The Board has issued a statement on the US House passage of the\u00a0health reform bill (AHCA):<\/p>\n
U.S. House health reform bill puts people with disabilities at risk<\/p>\n
Today, the U.S. House passed a health reform bill (AHCA) that cuts Medicaid funding by 25% ($900 billion), and jeopardizes the critical Medicaid supports that makes it possible for people with intellectual or developmental disabilities to live and work in the community instead of being forced into expensive nursing homes or institutions.
\nPeople with intellectual and developmental disabilities rely on all of Wisconsin\u2019s 20 state Medicaid programs\u2014including Family Care, IRIS, MAPP, BadgerCare\u2014and the ForwardHealth card to stay healthy, become employed, and remain in their homes. Medicaid also provides essential therapies, equipment, special education services and equipment from physical therapists to feeding tubes, and many other services critical to people with disabilities and often makes the difference between caregivers being able to keep their jobs or leaving the workforce\u2014jeopardizing their own financial futures\u2014to care for family members.
\nThe House bill caps and cuts federal funding for the entire Medicaid program without placing any controls on rising health care, prescription, and other increasing costs.
\nThe bill imposes per capita caps and block grants to Medicaid, which will force states to make decisions on who should be covered under state Medicaid programs, whether people have to wait for services, and what community based services and supports are included.
\n\u201cThe AHCA will force states to make large and continued cuts to Medicaid each budget cycle, especially to home- and community-based programs, like Family Care and IRIS,\u201d says Beth Swedeen, Wisconsin Board for People with Developmental Disabilities Executive Director. \u201cPrograms like Family Care have kept people needing long-term care in their homes rather than ending up in much more expensive Medicaid-funded institutions. Wisconsin has dramatically reduced Medicaid costs by keeping people in the community, progress that this bill threatens to reverse.\u201d
\nThe bill allows states to choose not to cover Essential Health Benefits, effectively ending pre-existing conditions protections. The inclusion of high risk pools will provide little protection for people with pre-existing conditions. Experts on both sides of the aisle have clearly warned that \u201chigh risk pools\u201d lead to higher costs, fewer benefits and waiting lists rationing care for those with pre-existing conditions.
\nIt also lets states allow insurers to charge people higher premiums for health coverage based on their health which means insurers could once again discriminate based against people based on their medical history.
\nBPDD calls on the U.S. Senate to oppose the harmful cuts to Medicaid and rollback of protections for people with pre-existing conditions in the American Health Care Act.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Board has issued a statement on the US House passage of the\u00a0health reform bill (AHCA): U.S. House health reform bill puts people with disabilities at risk Today, the U.S. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feature","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wi-bpdd.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wi-bpdd.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wi-bpdd.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wi-bpdd.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wi-bpdd.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1197"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wi-bpdd.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1199,"href":"https:\/\/wi-bpdd.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1197\/revisions\/1199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wi-bpdd.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wi-bpdd.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wi-bpdd.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}