Scott Walker's Most Heinous Budget Stunt Yet

Scott Walker

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:  READ MORE