Drug testing poor for health care, a political stunt for Gov. Walker’s re-election, says advocacy group

Walker seeking approval from feds to become first state to do tests.

One critic calls it a political stunt, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s plan to drug test Medicaid recipients.

“I believe that this is mostly political and mostly about his re-election,” Robert Kraig with the advocacy group Citizen Action Wisconsin said. 

The very concept of drug testing the poor to get health insurance is flawed, according to Kraig.

“(Walker) wants to blame the stereotypes about low income people who don’t have access to health care,” Kraig said, “it somehow being their fault that they’re not working or they’re on drugs, in his words.”

Medicaid is a jointly funded, federal-state health insurance program for low-income and needy people. It covers children, the aged, blind and/or disabled, along with others who are eligible to receive federally assisted income maintenance payments.

 

Walker’s Medicaid director faced questions from lawmakers in Madison Wednesday saying the intent of the drug testing is not to kick people off the program but, instead, connect them with treatment that will lead to them getting a job.

Kraig saw through those answers before the questions were even asked.

“He’ll try to claim that he’s helping them when, in fact, it’s extremely punitive,” Kraig said. “It’s not true that lower income people have higher rates of drug addiction than the rest of the population, and it’s not true that you’re immoral that you’re low income and can’t afford healthcare.

Walker says he’ll ask the feds for permission to allow drug testing of childless recipients of the state healthcare program even while some lawmakers are questioning the plan’s constitutionality.

Kraig says they should question the idea’s basic common sense 

“It completely flies in the face of modern medical science, which tells us that drug addiction is a disease, just like cancer or the flu,” he said, adding the way to deal with drug addiction is to make treatment widely available and free for everyone. “I think it would set back basically, the thinking on drug abuse and drug addiction and substance abuse in general, set it back decades bc it’s based on outdated stereotypes about drug abuse.”

Approval would make Wisconsin the first state in the nation to drug test for Medicaid.