From Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson, guest writing for the MacIver Institute:
It’s no surprise, but it should be, that state Senator Jon Erpenbach has come out in favor of a bill to reset the clock on the Obamacare subsidy of Medicaid. In an op-ed last week, Erpenbach joins his fellow Democrat Tammy Baldwin in supporting the States Achieve Medicaid Expansion (SAME) Act.
The bill, unlikely to pass in a Republican-controlled congress, would allow states that decide now to accept federal dollars to expand Medicaid to 138 percent of the federal poverty line to receive the same levels of subsidy received by states that did the Obamacare expansion in 2014. Under Obamacare, states that agreed to expand Medicaid coverage received 100 percent reimbursement from the federal government in the first year and then the subsidy declines to 90 percent in 2017.
Wisconsin did not accept the federal funds for the Medicaid expansion. Instead, Governor Scott Walker and the legislature changed the state’s Medicaid program, Badgercare, by covering everyone underneath the federal poverty line.