Wisconsin Tea Party Death Panel Cuts Cancer Care For Poor, Blames Obamacare!

Wisconsin Tea Party Death Panel Cuts Cancer Care For Poor, Blames Obamacare!

by Bob Cull

Having waited in vain for the "death panels" predicted by the detractors of Obamacare to materialize, Scott Walker, Tea Party Governor of Wisconsin decided that it was time to take matters into his own hands and create the proof that he was right himself.

For two decades Wisconsin has had a program to provide screening and treatment for breast and cervical cancer for the state's poor women.  The Wisconsin Well Woman Program (WWWP) has, in that time , provided over 500,000 screenings for breast and cervical cancer to over 70,000 women who would have otherwise not been able to obtain these critical early detection services, possibly meaning the difference between life and death.

Now the governor says that it is anticipated that there will be a reduced need for the program with more women being covered by new insurance policies due to Obamacare.  Of course he omits the fact that since his state will not participate in Medicaid expansion many of the women who have relied on the program will not benefit from Obamacare since they do not have sufficient income to qualify for a subsidy but have too much income to qualify for Medicaid.

The plan which is to be implemented on June 1st will combine the current 72 agencies administering the program, one in each of the state's counties to between 6 and 10 agencies statewide.  It will also cut the number of providers from the 1,000 currently providing these screenings to a mere handful of large providers around the state, who those providers will be and who will be administering the program has yet to be determined, still it remains scheduled to go into effect in a mere two and a half months.

Two groups who have worked closely with the program, the Susan Komen Foundation and the Wisconsin Breast Cancer Coalition wrote to Governor Walker more than two weeks ago and have not as yet received a response.  In their letter they questioned the need to make such drastic changes to the program this quickly when no one has done any study to learn how many fewer women will need the program nor has there been any real effort to design the new streamlined program.

This is not a program for which the state has to shoulder the entire burden, it is a joint effort by the state and federal government via the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the CDC is committed under the current contract until 2017.

Jennifer Miller, communications specialist with the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, says that, "Our year three funding from CDC begins on June 30, but we don’t know how much money that will be. Given that we expect receiving less funding from the CDC, and our expectation that WWWP will serve fewer women in the coming years because they will be receiving these screening services through ACA or BadgerCare Plus, it is appropriate to restructure the program at this time."

In contrast to Miller's assertions, Brittany Behm, spokeswoman for the CDC, told WisPolitics that the agency has no plans to reduce spending on the program and that last year funding was actually increased.

An email statement from Behm said:  “Decisions about funding for the NBCCEDP and all other programs at the CDC are made annually by Congress. In the recently passed fiscal year (FY) 2014 appropriations bill, Congress provided almost $10 million more to the NBCCEDP than it did for FY 2013. CDC makes individual grantee funding decisions based on a variety of factors and these decisions are not made public until final award announcements are made at the end of June.”

Governor Walker can say that the cuts are due to Obamacare all he wants, however this is just another transparent attempt to undermine it while continuing the GOP war on women, two birds with one stone as it were.

h/t:  Huffington Post

Bob Cull