Murphy for WI

Someone commented that Chuck Schumer voted against the contraception protection bill, and I apologize for not commenting initially, and now I can't find the post.

He did technically vote against it - after enough republican senators had voted against it to kill it. He did that for procedural reasons, as it will allow him to bring the bill up again in the future. It's a weird and convoluted Senate rule. So no, he's not actually opposed to the bill - he actually brought it up.

Hi there, everyone.

I think it's worth understanding the policies and repercussions of the Wisconsin GOP, and really, the GOP nationally. (read to the bottom, please!)

The ACA (Obamacare) was written into law in 2013, and implemented in 2013, and so we now have a reasonable amount of data to look at.

In Wisconsin, under Scott Walker and the WI GOP, they refused to accept federal money toward the expansion of state medicaid (Badger Care), and they refused to set up a state-wide insurance exchange, and so we only have access to the federal exchange.

Now, that did a couple of things. First, it means that there is less competition between insurance companies, which drives up rates. There are some counties in Wisconsin that have only one insurance company associated with the ACA, and monopolies are not known for competitive pricing. So, we can take a look at state by state comparisons, and on average, we will see that states like Wisconsin have higher ACA rates and had larger increases over time, due to a lack of competition.

We also know that the "fiscally responsible" GOP refused to accept the federal subsidies for the ACA, and so far I believe that number totals over $5 billion for the residents of Wisconsin. That money would have been designated to increase the number of people eligible for Badgercare based on poverty level incomes, and would have also increased the portion the federal government pays for all Badger Care recipients. In other words more Wisconsin residents would have been covered and it collectively would have cost ALL residents of Wisconsin less than it does now.

But the GOP refused, and at the federal level, voted over 70 times to revoke the ACA, despite not having any actual health care plan of their own.

Unfortunately though, fiscal idiocy aside, we now know that there are even worse repercussions.

Recent economic and health analyses show a direct causal relationship - in other words, correlation AND causation - between the ACA and health outcomes.

Specifically, over the range from 2013-2017, those states that accepted federal money from the ACA to increase the number of people on state Medicaid, not only saved money, not only saw more people on insurance, but also saw a 9.4% improvement in mortality.

In other words, as plainly as I can put this... The WI GOP and the national GOP, while playing politics, have not only cost us all billions of dollars here in Wisconsin, but their decisions have literally killed people.

That is who the GOP is.

(to download the .pdf of the recent study...)

www.nber.org