When the hospital tax was first proposed the Wisconsin Hospital Association came out against it. It was afraid the money collected from the tax would not go back to hospitals but be dumped into a general fund.
But Eric Borgerding, the Association's Executive Vice-President, says they just got assurances from the Doyle administration that wouldn't happen.
Borgerding says they were told, if the tax passes, the money from the tax and the matching bump in federal Medicaid rates would all go to the hospitals. And that would be written into the law.
But it's still a tax. Something republicans say they won't accept. Will the Association now lobby for it? All Borgerding would say in answer to that question is they will convey their withdrawal of opposition to the tax and hope it will be part of a final budget package.