Democrats continue to fight to expand Medicaid in Wisconsin, while Republican lawmakers are holding firm against. The Republican-controlled budget committee this week voted to stand by its decision to reject Governor Tony Evers’ plan to expand Medicaid. Republican state representative Mark Born of Beaver Dam says the committee instead increased state funding for Medicaid and other health care programs by more than $611 million over two years. “We did not grow welfare to improve our healthcare system. Instead we invested in nursing homes, personal care workers, direct care givers, we made substantial increases to counties in the children and family needs where we’ve seen a major uptick in costs, more investments in charitable clinics,” Born told WFDL news. But Assembly Democratic leader Gordon Hintz of Oshkosh says by not expanding Medicaid, Wisconsin will be forced to spend state tax dollars to backfill what could have been funded through federal tax dollars. “We would have saved state taxpayers $324 million in state taxpayer money. We would have also drawn down $1.6 billion of federal funds to be able to expand health care programs,” Hintz said. “What the Republicans did was take state taxpayer money to try to expand some of the health care programs.”
