On Friday I blogged about Scott Walker's comment about Wisconsin not needing healthcare reform because our rate of uninsured is smaller than most states. In that blog I focused mainly on the fact that there are still people that are struggling with health care issues and only significant national reform will change that fact. There is another important take on the Walker comments, however, that I should have also included in that Friday blog posting. Essentially you could say that Walker was complimenting the effort by Governor Doyle to greatly reduce the ranks of the uninsured in Wisconsin.
Walker's comment was that the number of uninsured is much lower in Wisconsin, so we don't need fundamental reform. Our number of uninsured is not lower based on some accident, rather it is because of the determined and focused leadership of Governor Doyle on this specific issue. Health care programs that have been pioneered by Governor Doyle have obviously been wildly popular and effective at driving down our number of uninsured. Badger Care Plus Core, as only one example, was so popular and the need so great that the plan quickly reached its enrollment limits. Now Governor Doyle's administration is working on ways to get a basic level of insurance for those waiting for enrollment into Badger Care Plus Core.
As Governor Doyle said in October, "Despite the tremendous work we have done here in Wisconsin, Badger Care Plus and (other) state plans like it, are merely bridges to get us to national health reform." By all accounts those bridges have been very successful, so successful in fact that even Scott Walker had to compliment Governor Doyle's efforts.
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1 comment:
Now that was a great way to frame the issue. We need more of that.
The number of uninsured in Wisconsin would never have reduced under a Republican governor(s).
That fact, and the overwhelming support and enrollment in the Badgercare program, prove how wrong the GOP is about the publics willingness to make government work for them.
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