Wisconsin
Health Policy rankings
Health indicators | Rank |
| Population | 5,451,124 |
Number of insurance mandates: | 31 |
| Death rate per 100,000: | 749.9 |
Number of adults overweight or obese | 59.10% |
| Percent of adults who have visited a dentist in the last 12 months | 77.50% |
Number of births (2004) | 70,146 |
Ranking public policy | Rank |
| Overall health ownership rank | 15 |
| Government health care rank | 26 |
| Private health insurance rank | 12 |
| Medical tort rank | 21 |
Provider burden of regulation rank | 22 |
*Policy ranks are from the U.S. Index of Health Ownership, published by the Pacific Research Institute.
*Health indicators are from State Health Facts, a service of the Kaiser Family Foundation.
*Number of insurance mandates comes from Health Insurance Mandates in the States 2007 (PDF), a publication of the Council for Affordable Health Insurance.
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Wisconson Policy Research Institute
State Offices
Thursday, May 15, 2008Medica Rolls out Comparison ToolBy John LaPlanteCategories: Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, WisconsinIf patient-centered care is ever going to take hold in health care, we're going to need some tools to help people figure out which doctors, hospitals and clinics are doing the best jobs at the lowest prices. Fortunately some tools are being developed. One is Angie's List, which is expanding its "tell your neighbors" approach from lawn care services to health care. Meanwhile Medica has developed Main Street Medica, which lets you rank physicians, clinics, and hospitals by price, number of patients seen, and other criteria. It's far from perfect, but it's a good start.
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Wednesday, May 14, 2008Why High Health Care Costs in Milwaukee?By Linda GormanCategories: WisconsinThe Wisconsin Policy Research Institute has issued a report on high health care costs in Milwaukee. I was the author. The basic conclusion is that prices would be lower if hordes of expert American shoppers were set loose on its highly integrated health care providers. It includes an overview of the literature on hospital pricing behavior in integrated health care systems. People who want to extend government control over health care generally laud integrated health care systems as a way to lower costs and generally save the world. As was the case when the same group of people said HMOs and capitated care would save the world, the truth is probably more complicated. The report tries to promote a beginning understanding of the behavioral drawbacks inherent in promoting integrated systems as the cure du jour. Understanding those drawbacks is essential to making cogent arguments against those who think more government is the cure for what ails us. The opening sections include some discussion of the more common claims about why health care costs are so high. The paper also contains an extended discussion of the savings that can accrue to purchasers of health insurance when they combine a health savings account (HSA) with a qualified high deductible health insurance policy (QHDP). Even under fairly severe assumptions about illness, there are still small lifetime savings from an HSA/QHDP. The calculations use real prices and make assumptions that would favor traditional low deductible insurance policies. Graphs are included. In addition, you might find the paper useful for its references.
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Friday, May 2, 2008Grassroots Health Care ReformManitowoc County Saves Big With HSAs By Linda GormanCategories: WisconsinIn 2006 Wisconsin’s Manitowoc County needed to control its employee health care costs. With union agreement, it decided to experiment with a qualified high deductible health plan coupled with a health savings account. For single employees, the county planned to contribute $1,500 to a health savings account for each person. It hoped to save up to $825 an employee. Initial results are in. At the end of 2007, County Executive Bob Ziegelbauer told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that the county would save $500,000 from what it spent in 2006. The savings occurred even though it paid the entire employee health insurance premium, eliminated all copays, and put $1,500 into the health savings account of each covered individual or $3,000 into the health savings account of each employee with a family policy. In January, the county issued a report projecting savings for 2008. It estimates that employees with family plans will save a minimum of $2,126.70 in cash compared to what they would have paid under the old low deductible with co-pay plan. The County’s cash savings per family plan are projected to be $5,941.80 a year. An October 2007 op-ed by Mr. Ziegelbauer explains why it HSAs work. The slide show the county uses to explain the new plan to its employees is here. Even though Wisconsin legislators tax health savings accounts, an estimated 5.6 percent of people who were under 65 and privately insured were in them at the beginning of 2008. This puts Wisconsin among the top 10 states for HSA penetration, behind Minnesota (9.2 percent), Louisiana (9.0 percent), Vermont (7.4 percent), Colorado (7.1 percent), Nebraska (6.4 percent), and Connecticut (5.8%). Are your local officials looking at qualified high deductible plans coupled with health savings accounts for their employees?
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Monday, March 24, 2008Getting a Handle on Immigrant PopulationsBy Christian SchneiderCategories: WisconsinWhile the small city of Green Bay in Northeast Wisconsin has recently lost its most famous resident (Packers quarterback Brett Favre), the city has had no shortage of people moving in - specifically, both legal and illegal immigrants. With governments all over the country figuring out how to handle their growing immigrant populations, the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute thought it would be instructive to examine the economic effect immigrants have had on the City of Green Bay. The report, authored by David Dodenhoff Ph.D., attempts to quantify the costs and benefits of a large immigrant (both legal and illegal) population in a small city in Northeast Wisconsin - with the hopes that many of the conclusions translate to other mid-sized American cities. Among its findings:
The full report can be read here.
