Erpenbach: ADRCs Deserve Legislative Support

Senator Jon Erpenbach has written an op-ed piece about the importance of the Aging/Disability Resource Centers and the long term programs that serve our disabled and elderly citizens:

In the mid-1990s Wisconsin made the decision to create Aging and Disability Resource Centers. These centers have spread throughout Wisconsin and have been used as a model for many other states for best practice in local long-term care support. ADRCs help the elderly and disabled and their families by providing counsel regarding options for in-home services and care that help people stay in their own home and out of nursing homes and institutions.

This model of a "local one stop shop” for the elderly and disabled, managed on a nonprofit basis in local communities, is truly a success story for Wisconsin. ADRCs are charged with helping individuals use their own financial, family and community resources efficiently and effectively. ADRCs are available for all residents to use, regardless of income or personal resources, and have a mission to empower people to make informed choices.

Unfortunately, Gov. Walker has proposed that ADRCs do not need to operate in every county and that services could be provided on a statewide basis managed by a private for-profit company. Local ADRC governing boards, which include elderly and disabled board members, would simply be eliminated.

ADRC boards are not alone; the successful self-directed IRIS program is also slated to be eliminated, and existing local management for Family Care is also set aside in favor of the statewide management program.

For the past 20 years I have volunteered delivering meals on wheels once or twice a month. Many clients are referred to the program by our local ADRC. The relationships I have built with participants have truly shown me that ADRCs are needed and necessary in our communities. You simply cannot substitute local knowledge and support.

Obviously, the first question we would like the governor to answer is why should we throw out programs like ADRCs, which work successfully locally with a core set of volunteers and not-for-profit experts in favor of a statewide program that will be run for profit? These choices make no sense for the people of Wisconsin and should be outright rejected by the Republican-controlled Legislature. I will do my part on the Joint Committee on Finance to repeal Walker’s proposed privatization of ADRCs, IRIS and regional management of Family Care. Elimination of local systems to create bigger private systems of care for individuals seems like a bad idea.

I agree completely with Erpenbach on all but one point. Walker's scheme does not seem like a bad idea - it is a bad idea!

Assembly JFC Dems Stand Up For The Elderly And The Disabled

Last Friday, I, and scores of others, spoke to the Joint Finance Committee against Scott Walker's plan to privatize and decimate the long term support programs for the frail elderly and people with disabilities.

So it was with great pleasure to see that at least two committee members, Representatives Chris Taylor and Gordon Hintz, were not only listening to us, but are willing to fight for this.  The following is a joint press release from Taylor and Hintz:

Prior to the Joint Committee on Finance’s  (JFC) hearing in Rice Lake, the Democratic members of the JFC called for removal of budget provisions that would dismantle Wisconsin’s successful long-term care system.  Governor Walker’s proposal would replace it with a statewide model, likely run by out-of-state corporate insurance companies and without competitive bid requirements for contracts.  Following their request for removal of these changes, Representatives Gordon Hintz (D-Oshkosh) and Chris Taylor (D-Madison) released the following statement:

“The Republicans' dismantling of Wisconsin’s long term care system is throwing Wisconsin families into crisis,” Rep. Taylor said.  “Families served by Wisconsin’s long-term care system want to be treated with dignity and respect, and instead feel surprised and sabotaged.  But it doesn’t have to be this way.  Republicans need to take these changes out of the budget today.”

“Over the last week I have heard from hundreds of families that count on IRIS and FamilyCare for the support they need to be healthy and successful,” Rep. Hintz said.  “We are being asked to adopt a plan that has no details other than dismantling our existing long-term care system.  More than 50,000 Wisconsin families are served by our long-term care programs fear what this means for their loved ones.  This change has no business in the budget, and needs to be removed immediately to avoid any further harm and uncertainty."

Wisconsin’s current long-term care system has been a national model, based on years of trust, accountability, and work built by local stakeholder input. Currently, IRIS and Family Care allow people with a disability and the elderly to choose the type of in-home health services that best meet their needs, through regional providers or self-directed care. These changes were never discussed before they were introduced in the budget and have been met with strong opposition from families who were blindsided by the proposal.  DHS Secretary Rhoades has stated that she was also unaware of the proposal before it was included in the budget.

I thank and commend Representatives Taylor and Hintz for doing the right thing on this issue.

I just hope that their Republican counterparts realize that Walker has put them firmly on Wisconsin's version of the third rail and that they have the common sense to get off of it before it's too late for our state's most vulnerable citizens and for their own careers.

The Corporate Wolf At The Door

Last week, I reported about how Scott Walker wants to throw the disabled and frail elderly to the corporate wolves.  In a nutshell, he wants to do away with programs like IRIS and Family Support Program, and make it mandatory that these vulnerable citizens are forced into a privatized version of Family Support:

Walker would also award all of these contracts in a no bid process.
And to show that the care of these vulnerable adults are not his priority, Walker wants to take oversight of these programs from the Department of Health Services and give it to the Commissioner of Insurance.

