Walker budget bill ends state health coverage for domestic partners
MADISON - The state would discontinue state health coverage and other benefits for thousands of domestic partners of state and local workers — even those whose partners have already died, under Gov. Scott Walker’s budget bill.
But within hours of a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel report that the bill would affect a handful of survivors whose partner had died, Walker spokesman Tom Evenson said that wasn’t the proposal’s intent.
“We’re willing to work with the Legislature on a potential fix for this,” he said.
Evenson said the thrust of the measure is to require all state and local workers to marry if they want to receive their state benefits — a step made possible by the 2014 legalization of same-sex marriage in Wisconsin. That makes domestic partner benefits unnecessary, he said
But marriage is no longer an option for the handful of people in Wisconsin whose domestic partner has already died.
The budget bill makes an exception for the domestic partners of police and firefighters who were harmed or died while on duty, according to an analysis by the Legislature’s nonpartisan budget office. But otherwise, health coverage for domestic partners would end on Jan. 1, 2018.
Dropping coverage for survivors particularly troubled Outagamie County Executive Tom Nelson, a Democrat and former state lawmaker who said that it would affect domestic partners of county employees.
“This is just really unconscionable. This has to be rectified,” Nelson said.
Rep. JoCasta Zamarippa (D-Milwaukee), who is bisexual, echoed Nelson’s words, calling it “unfair, unequal, and simply wrong” to drop benefits for domestic partners.
There are 4,100 couples — both same-sex and opposite sex — who have at least one of them in a state or local government job and who have registered for health, pension or other benefits, the Legislative Fiscal Bureau reports. There are at least seven participants who continue to buy state health insurance after the death of their domestic partner, according to a state official.
The change would only affect the benefits of these government employees. It does not affect the separate statewide domestic partner registry for samesex only couples that was established by Democratic lawmakers and Gov. Jim Doyle in 2009.
Domestic partner benefits have dropped in prominence following the 2015 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide and dealt the final blow to Wisconsin’s gay marriage ban.
Currently, the domestic partners of a deceased state employee have access to state health coverage, though they have to pay the state’s full cost of the insurance.
If Walker’s bill is not amended, they would lose that access, according to the Fiscal Bureau.