As GOP Legislature Pulls All-Nighter, And Walker Hides Out...
Please remember his ironic, iconic bluster given to the friendly folks at The Lakeland Times newspaper during the 2010 gubernatorial election, including these keepers:
Transparency
When he says he believes in government transparency, it's not just a campaign slogan, Walker said.
"I don't just say that, I've lived it," he said…
Walker said he does not favor proposed constraints on access to police 911 tapes or to the state's online circuit court records, and he says he also believes the Legislature itself needs to be more transparent.
"In fact I've even proposed - in terms of the budget process, but it would apply to anything - other things that would help transparency," he said. "I don't think there should be any votes in closed caucus, on any issue... If a county board or school board can't discuss a budget in private, then the state Legislature certainly should not. There should not be any closed caucuses on the budget."
What's more, he said, the budget should only entail budgetary items; there shouldn't be any nonfiscal items in it.
" And I would make it, by statute, that the Legislature can't vote on anything after 10 at night or before 9 in the morning," Walker said. "They did things this last (budget) at 2 and 3 o'clock in the morning. As I tell my staff, nothing good happens after midnight…"
3 comments:
I'm not sure the Assembly's cancer bill doesn't allow insurers to stick it to the users of oral chemotherapy. Phil Dougherty of the Wisconsin Association of Health plans seems to be saying that there are instances in which the insurer could opt to require the patient to pay a higher co-pay if the co-pay for traditional chemotherapy is more than $100 per month. Does this mean that even if the Assembly bill caps the oral pills at $100 co-pay the insurer could demand a co-pay that is equal to the higher co-pay for traditional chemo? If this bill allows that.... then insurers are going to raise the co-pay for intravenous chemo and the patient will be hit in the wallet. Hopefully I'm misunderstanding something about the bill's co-pay provisions.
I've just been informed that both the Assembly and Senate cancer bills both require that the co-pay for both oral chemo and traditional chemo must be the same. So the $100 cap is meaningless if an insurer requires a higher co-pay for traditional chemo. What's to prevent insurers from raising the traditional chemo co-pay to recover costs of the oral pills. Or if the oral pills are cheaper the co-pay could still be raised by merely requiring a higher co-pay for intravenous chemo! The cap seems meaningless at least on the surface and outside of requiring insurers to cover the oral treatment the patient is not protected against excessive cost.
If both bills required co-pays to be equal did Vos's insisting that the amendment be included just offer protection to the insurance industry and in reality no protection for cost to the patient? Seems like special interests rule even when treating cancer. I hope someone checks the communication on this amendment to find out where it originated and when. Hard to believe that Walker's office would be involved as he said he would sign the Senate bill....but anything's possible with Vos and company.
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