State health officials say they’ve made an “aggressive effort” to reach state residents impacted by changes to BadgerCare. Some 75,000 state residents lost BadgerCare coverage, effective Monday, because Governor Scott Walker put tighter income eligibility standards in place. But Kevin Moore with the state Department of Health Services says those same people have extra time to sign up for Obamacare.
“Now that we are going into the next phase, we are continuing our outreach efforts to this exact same population, (with) additional letters, additional outbound phone calls saying ‘look, you do have an extra 60 days.'” That extension was granted due to problems with the federal website last fall.
As of mid-March, data from the federal government indicated that some 71,000 state residents have signed up on the federal exchanges – but it’s not clear how many of those who lost BadgerCare are among that number. “We continue to wait for the data from the federal government, because that is truly when we’ll be able to put all the different pieces together to give us a clear snapshot,” said Moore.