In other words, Walker wants to force the frail elderly and disabled adults into a single, expensive program. He then wants to give these contracts - worth more than $3 billion - in a no bid process to large for profit insurance companies, who will have little or no oversight.

Gee, do you think he is fishing for the Big Insurance campaign donations with this immoral giveaway?

The big question is what company could do what Walker wanted.

It would have to be a big insurance company to be able to set up a statewide system. But because Walker wants it done by the end of next year, it would have to also be a company that already has a pretty good understanding of how the system works so that they could be ready to go in such a relatively short time.

The only logical conclusion would be WPS Health Insurance.  They are a huge mulitbillion dollar company who already has contracts to be the third party payer for many of the state's Family Care systems.

To make WPS seem even more likely to be the corporate wolf that Walker wants to feed on our vulnerable citizens is the ties he has to the company.

Just a year ago, Brett Davis, who was Walker's Medicaid director, suddenly up and left his job.  Just a few weeks later, it was announced that Davis had been hired at WPS at vice-president of provider relations.

This is important for a couple, three of reasons.

One, the Family Care program is funded through Medicaid, thus giving Davis an upper leg on most people on being able to run this program in the private sector.

Secondly, the timing of Davis' departure from the state and hiring at the state would make him eligible to do lobbying with the state.  And don't forget that Davis used to be a state legislator himself before Walker gave him his cushy job.

Scott Walker and Brett Davis

Thirdly, Walker and Davis do have a long and tight relationship. The gentle reader might recall that Walker had wanted Davis to be his Lieutenant Governor.  This was evidenced by the fact that Walker had Kelly Rindfleisch doing Davis' fundraising instead of her supposed duties as Walker's Deputy Chief of Staff at Milwaukee County.  Other emails from the Walkergate investigation showed that Walker's team didn't think much of Rebecca Kleefisch, who eventually did become Walker's lieutenant governor.

Now, this is all purely speculation.  But given Walker's modus operandi, it all fits together so very well.  It also follows the pattern that Walker tried to use when he wanted to set up a perpetual taxpayer-funded campaign donation scheme with Sportsman United.

And let's face it...is there anything that we wouldn't put past Walker trying to do, especially if it was meant to further his political aspirations?

Scott Walker's Most Heinous Budget Stunt Yet

Under Medicaid guidelines, a disabled adult or a frail elderly person would need to go into a nursing home to be able to access Medicaid funding to pay for their care. However, each state has a waiver program that allows the person to divert that money into community-based support services that allows the person to remain in the community, if not in their own home.

In Wisconsin, there are three programs that offer this type of waiver. One is Family Care, which can provide such things as residential services, day programming and personal cares. Another is Partnership, which does the same thing as Family Care, but includes an HMO component for medical care. The third is IRIS, which allows the person to self-direct their services.

At least one of these programs is offered in 57 of the 72 counties in Wisconsin. Many of them have two options, Family Care and IRIS. Of the remaining 15 counties, eight of them are already in the process of transitioning to Family Care.

Until now.

In his 2015-17 proposed budget, Scott Walker wants to make sweeping changes to these programs and the way they are administered.

One of the biggest changes would be the elimination of IRIS. The effect of this will be devastating for a lot of these people and their families:

Beth Swedeen is the Executive Director of the Wisconsin Board for People with Developmental Disabilities. She says one of the biggest concerns they are hearing about is the possible elimination of the Include, Respect, I Self Direct, or IRIS Program. IRIS allows qualifying people the ability to make their own choices about many healthcare options instead of being institutionalized, on Family Care, or regular Medicaid. “People with significant disabilities and older adults are using long-term care where they are self directing their own support, so they’re hiring their own care workers, and they’re making decisions about the budget that they are allowed to have in ways that make sense for them and their families, so we’re really concerned about that. I’ve gotten a lot of calls from folks who are really concerned about the elimination of that program.”

Swedeen says one of the many benefits of IRIS is the member gets to choose who their caregivers are. “When you have people in your home doing things that are very personal to you, like helping you with a bath or helping you get dressed, you want to make sure that’s a person you are comfortable with, and somebody that is safe and that is somebody you’ve chosen rather than somebody that an agency has chosen.”

Other changes include dissolving the regional districts and making Family Care contracts available only to companies that can operate state wide, such as Big Insurance companies. Walker would also allow the state to contract with anyone for for the Aging/Disability Resource Centers (ADRCs), which are currently run by the counties. Walker would also abolish ADRC governing boards and long term care councils.

Walker would also award all of these contracts in a no bid process.
And to show that the care of these vulnerable adults are not his priority, Walker wants to take oversight of these programs from the Department of Health Services and give it to the Commissioner of Insurance.

In other words, Walker wants to force the frail elderly and disabled adults into a single, expensive program. He then wants to give these contracts - worth more than $3 billion - in a no bid process to large for profit insurance companies, who will have little or no oversight.

Gee, do you think he is fishing for the Big Insurance campaign donations with this immoral giveaway?

