Contact Chairs of State Health Committees & Demand Public Hearings Be Held on Proposed  Medicaid Changes

www.savebadgercare.org

October 6, 2011

Last Friday, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) released plans to help cut $554 million from Medicaid. Key aspects of the proposal require federal approval through a waiver from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). DHS has said they will be collecting public input through their website for the next couple week - but that's not enough! We need REAL opportunities to provide public input and we need our state health committees to hold public hearings on these critical changes to our Medicaid and BadgerCare programs. Take just a couple minutes out of your day to call the committee chairs and tell them to "schedule public hearings in their health committee so the voices of BadgerCare families and supporters can be heard!" Senator Leah Vukmir (608) 266-2512 Representative Jeff Stone  (888) 534-0082 You can also link here to email them a message requesting they schedule a hearing. Link here for a preliminary assessment of the likely consequences of the proposed changes relating to BadgerCare Plus, with regard to the "maintenance of effort" waiver portion of the DHS proposals and the benchmark plan. Overview and analysis of the other proposals will be forthcoming. Thank you!    Thank you for supporting BadgerCare and Medicaid.  Be sure to forward this email to others letting them know that MEDICAID MATTERS!  For more information and to join the Save BadgerCare Coalition, visit: www.savebadgercare.org. Looking for another way to stand up for BadgerCare? Participate in our Save BadgerCare Coalition Photo Petition Drive! Take a picture showing that you want to Save BadgerCare. You can print and use one of our signs (see attached), or you can get creative and make your own that explains why BadgerCare is important to you. Email your photo as an attachment to savebadgercare@gmail.com. Make sure you include your name, city and zip code. We'll post your photo on our site and use it to show our elected leaders that their constituents support and want to protect BadgerCare and Medicaid when policy decisions are made in the next month. Forward along to friends, family, colleagues and neighbors.  We're aiming to collect at least 500 images by the end of October!