A WI GOP Lawmaker May Block Bill Expanding Postpartum Medicaid Coverage

The Wisconsin Senate passed a bill on Tuesday that would grant low-income people who have just given birth one full year of Medicaid coverage. Under the current law, they get only two months of coverage.

The chamber has a near-even partisan split, with 18 Republicans and 15 Democrats. In a rare example of bipartisanship, the bill passed by a 32-1 vote, with only one Republican voting against it.

Wisconsin is one of only two states — the other being Arkansas — that does not offer expanded postpartum coverage, instead granting people who have just given birth only 60 days of coverage. A similar bill to rectify that standard passed last year within the State Senate, but was blocked from advancing further by the State Assembly after Republican Speaker of the Assembly Robin Vos refused to allow a vote on it.

While there is bipartisan support for the bill within the Assembly — 44 Democrats and 28 Republicans are listed as cosponsors of the legislation within the chamber — Vos may yet again block the current bill, as he has not yet committed to allowing a vote on it.

Vos expressed dismay about the bill in December, complaining that taxpayers already pay for nine months of a person’s pregnancy coverage and for two additional months of coverage after they’ve given birth. Extending postpartum Medicaid coverage to 12 months after birth is “just too long,” he said.

After the Senate passed the bill this week, Vos reiterated his opposition to the measure.

“My position has been fairly clear from the very beginning. I’ve never supported an expansion of welfare. I can’t imagine that I would ever support one,” Vos said. “But we have to talk about it as a caucus.”

Notably, the bill would be relatively inexpensive, costing just an additional $18.5 million annually, and an even lower amount if Wisconsin finally accepted the federal Medicaid expansion funding that was promised under the Affordable Care Act.

Advocates for the bill have noted that maternal mortality rates in Wisconsin are far higher than the national average.

“Sixty-three [Wisconsin] moms died with pregnancy-related issues from 2020 to 2022. One third of those deaths occurred more than 60 days postpartum. So 21 moms died because they didn’t have access to the care that they needed,” Democratic Sen. Melissa Ratcliff said ahead of the vote on Tuesday.

“Forty-eight states have recognized that access to uninterrupted, quality health care can save the lives of countless moms and babies, and it’s past time that Robin Vos gets out of the way and helps new families get the care they need,” said Democratic Party of Wisconsin Deputy Communications Director Haley McCoy.

Postpartum complications after a pregnancy can sometimes take “six months, even up to a year, to develop,” Annmae Minichiello, an advocate for the bill, told local media about its advancement in the state legislature. “It’s really [about] protecting the rights of those moms, and in doing so, the ripple effect to those families too.”

Maternal mortality rates in the U.S. overall are dismal compared to other wealthy countries. A new National Institutes of Health study, done in partnership with Harvard Medical School, shows that maternal mortality rates in the U.S. are increasing, shooting up by 27.7 percent between the years 2018 to 2022.

The study noted that there were huge disparities in levels of care based on socioeconomic status and access to coverage. Researchers also said that systems bias and discrimination against certain ethnic and racial groups contributed to higher rates of maternal mortality.

A more progressive approach to maternal care could lead to better outcomes, suggested lead author of the study Rose Molina, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School.

“Our study points to different policy levers that need to be addressed, because there shouldn’t be as much state-level variation as there is,” Molina told the Harvard Gazette. “One of our biggest findings is that we could have avoided 2,679 pregnancy-related deaths during this time period if the national rate were that of California. If California can do it, then how can we get other states to perform as well?”

Medical providers in the U.S. should focus on postpartum care for a full year, rather than the traditional six weeks after a pregnancy, Molina added.

“The high number of late maternal deaths points to why we need to design better systems of health care in those later months, as opposed to only focusing on the first six to 12 weeks,” she said.