Ah, but that's not all. With all things Walker, there is more. There is always more.

Walker is not satisfied with just going after the disabled adults and frail elderly. He wants to go after disabled children as well.

Included in Walker's budget is the elimination of the Family Support Program, which helps families with disabled children to get special equipment or services that are not covered under Medicaid.

Just when one might think that Walker has hit the depths of maleficence and greed, he finds a way to prove us wrong.

Walker and his apologists will point out that his budget calls for expanding Family Care to all 72 counties so that no disabled person or frail elderly person would go without these "services."

Don't be fooled by this claim.

The only reason Walker is doing that is that the federal government slammed him a few years ago when he tried to put a cap on Family Care and told him in no uncertain terms that he could not deny services to anyone eligible for them:

Because the currently approved waiver includes and entitlement to waiver services, we are instructing the State to operate the waiver as it was approved by CMS. Therefore, we are directing the State to identify any individuals not currently enrolled onto the Family Care or Self-Directed Supports waivers since the July 1, 2011 implementation of the newly instituted enrollment caps, and immediately enroll those individuals in the waiver programs. This includes individuals living in any counties who had or would have had an entitlement to the waivers as of July 1, 2011, and includes individuals who were or would have otherwise been selected for enrollment from other participating counties.

In ancient history, people would put their frail and disabled people out into the cold for the wolves. Walker is doing a modern day version of this where he is throwing these vulnerable citizens to the corporate wolves.

Walker Escalates His Attack On State's Most Vulnerable Citizens

Scott Walker, like any other Koch-head Republican, has a long history of attacking the more vulnerable citizens in order to further his political agenda and ideology.

Even has he does his weaselspeak about cutting taxes, the truth is he is raising them, most often on the poorest of the poor.

When he says he's cut spending, he really hasn't, but he just shifted it from the poor who are dependent on Badger Care and giving it to his wealthy corporate sponsors. So what if state spending is up and tens of thousands of single mothers and their children are left without health care coverage. A tax break for some major corporation is much more important than anyone's life, right?!

Walker feels free to attack these people because they are poor. They don't have the wherewithal to flood the airwaves with ads exposing the truth. And even if they did, they still would be no match for the billions of dollars Walker's supporters would spend to disparage and smear them. For proof, just look at the vulgar way these elitist, pompous asses are treating people that need government subsidized phones to help them find work or keep them and their families safe in cases of emergencies.

Among Walker's favorite targets are the disabled and the frail elderly.

Almost everyone in this population group is on SSI benefits which means they usually get less than $800 a month to live off of. After paying room and board, copays and personal hygiene products, they're lucky to have to dimes to rub together. On top of that, the law forbids them to have more than $2,000 at any given time. If they go over that, they could lose their benefits.

As you can imagine, with no money, it's hard to have one's voice heard.

Furthermore, many disabled adults are non-verbal and/or cognitively delayed or have some other condition that would make it impossible or very difficult for them to even speak in the first place.

Walker's attacks on these vulnerable citizens have been occurring for a long time. As Milwaukee County Executive, he would try to cut the services to these vulnerable adults. Walker's callousness had been noted at the time in which he got caught up in a lie saying that other services were available when there was none.

Even his staff, who were running a political website as I reported on in the Introduction to Walkergate, were equally heartless when they would taunt the disabled by comparing a rally for them to a teahadist rally when they were still popular.

When Walker became governor and hired Dennis Smith to head up Human and Health Services, it sent a feeling of dread across the state. Smith already had a notoriety for screwing more than other men's wives. He was also known for screwing the poor by cutting Medicare and Medicaid with heartless abandon.

So when Walker came out with his first budget, it was no surprise that among the other Medicaid cuts, Walker wanted to place caps on Family Care, a Medicaid-waiver based program that allowed disabled adults and the frail elderly to remain in the community instead of being housed in the much more expensive institutions.

Fortunately, the Feds stepped in and told Walker that his caps were illegal and he needed to lift them. This caused a mild furor when Walker lied to the press and tried to paint the lifting of the caps due to his "budgetary prowess" instead of his mean-spiritedness crossing the line.

Showing his utter lack of scruples, Walker doubled down on the lies a few days later. Five days after that, he admitted what the left and advocates for the vulnerable people were saying all along - Family Care actually saves tax payers money while promoting independence for these vulnerable people.

By now, I'm sure the gentle reader has an idea that Walker has utter contempt and disdain for these vulnerable citizens and feels that they are only good for being political pawns.

Given that history, one can imagine the red flags that popped up when I saw that Smith was claiming to find that the Medicaid deficit was $27 million less than previous reported (and what the hell happened to Walker's supposedly balanced budget?!). Especially when one sees where Smith claimed the savings came from (emphasis mine):

Smith attributed the decrease to $27 million the state received from the federal government for retroactive service claims. He also noted that fewer people than anticipated have joined the state's Family Care program since the Legislature lifted an enrollment cap in April. The Family Care program is designed to keep disabled and elderly people out of costly nursing homes.

