Scott Walker campaign to repeal Obamacare begins

Led by Gov. Scott Walker, Wisconsin resisted a full embrace of Obamacare, settling instead on a novel approach that kicked some people off Medicaid while using the health subsidies as a way of making sure residents had some avenue to obtain coverage.

Mr. Walker’s middle path is bound to receive scrutiny after the second-term governor announced Monday he is seeking the 2016 Republican presidential nomination amid a crowded field that includes fellow governors with their own approaches to Obamacare.

Some of those went for a deeper embrace, expanding Medicaid as the Obama administration wanted. Those included New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Meanwhile, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Rick Perry of Texas resisted anything that smacked of Obamacare, despite calls from health and family advocates to insure thousands of poor residents back home.

“I think it’s a big deal,” said Matt Schlapp, chairman of The American Conservative Union, who said a Supreme Court decision last month to save Obamacare’s subsidies put the law “front and center again” in the political debate.

“I think conservatives are very proud of governors who said they’d have nothing to do with Obamacare,” Mr. Schlapp said.

Mr. Walker, who on Monday vowed to work with Congress to repeal Obamacare if elected, forged a distinct path, one that allowed him to refuse the administration’s demand that states expand Medicaid, but still allowed him to overcome the unseemly “coverage gap” that resulted from those whose incomes were too high to get Medicaid but too low to get subsidies.

Wisconsin was able to put everyone at or below the poverty line into Medicaid coverage, while those at or above 100 percent of poverty would be eligible for the subsidies on HealthCare.gov.

“Among the states that did not take the expansion through the [Affordable Care Act], Wisconsin is the only state in the nation without a gap in coverage,” Walker spokeswoman Laurel Patrick said Monday, citing the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.

That’s allowed the governor to boast everyone in his state has some access to affordable insurance, while others will have to defend the more extreme ways they did or did not embrace Obamacare.

“I think it is preferable,” Mr. Schlapp said. “I think he deserves credit for coming up with a Wisconsin-based approach.”

But Democrats said Mr. Walker’s plan still left plenty of people without coverage they should have gotten.

“Governor Walker’s decision to reject a federal investment in our BadgerCare program may serve his short-term, political interests, but it is fiscally irresponsible for Wisconsin,” said Sen. Tammy Baldwin, Wisconsin Democrat, citing a state report last year that said about 27,000 out of 63,000 people kicked off government insurance were unable to navigate over to private coverage on the exchange.

Mr. Walker’s middle path means his state forgoes federal matching funds that Obamacare provides to states that fully embraced the expansion. The governor, who called for Obamacare’s repeal during his campaign launch Monday, doubts the federal government would pay its share anyway.

Under the Affordable Care Act, the federal government pays for states to expand their Medicaid rolls to cover those making up to 138 of the poverty level. Through next year, the federal share is 100 percent of state costs, scaling down to 90 percent in 2020 and beyond.

Holdout Republican governors say expansion will bust state budgets down the road, and that it isn’t wise to put more people on government assistance.

Operatives in Iowa and New Hampshire said it’s not clear how much weight voters will place on intricacies of Obamacare, but it could be a tiebreaker in the crowded field.

“I’m not sure that issue will be in the forefront, but you never know. It could come down to that,” said Dave Carney, a GOP political consultant in New Hampshire, home to the first primary after Iowa’s party caucuses.

Among contenders who’ve taken federal Obamacare dollars, Mr. Christie said he did what was “best for the people of my state,” after his predecessors set up a generous Medicaid program.

In Ohio, the expansion will bring federal tax dollars back to the state, get the drug-addicted into rehab instead of prison and lift up the working poor, according to Chris Schrimpf, a spokesman Mr. Kasich’s super PAC, New Day for America.

“When voters understand the fiscal and economic reasons behind his decision,” he said, “they respect it and admire him for doing what he thought was best for Ohio.”