The state’s top Republicans back Obamacare repeal bill.

Debate to shape U.S. Senate race

MADISON - Top Republicans in Wisconsin are backing a sweeping, final-hour effort to repeal Obamacare and hold down spending in other health care programs for the needy that existed prior to Obamacare.

U.S. Senate candidate Kevin Nicholson has stopped just short of saying he supports this latest Senate legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but his GOP primary opponent, Leah Vukmir, backs the bill known as Graham-Cassidy.

So does U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson — who helped write the current version of the Senate bill; Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker — who has praised the bill in a letter to Senate leaders; and U.S. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan of Janesville, who on Monday said he would help advance the bill.

The legislation is in trouble, with U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) announcing his opposition to Graham-Cassidy on Friday and likely dooming the bill in his house. But the debate over the proposal in particular and health care, in general, will help shape the 2018 race between the Republican candidates and U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat.

Vukmir, a state senator from Brookfield, said Friday she wants to repeal Obamacare, move more decisions back to states and opposes a single-payer health care plan supported by Baldwin.

“While Graham-Cassidy isn’t perfect, I do support the notion of allowing states to solve problems,” Vukmir said in a statement. “We know what we’re doing in Wisconsin, and the feds need to get out of our way.”

Nicholson hasn’t explicitly backed the bill but on Wednesday he told the College Republicans of the University of Wisconsin-Madison that he backed using state-led high-risk pools to cover people with pre-existing medical conditions rather than keeping the Obamacare requirement that insurers cover those consumers.

Nicholson, a former Marine, told students that Obamacare “has to be repealed,” in part because it has expanded coverage of childless adults under the Medicaid program. Nicholson said Medicaid wasn’t intended to cover childless adults when it was created in 1965.

“It puts those most vulnerable among us that actually did benefit from Medicaid, or state variances of Medicaid, at the most risk. So, I think it’s absurd. And, the more you let it go on, the more it metastasizes,” Nicholson said of the expansion of Medicaid.

Eric Hovde, a Madison investor who ran unsuccessfully in the 2012 GOP primary for U.S. Senate, didn’t respond to a request for comment on the measure proposed by Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana.

For her part, Baldwin said in a statement that she opposed the proposal as she has the other Republican bills so far this year to repeal or overhaul the Affordable Care Act.

“This latest partisan repeal plan is more of the same and another attempt to make things worse with higher costs for people with pre-existing conditions, an age tax for older Wisconsinites, more uninsured families, and people paying more for less care,” Baldwin said.

The Graham-Cassidy bill would keep much of the Obamacare tax structure in place, but it would give the money back to the states in the form of block grants and would allow states to design their own health care systems. That part of the bill would provide more money to states like Wisconsin, which provided some additional Medicaid coverage to childless adults but didn’t take the federal money available under Obamacare to do a full Medicaid expansion.

In addition, the bill would limit the future growth of Medicaid programs for the needy, such as nursing homes for the elderly and medical care for low-income children. That part of the bill would limit the health care money available to all states, including Wisconsin, though states could also try new approaches to save money.

Separately, the Vukmir and Nicholson campaigns both criticized Baldwin for recently supporting so-called single-payer legislation sponsored by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders that would provide Medicarestyle coverage to all Americans.

“Failure to repeal and replace Obamacare will only encourage liberals like Tammy Baldwin and Bernie Sanders to move forward with their dangerous plan to have the government take over our health care system, destroying quality of care, causing taxes to skyrocket and the national debt to explode,” Nicholson campaign adviser Michael Antonopoulos said.

Baldwin responded by saying Republicans in Congress aren’t using their position of power to work with Democrats on improving the healthcare system.

“We should make things better by getting the job done on bipartisan solutions that stabilize and strengthen the health care marketplace, lower costs, make health care more affordable, and expand coverage,” Baldwin said.