It actually be more accurate to say that fewer people than anticipated had been allowed to join or even stay in the program.

Walker has slowly been tightening the qualifications for people to be eligible for the program, making it harder for them to get enrolled. Furthermore, Walker is cutting not only the services that the people can receive, but the quality of the services as well.

One of the ways that Walker is doing this is a version of bait and switch. He lures managed care organizations in with generous contracts, who in turn subcontract the actual hands on care to other agencies based on that contract.

But then suddenly Walker claims a financial crisis and sharply cuts the funding to the managed care organization. The organization then cuts what it's paying to the provider, who has to cut corners and, ultimately, it is the vulnerable client that suffers.

Sometimes the cuts are so severe that the managed care organization decides to fold then to go underwater. An example of that is going on right now in western Wisconsin (again, emphasis mine):

Eau Claire-based long-term care provider Community Health Partnership will close at the end of the year, as its contract with the state Department of Health Services is set to expire.

CHP has had a five-year contract with the state to provide long-term care services to low-income elderly and disabled people in Chippewa, Eau Claire, Dunn, St. Croix and Pierce counties.

The two programs offered by CHP to the state DHS are Family Care, which offers assistance for individuals with functional challenges, and Partnership, which provides both functional and medical services to elderly and disabled individuals. The programs services about 2,700 people in the region, who were notified of the change by a letter from the state DHS.

CHP released a statement Tuesday saying that the agency informed state officials in July that it was not financially viable for CHP to continue offering the Family Care program.

“In early August, CHP received a letter from ... (DHS Secretary) Dennis Smith, stating that they interpreted (CHP’s) follow-up email as a notice that CHP did not want to participate in the Family Care program going forward,” the statement said.

“The letter ... also stated that this would also mean CHP’s operation of the Partnership program would end as of Jan. 1, 2013.”

Because those two programs are the only ones offered by CHP, the agency will close after the contract expires at the end of December. CHP currently employs about 360 people, and has locations in Chippewa Falls, Eau Claire, Menomonie and River Falls.

Jake has a good summary of what this means in real life terms:

It makes you wonder if some of this is related to the Walker Administration's jerking around of the Family Care program, which started by having Walker and Smith's DHS limit enrollment in the popular program to cut expenses, and led to the fiasco last December where Walker lied to reporters about his reasons for removng the cap (Remember when Scotty said he was doing it because it was the right thing to do when it turned out the Obama Administration told them to do it or else they'd lose millions in federal funds? Yeah, that screw-up).

Another part of that handling of Family Care involves payments to providers, and Walker and Smith have claimed that they will be able to reach millions in cuts through various "administrative measures." Well, I have little doubt that those administrative measures helped lead to CHP saying that it couldn't go on with the measly amount of money the state was paying it. So it ends up going out of business, leaving 2,700 people in the lurch in places such as Eau Claire, Chippewa Falls, Menomonie, and River Falls.

Now the state plans to run a competitive bid for these services and should be able to find some providers to continue to allow Family Care recipients to continue to get services, and some of those 360 people currently working at CHP will no doubt continue working for the new provider with a similar job. But there's no promise that the costs won't be higher, along with some painful transitions as the new providers go into place around January 1...and that's if the new vendor is competent and everything goes well in the changeover (which is not a guarantee in these situations).

However, this disruption of services for people in Western Wisconsin doesn't mean much to Scott Walker and Dennis Smith, they just care about the bottom line and the ability to pose behind an allegedly "balanced" budget. And if thousands of Family Care recipients and their families are damaged in the process and the value of services goes down, that's just collateral damage in the bigger picture of advancing right-wing ideology over results.

I am fully aware that some of my conservative readers (and trolls) are muttering to themselves things to the effect of how it serves those moochers right and those disabled adults and frail elderly should just pull themselves up by the bootstraps and get a job and pay their taxes just like everyone else. They don't really give a damn about the fate of these vulnerable people, just as long as their taxes don't go up or at least not so much that they have to go through cognitive dissonance with their support of Walker.

(Yes, some of these right wing ideologues actually think like that.)

But the thing is, Walker's stunts aren't even saving taxpayers any money.

Milwaukee County was in the middle of transitioning to Family Care when Walker, who had bragged about the program as a candidate, threw it under the proverbial bus as soon as he was governor. As part of the deal with the Feds, Milwaukee County had to finish the work according to the original timeline, even though Walker's stunt caused a nine month delay and the waiting list to grow.

To meet that Herculean task, the county has now had to pay out a bundle on overtime and hire back several retirees through a temp agencies. In other words, the county is now paying from one and a half times to two times the amount that they normally would if it weren't for the delays.

There is one story that encapsulates all of which I mentioned above. From the Columbus Journal:

About a month ago, Neuman said he got a call from Infinite Ability about rates being “drastically cut as much as 75 percent.” Several calls to Infinite Ability were not returned.

Neuman heard about the class-action suit and contacted Pledl.

