Wisconsin BadgerCare

The BadgerCare Demonstration provides the State waiver authorities which allow it to postpone Medicaid eligibility for parents and caretaker relatives with incomes between 150 and 200% of FPL who have or recently had access to employer-sponsored insurance, and not to provide them three months of retroactive eligibility. The purpose of these restrictions is to limit the possibility that offering Medicaid eligibility will crowd-out private health insurance. The BadgerCare Demonstration in its original form was designed as a health insurance program to provide coverage to families with incomes too high for Medicaid and who do not have access to affordable health insurance. By extending health care coverage to uninsured low-income families, BadgerCare sought to provide a safeguard against increasing the number of uninsured families and children as a result of Wisconsin's welfare reform program. Over the years, many of the key features of BadgerCare were incorporated into Wisconsin's Medicaid and CHIP State plans, taking advantage of new State plan options that were not available at the time BadgerCare was first approved. The current Demonstration provides a limited set of waivers needed to continue the features of the original BadgerCare Demonstration that cannot be accommodated in a State plan.