Home health workers, head start teachers and Medicaid recipients are calling on state legislators not to approve cuts in the state's Medicaid and BadgerCare programs.
About 50 people testified at a hearing in Madison on Monday sponsored by HealthWatch Wisconsin, a non-profit group that advocates for public health care access.
Shanda Hubertus of Wausau is a private duty nurse who cares for disabled people in their homes. All of her clients pay for her services through Medicaid. She says the $110 million dollar cut in the program in Gov. Walker's budget repair bill will mean she may lose her job and many of the people she cares for won't get the services they need.
"I get no paid vacation, no sick days, no workmen's comp, no weekend holiday or night differential, no pay increase in ten years, health insurance or anything else," says Hubertus. "I am an independent contractor, so the lack of benefits is part of the deal, but how do you recruit qualified nurses to work with our countries most vulnerable population if you can't even get a fair wage."
The cuts will also increase co-pays and limit eligibility for some HIV and AIDS patients like Carl Kryssa of Milwaukee .He depends on Medicaid for the retroviral medications that keep him alive. Kryssa says hundreds of thousands of people live in Wisconsin with HIV and AIDS.
ADVERTISEMENT
"Without this we will all end up in emergency rooms and we all will die and that will cost the state of the Wisconsin a whole lot more than what they're paying for now," he says.
Organizers say the ad hoc hearings on Medicaid and BadgerCare were necessary because there was no opportunity for those affected to have their voices heard before the vote on the budget repair bill. The hearings continue today at a downtown hotel in Madison.