Donald is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which details cuts made in the payment rates for residential services and alleges the cuts force housing providers to discharge the people developmental disabilities.

According to the complaint, rates to local providers have decreased, like Donald’s under the managed care organization Care Wisconsin. His new daily rate is $199.19, which is too low for local providers to maintain his care at the home. Based on the new rate, Donald will be moved to the larger adult family home to continue services and reduce costs.

Moving to another group home will be disruptive and traumatic, the complaint says. The complaint says it is likely that his behaviors and medical condition will worsen without the level of care he now receives and he will then require care in an institution or other more restrictive setting.

By October, Donald’s daily rate is expected to be $131.72, at which point, Infinite Ability will have to issue a discharge notice, according to the complaint. Donald’s day services programming is also through Infinite Ability, so that could be in jeopardy, too.

“It’s such a nice thing because all the clients are socializing. I didn’t think my dad would be able to read again and now he reads the newspaper to the other clients,” Neuman said.

Pledl’s lawsuit cites the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act, which defines discrimination on the basis of disability — or, in this case, targeting a specific disability group for rate cuts — as unlawful.

“The class action primarily addresses residential rates, but issues that affect them include day services, employment and transportation. If people don’t go to day programming, they’ll be at home and that will increase the cost for residential providers. If residential providers have to supply transportation that increases their costs. All of those problems involve shifting costs to residential providers,” Pledl said. 

There are 300 to 400 people in Columbia County who are clients of Family Care, according to Joe Fortmann, director of the Aging and Disability Resource Center and of the county’s Commission on Aging. The county joined with the MCO in 2008.

In summary, Walker is again launching a cold, heartless and pointless attack on our state's most vulnerable citizens. However, like all things that Walker does, this will end up backfiring. The end result will be a lot of disabled and/or frail elderly people and their families going through hell needlessly, and then the taxpayers getting socked to clean up Walker's mess.

Even as this is happening, Walker will falsely claim he is some sort of fiscal conservative and his supporters and the corporate media will accept it unquestioningly.

The only way to make sure that he is unable to create more damage to these innocent people who already have enough to contend with - as well as other atrocities like right to work for next to nothing legislation or giving the mining companies another crack at crafting their own laws - is to take away the support he has in the legislature. Just as we did with the recalls, we have to go out, hit the streets, make the phone calls, talk to everyone we meet, and get out the vote. If you don't want to do it for yourself, do it for the vulnerable citizens that can't do it for themselves.

Walker Admits To Wasting Taxpayer Money With Family Care Caps

Image courtesy of
One Wisconsin Now

In his weekly radio address, Scott Walker not only continued with his shameless lies regarding Family Care, but admitted to using people with disabilities as political props and wasting taxpayer money:

Last summer, I told the Journal Sentinel editorial board that we would have a plan to lift the caps on Family Care by the end of the year. In December, we introduced our plan to insure that the program is stable for years to come.

This week, I followed through on my plan and signed the new bill into law, which lifts the caps so that seniors needing long-term care - as well as people with developmental and physical disabilities - can now participate in Family Care. I signed it at an agency called Independence First.

It was appropriate to sign the bill at this location because Independence First connects individuals with the resources to live independently at home by utilizing Family Care and other programs. This type of patient-focused care saves taxpayers money as it keeps people out of higher cost facilities. This is truly a win-win.

I want to thank Rep Dean Kaufert and Sen Terry Moulton for their leadership in helping us on this new legislation that is good for the State of Wisconsin. We were happy to put together the plan to both lift the cap and open the process to expansion into every part of the state. And we are thankful to lawmakers for approving it.

We already know that he planned for the caps to be in place for at least two years since that is the way he wrote it into his budget.

We also know that the lifting of the caps was not his idea at all since it was the federal government that told him the caps were illegal and could cost the state nearly two billion dollars if they did not lift the caps. (It's not the first time Walker's "cost saving" stunts ended up blowing up on him and the taxpayers.)

But the kicker is when he admits that "this type of patient-focused care saves taxpayers money as it keeps people out of higher cost facilities."

This is something that the left and advocates for the disabled has been screaming about ever since he introduced his budget. Even more, Walker knew it fully well, since he kept bragging about it when he was campaigning for governor.

I keep wondering how long the media and Walker's apologists are going to keep putting up with this before they realize they can no longer defend the indefensible.

The Walker Budget Is Already Working! Part XCII

Remember that Family Care fiasco by Scott Walker? Where he tried to take credit for lifting the caps which he illegally imposed in the first place and had to be told by the feds to lift them. Apparently it took him too long to do the right thing to save jobs:

Care Wisconsin said Wednesday it will cut 15 administrative positions at its offices at 2802 International Lane, or about 3 percent of its 511 employees.

Services to elderly residents will not be curtailed, the nonprofit organization said.

Care Wisconsin serves more than 4,700 frail elderly and adults with disabilities in South Central Wisconsin in the state's Family Care and Partnership programs. Its programs include adult day centers, long-term care options and transportation.