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Thursday, March 13, 2008The Shell Game Lives OnBy John LaPlanteCategories: WisconsinWisconsin faces a budget shortfall. So what does Gov. Jim Doyle propose doing about it? Scamming taxpayers in other states through the Medicaid program. The idea is to levy a new tax on hospital says, which qualifies the state for more matching funds from federal taxpayers. The match then frees up some state money spent on Medicaid for other purposes. This approach is hazarous for Badger State residents, too, says the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute : "The feds are often fickle when approving more federal funding to bail states out. This was in evidence in the 2003-05 budget, when Doyle wrote in hundreds of millions of dollars in Intragovernmental Transfer Program (IGT) funds to plug a Medicaid hole. As it turns out, Doyle’s number was pure fiction, as the money never materialized. Naturally, the state refinanced some debt (opting to pay more long-term in exchange for a few immediate bucks) rather than making any substantive budget changes."
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Wednesday, March 12, 2008Will "Healthy Wisconsin" Become a Welfare Magnet?By John LaPlanteCategories: WisconsinWisconsin led the nation in welfare reform, and in so doing became much less attractive for welfare-driven migration. Could it undo that by implementing "Healthy Wisconsin," a planned government takeover of health care? Christian Schneider, writing for the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, says it's plausible:
The difference between this and the old-fashioned form of welfare is that "Healthy Wisconsin" is a much more serious threat to societal well-being and the public purse.
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Friday, February 29, 2008Piling on Another MandateBy John LaPlanteCategories: Insurance Regulation, WisconsinWill insurance in Wisconsin become even more expensive? It might if Gov. Jim Doyle has his way. The governor isn't calling for higher premiums, but he is calling on the state house to impose an insurance mandate for autism treatment. The governor says he is for the people and not for insurance companies. But this high-minded rhetoric obscures an important fact: business costs are passed along to the final customer. So what Gov. Doyle is calling for, ultimately, is an increase in insurance premiums. How is that consumer-friendly?
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Wednesday, February 13, 2008What Will Wisconsin Do?Expand private market, or regulate it more? By John LaPlanteCategories: WisconsinLast year, Wisconsin made news when Democrats in the state senate proposed "Healthy Wisconsin ," a government takeover of health care in the state. Could 2008 be instead the year of free-market reforms? Rep. Leah Vukmir has introduced legislation to enshrine in the constitution the right to purchase private insurance. Patrick Illheran says that even if Healthy Wisconsin is enacted, this proposal would spare Badger State residents the plight of most Canadians, who can't even buy private insurance to supplement the woeful taxpayer-paid system. Rep. Vukmir has also proposed legislation to let out-of-state companies sell policies to Wisconsinites, as long as those companies abide by the regulations of their home states. (I've been told that it's L.R.B. 3560/1, but I can't find it online.) Such an idea could benefit consumers by expanding the number of companies that sell insurance in the state. Meanwhile, Gov. Jim Doyle has his own ideas, including a BadgerCare expansion that comes with community rating, financial non-starter.
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Saturday, January 5, 2008The Sorry History of Mandatory CoverageBy Greg ScandlenCategories: California, Insurance Regulation, Massachusetts, WisconsinI rarely agree with David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhndler, the husband and wife team of Marxist doctors from Boston who run Physicians for a National Health Plan. So it was something of a shock to read an op-ed they had in the New York Times, and discover that I agreed with every word, except two concluding paragraphs.They look at the history of mandatory insurance coverage at both the state and federal levels, beginning with President Nixon’s pay-or-play proposal in the early 1970s. They then discuss the Massachusetts effort in 1988, Oregon’s in 1989, and similar laws in Minnesota, Tennessee, Washington, and Vermont in 1992-1993. In every case the laws are enacted with grandiose promises but end up making the conditions worse than before or are repealed or overturned in court before they van even be implemented. The article quotes Oregon Governor Barbara Roberts as saying at the time, “Our dream of providing effective and affordable health care to all Oregonians have come true.” Tennessee’s Governor Ned McWherter announced, “Tennessee will cover at least 95 percent of its citizens.” This should be mandatory reading for every advocate of mandatory coverage. Himmelstein and Woolhandler’s preferred solution, of course, is Single Payer National Health Insurance. They ignore that such a system would make all the existing problems in health care financing much worse. And they seem to have blind faith that the same politicians who made a hash of earlier efforts will miraculously transform into enlightened leaders once they control the entire health care system. No, no, no. Far better to put your faith in “the people” than in the politicians. Let the people control the money and get out of the way.
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Wednesday, November 28, 2007Wisconsin Expands SCHIPBy John LaPlanteCategories: SCHIP, WisconsinEven with the defeat in Washington DC of a congressionally-mandated expansion in SCHIP, the politicization of health care continues in the states. Wisconsin, for example, is moving towards including more people in its version of SCHIP/Medicaid. From CQ Politics :
I suppose that allocating money in the children's program to children is the least we can expect. Too bad the state otherwise seems to be moving in the wrong direction when it comes to making health care something affordable, accessible, and to "ownable" to its residents.
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