Gov. Walker incentivizes the poor to just die already
Bring out your dead!
Sure, Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker proposed a budget that would end drug coverage for low-income seniors and hand over oversight of and cut funding for our state’s successful health care program, BadgerCare, to his extreme administration. But fear not, poors! Gov. Walker’s budget makes it cheaper to die anyway:
The governor’s budget steps up payments for funerals for people on Medicaid even as it cuts nearly $500 million from the health programs that serve 1.2 million statewide.
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Sure enough, on page 266 of the Governor’s budget, on the state Department of Administration’s website, is an item called “Funeral and Cemetery Aids.”It contains the following directive: “The Governor recommends increasing funding for payments to counties based on a re-estimate of unreimbursed funeral and cemetery costs.”
Funding jumps from $3.897 million in fiscal year 2012 to $4.0434 million in fiscal year 2013.
Phew.
But not everyone is convinced.. The whole plan has one state resident, Dorrine Green, a bit worried:
The Manitowoc mom suffers from a rare disease called Pseudomyxoma Peritonei that requires surgeries every couple of years and regular monitoring with CAT scans. Last year, her medical costs totaled $140,000. Without help from the state’s public health programs, she says, she would have died. She still will die if she doesn’t get such help again, Green says. Her tumors are sure to return and require surgery in a year or so. After seven or eight of these operations, she says, the disease is usually terminal.
To document her concerns. Ms. Green started the blog, ‘Scott Walker is Going to Kill Me.’
I wish I was making this up.