The job reduction will take effect May 19, Care Wisconsin said.

Aren't you glad things are getting better?

Walker's Family Care Falsities

On Monday, Scott Walker, as is his wont, did his usual showboating when he finally signed the Family Care bill, lifting the caps as he was ordered to do by the federal government three months ago.

But even though the federal order is common knowledge, Walker still couldn't resist trying to lie about it:

Walker signed several bills at Independence First in Milwaukee, including lifting the enrollment cap on the long-term care program for the elderly and disabled.

Walker announced plans in December to allocate $72 million to resume enrolling people in Family Care, following an order from the federal government. The legislation he signed on Monday lifted a cap on enrollment.

Flanked by dozens of people with disabilities, Walker praised Family Care.

"It's a great program to help people in need," he said to reporters afterward.

Walker said he was following through on a promise he made last summer to lift the enrollment caps and provide funding.

He said changes were made to make the program sustainable, which he said opened the door to expanding it to other counties. Family Care is now available in 57 of the state's 72 counties.

He later doubled down on the lie with this tweet, claiming he said that it would end before the end of the year:

The truth is that the budget he signed into law said that the cap would be for at least two years, the entire length of the budget.

But even though this is supposed to be a good thing - a correction of a past misdeed done by Walker and the Republicans in the state legislature - it still contains some serious flaws. In other words, they couldn't even implement the correction correctly.

Just getting the bill to the legislature was a challenge that was almost thwarted by Representative Dale Kooyenga (R-Brookfield) who wanted to add a ten-year residency requirement, which was in complete violation of Medicaid standards, which is six months. The introduction and subsequent withdrawal of this amendment knocked the vote out of the original date.

The law has one major flaw in that any expansion still has to go through the Joint Finance Committee, which is still co-chaired by Representative Robin Vos (R-Trollville), who has repeatedly and explicitly expressed his opposition to Family Care (or anything else that helps people).

But the most sinister aspect of this would-be good deed is that he is looking into cutting into vital health care services for other people, or even the same people that would benefit from the lifting of the cap. Of course, it would be unfathomable for Walker to have his filthy rich profiteering friends, cronies and campaign contributors share in the sacrifice. Just the thought of it would be labeled heresy in Fitzwalkerstan!

How sad of a little man Walker is that he cannot even right a wrong he committed without lying about it, making a fiasco of it and finding a way of actually making it worse.

Rep. Clark Proposes Sensible Fixes To Family Care

For those that have followed me for a while, since before Fitzwalkerstan, they know that one of my interests and pet peeves is the disaster they have made of the child welfare system in Milwaukee County.

In the 1990s, Governor Tommy Thompson and his Republican allies took over and privatized the system. Since then, the costs have gone up exponentially and they are still having a lot of issues with it.

A majority of the cost can be attributed to the privatization.  They were paying the front line workers a lot less than county workers had been paid, but they were still racking up the costs. They were paying lavish salaries and benefits to the upper echelons in the administrations in several agencies.  Taxpayer money was also going to wasteful spending, like $9,000 conference tables and every imaginable type of promotional item they could emboss their logos and names on.  But even less money than before was going to actually providing services to the abused and neglected children or their families.

In a press release, Representative Fred Clark points out that similar abuses are occurring in the Family Care program, where an increasing amount of the cost is attributed to a growing layer of administrative bureaucracy and to executive officers of the the MCOs (Managed Care Organization) getting salaries as high as a quarter of a million dollars, more than twice what a public sector director would be paid. And like with child welfare, that means less money is actually being put to where it is supposed to be, the clients.

Clark takes it a step farther by giving sensible recommendations on how to improve the efficiency and accountability program. These include:

-Perform a detailed audit of administrative expenses, including salaries and benefits, paid to MCOs;

- Establish metrics for MCO benefit/cost ratios that will guarantee a minimum percentage of capitation rate dollars are actually used to fund services to Family Care members;

- Establish salary caps for MCO administrative positions paid with public dollars that are comparable to public employees with similar responsibilities;

- Require MCOs to develop and promote the "self-directed care" option that is established under current law. While this option exists in theory, eligible participants are rarely aware of it and MCOs often discourage members from using this option;

- Provide for a fair, independent process for grievances and appeals available both to Family Care members and care providers. This could be done by increasing funding, independent of DHS, for Disability Rights Wisconsin to operate as a program advocate, and by assuring that all members know their rights to be involved in their own care management decisions and authority to question decisions by MCOs that affect them.

If the local media ever fully and thoroughly investigated and reported how much taxpayer money is going to just make a handful of administrators rich and how much is being squandered, even the most ardent anti-public sector conservative, if they are intellectually honest, would demand that this be put back into the public sector.

I commend Representative Clark for calling this out. Hopefully this will gain bipartisan support and something good could be accomplished in this current regime.

Wouldn't that be a pleasant surprise?

Walker Shows He CAN Do The Right Thing -- When He's Forced To Do It

While running for governor, Scott Walker regularly touted what a success Family Care was for Milwaukee County and how it helped get services to frail senior citizens who had been on waiting list for year. This was a rather perverse position for him to take since Milwaukee County's Department of Aging was one of the pilot programs in the state and started years before Walker weaseled his way in as county executive.

To add to his depravity, Walker actually tried to sabotage the program by laying off the CPAs who were overseeing the program to make sure there weren't costs overruns. Walker said that he laid those people off to save money. The end result of his money saving scheme was two years of massive deficits running into the millions of dollars.

But despite his continued praise of the Family Care program, as soon as he started wielding his budget ax around, one of the first things he did was put a two year cap on the program.

What this meant was that about 10,000 of our most vulnerable citizens were being denied services for no other reason than Walker wanted to do that. The only way that these poor souls were to get services would be if that someone already receiving services moved away, aged out or died. And if the denied disabled person happened to live in a county that had not transitioned to Family Care yet, they were completely screwed over.

Walker claims he did this as a cost saving measure, but the hard truth is that it actually ran up the bill faster for taxpayers:

Allowing an expansion of Family Care and related similar programs would lead to "quality services at a lower cost," said Terry Metzger, an executive with the Southwest Family Care Alliance. The savings figure in the study was a statewide projection based on actual costs for 28,000 Family Care clients from northeastern Wisconsin.

If the freeze is enacted, many people now on waiting lists for Family Care could wind up in nursing homes, said Barbara Beckert, Milwaukee office manager for Disability Rights Wisconsin. That would drive up state costs because nursing home care typically costs $5,000 a month or more. Average costs in Family Care are about $2,800 a month for care services provided at home.

Milwaukee County has at least 2,000 on its Family Care waiting list. Some of those would likely wind up at the county's Mental Health Complex, where acute care costs more than $1,300 a day, if program enrollments are frozen, Beckert said.

It was further reported that the state was already saving $90 million a year on the people already enrolled, which is almost the same amount Walker figured he would save by denying these people services.

Like I said, he only did it because he could.

Now let's fast forward to a couple of weeks ago.

Walker arranged one of his usual grandstanding press conferences to announce that they had suddenly found all sorts of savings and were now going to lift the cap on Family Care, at least eighteen months before he originally planned on doing so:

Earlier this year an enrollment cap was placed on Family Care in response to a Legislative Audit Bureau (LAB) evaluation which found a number of areas the program could be improved and made more efficient. After a briefing on the hard work done by DHS over the past couple of months, today Governor Walker announced a plan to lift the Family Care cap. Governor Walker’s plan also calls for Family Care to be expanded to additional counties.

“I am confident that Family Care can continue to be implemented efficiently and cost effectively,” said Governor Walker. “Lifting the cap will be done in a way that respects taxpayers and is mindful of their investment, while at the same time providing care for those who are truly in need.”

The 2011-2013 state budget and the Legislative Audit Bureau required the Department of Health Services to do a thorough review of the program given its rapid growth. The LAB report released in April 2011 offered recommendations for improving the program. A very critical issue raised in the report was that the cost effectiveness of Family Care was difficult to assess. Because the Department was able to take the time to strengthen the program, Wisconsin now has the detailed data needed to develop solutions to ensure Family Care is on sound financial footing for those in the program now and for future enrollees.

Wowsa! What a great governor he is, right? Not in the least, actually.

You see, the thing is Walker didn't suddenly find any savings. What he did find was a scathing letter from the feds telling him he is in violation of their agreement and needed to cease and desist his malfeasance immediately:

Because the currently approved waiver includes and entitlement to waiver services, we are instructing the State to operate the waiver as it was approved by CMS. Therefore, we are directing the State to identify any individuals not currently enrolled onto the Family Care or Self-Directed Supports waivers since the July 1, 2011 implementation of the newly instituted enrollment caps, and immediately enroll those individuals in the waiver programs. This includes individuals living in any counties who had or would have had an entitlement to the waivers as of July 1, 2011, and includes individuals who were or would have otherwise been selected for enrollment from other participating counties.

There is no denying that Walker is a weasel and cannot be trusted to do the right thing unless he is literally forced to do so.

But his problems might not end there.

He made the grave error of embarrassing the media when he told his outright lie, knowing that they were going to most likely regurgitate it. But unlike when he was Milwaukee County Executive, and had the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel covering up for him, he is dealing with media sources that he doesn't have in his back pocket. That would explain why so many of the news stories regarding the Family Care issue starts like this one from the Green Bay Press Gazette:

Gov. Scott Walker failed to reveal that the federal government had ordered him to immediately lift an enrollment cap on a state program to help the disabled and elderly stay out of nursing homes, instead telling reporters that his administration removed restrictions after identifying tens of millions of dollars in efficiencies in the program.

The rest of the article focuses on Walker's lies instead of the positive spin he was hoping for.

Oh, and if any reporters out there that do happen to come across this little old blog post of mine, I'd be glad to help you catch up to speed on the other ways he has bamboozled you.

Walker Comes Out Whiffing

On the eve of his recall, Scott Walker comes out swinging.  And ends up whiffing enough to cause a steady breeze.

Courtesy of TPM, we see that Walker came put an ad up during Monday Night Football:



The woman in the video is Karin Rajnicek of the Waukesha School Board. In the video, she says this (emphasis mine):

“We were worried when the state budget was gonna mean less money for our school district. And we have 25 schools,” says Rajnicek. “But Governor Walker — he gave us options that reduced our biggest costs, so that we could put more money back into our classrooms.”

Maybe she should have been more worried, because according to the Waukesha School District website, they must have lost five schools (again, emphasis mine):

The School District of Waukesha is located fifteen miles west of Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the rolling hills of Waukesha County. With over 12,000 pre-kindergarten through 12th grade students served in our 20 schools, we are the seventh largest school district in the State of Wisconsin. Our schools include three comprehensive high schools, three middle schools, and 14 elementary schools. In addition, we serve students in six charter schools: Waukesha STEM Academy which has two campuses - Randall for Grades K-5 and Saratoga for Grades 6 and 7, Harvey Philip Alternative Charter School, Charter Recovery School, Waukesha Academy of Health Professions, Waukesha Engineering Preparatory Academy, and iQ Academy Wisconsin.

Or if you count the charter schools, she is short one. (Then again, does anyone really consider charter schools to be real schools?) Either way, it's rather scary that she is in charge of educating children when her math skills are as poor as Walker's. Maybe that's why she thinks that his slashing funding to her district was a good thing.

But that's just the beginning of the gaffes, folks.

Walker then comes on screen as says this:

“I’m committed to working together, to create more jobs, to improve our schools, and to protect our seniors. You know, Wisconsin’s best days are yet to come. It won’t happen overnight, but we are on our way.”

By creating jobs, he means, of course, chasing them out of the state by the hundreds.

And the DPI, in their annual survey, show that by improving schools, he means making sure the kids get less and less of education with less teachers, less schools and less programs.

And Walker feels that the best way to protect seniors is to cut their health care and deny them Family Care services.  And if the senior somehow manages to keep their health care coverage and/or get into Family Care, he'll make sure they don't make it to their medical appointments.

Can you believe he spent $300,000 of the Koch Brothers' money on this?  If this is the best he can do, this will be a cakewalk.

But Walker was correct on one thing.

Wisconsin's best days are yet to come.  And no, they will not happen overnight.  It will take 60 days just to get the recall signatures.

And yes, we are on our way...to recall this corrupt, inept bully and reclaim Wisconsin!

The Greater Evil Is Outraged At The Lesser Evil

Yesterday, a group of a couple dozen students held a zombie-themed protest regarding the actions of Scott Walker and WISGOP, who have been working hard to take away the kids' rights and raise their tuition exponentially.  Unfortunately, these youngsters decided to cross the line (which has been happening way too much lately) and act like boors by disrupting a Special Olympics event.

Koch News, aka MacGuyver Institute (Motto: Reporting all the news worth a press release), captured it all on video on how the zombie student protesters placed themselves between Walker and the Olympians and turned their back on Walker in silent protest.

Yeah, they needn't have done that and shouldn't have done that .

But the craziness of the right wing came out in full force after this clip made the right wing email/press release circuit.  The selective outrage was all over the map on the right side of the Cheddarsphere.

It started out with the right wing not even clear on who they were complaining about.  Charlie Sykes thought they were unionistas.  Patrick Dorwin thought they were public sector union members.  Lance Burri thought they were selfish students (I'm not sure what's so selfish about wanting to keep one's rights, but I'm not a right winger either).  Cindy Kilkenny thinks I was somehow responsible for it all.

For the record, Burri came the closest to the truth, according to an article which, ironically, comes to us via Kilkenny.

But their outrage is laser thin in its selectivity and ocean wide in its hypocrisy.

While they are wailing about the two dozen rude college kids ruining the Olympians special day, they completely ignore the fact that it is Walker and WISGOP who have decreed that 10,000 disabled people do not deserve to get services by capping off Family Care.  (At least 2,000 of these people are in Milwaukee County alone.)  Nor do they mention that even those currently receiving services as that the Republican legislature has given Walker the sole power of playing God and deciding who will continue to get services and who are not worthy of their independence and a quality of life.

They also miss the fact that Family Care has been shown to save tax payers $90 million a year, not to mention all the jobs for caretakers, day program providers and special transportation drivers (like Dorwin) that Family Care creates and preserves.

In summary, according to the RWNJs, it's perfectly fine to ruin the lives of thousands of disabled people, take away their court won rights to independence and services, tax people $90 million more than needed and not create a single job, but don't you dare act the fool and disrupt the one day that Walker decides to use them for a photo op.

As for me, I don't want anything to do with either of those two groups and would rather stick with the people that are willing to do the right thing for our most vulnerable citizens, like the majority of the #wiunion protesters.