>> The following program is a PBS Wisconsin original
production. >> As the federal funding
package moves on to the Senate, Wisconsin's
delegation staunchly opposes the measure, but for very
different reasons. [MUSIC]
tonight on "Here& Now" Wisconsin veterans say
their VA benefits. A state analysis shows who will lose
out on federal health care and food assistance.
[MUSIC] Hospital nurses strike in
Madison as the health care workforce struggles to keep
pace, and a moderate Republican returns to the
statehouse to find common ground. It's "Here& Now".
For May 30th. >> Funding for "Here& Now"
is provided by the Focus Fund for Journalism and
Friends of PBS Wisconsin. >> A handful of Republican
U.S. Senators are saying they won't pass a big budget
bill that spends more than it saves. Leading the charge
is Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, who has vowed to
oppose the measure in his chamber unless more is done
to rein in spending on assistance programs. Senator
Tammy Baldwin agrees. The measure adds too much to the
federal deficit, but places the blame on tax cuts.
>> You got to do the work. We're not doing the work.
We're exempting most spending. Taking a at a
couple of programs. Afraid of the political blowback?
The lies being told about Medicaid, for example? Oh,
we can't touch that. And that's why we're $37
trillion in debt. There's no amount of pressure that
President Trump can apply to me that exceeds the pressure
I feel the promises I made to stop mortgaging our kids
future. >> I believe that the impact
that the bill would have as passed by the House would be
devastating on the most vulnerable communities, and
mightily to the deficit and debt. And again, why? So
that they can pay for more tax cuts for the very
wealthy and big corporations. >> Senator Johnson is
expected to join us next week. The Department of
Veterans Affairs is in crisis. Those are the words
of a retired physician of 27 years at the VA hospital in
Madison. Trump administration DOGE cuts to
VA health care are having real life consequences to
the some 9 million patients and their care teams and
providers across the country. This week, Senator
Baldwin held a roundtable in Madison with veterans,
patients and employees to hear about it.
>> The mass firings that we have seen have had real,
real impact. >> Appointments are being
canceled because there is not a provider there to see
them. >> I went out there and I
was deployed. I don't know how many times, but I did it
and I just called and they reglued my feet together and
I put my boots back on and I went back out there. I just
enjoyed my job so much because we had the sense
that our Congress, our Senate and our president and
those offices would take care of us because we were
taking care of what they were asking us to do.
>> That's right. I have been getting calls where many
highly service connected. Many with, you know, fragile
mental health are afraid that their benefits will be
taken. And I have had more than one say. Well, then
I'll just kill myself. It's horrifying.
>> The retired physician at the VA in Madison, we
mentioned was also at that roundtable, bringing his
inside knowledge. Doctor Michael Sieber says the cuts
have led to disastrous problems for veterans health
care. He joins us now. Doctor, thanks for being
here. >> So we know that the VA
secretary wants to cut the agency's workforce by about
83,000 employees, but vows not to take any frontline
health care workers. What's your knowledge about who's
been let go or who's leaving? Because of the kind
of uncertainty of it all? >> Well, it's very hard to
get exact data, but it's clear that even with the
cuts that have been made so far, services have been
worsened for veterans. So it's only going to get worse
as time goes by. >> You said that there's a
certain secrecy about what's happening.
>> How so? There is a secrecy. There are DOGE
people that are senior advisors now working at the
Veterans Administration. The leadership in the 170
different medical centers around the country have had
had to sign non-disclosure agreements. The people on
the ground, the people working in the VA hospital
don't know what's going to happen. They're very fearful
about the cuts. There are a group of people who are
quite dedicated to taking care of veterans.
>> What are some other examples of the real world
consequences in inside these hospitals?
>> At the Middleton VA hospital where I work, they
have a shortage of custodial staff so that individual
persons, including secretaries and
cardiovascular surgeons, are cleaning their own rooms,
emptying their own wastebaskets. The veterans
are cleaning the Or and surgeries are delayed. While
they're doing that cleaning. >> So what are your former
colleagues there telling you about conditions like that
inside for both health care, but also morale?
>> Well, morale is terrible. The fear about what's going
to happen, not knowing what it's going to be. The fact
that there was a mandate that everybody working from
home had to come to the hospital. People are jammed,
jam packed in, you know, this happened with the
suicide prevention hotline and there was no
confidentiality. People were working out of closets or,
you know, six at a table. So there are a lot of things
that have happened that make it more difficult to deliver
good medical care. >> I was going to ask, how
should families what what should they know about what
all this means for patient care?
>> Well, it's not good. I mean, there are things that
are happening that make it harder to deliver good
patient care. The pattern of loss of people at the VA is
primarily letting go. People who are support staff, so
that the physicians, they're not letting them go. The
nurses are not letting them go. Although 1700 nurses
have already taken early deferred retirement. 200
doctors we know have taken early deferred retirement.
There was a case where in one VA hospital, the x rays
were piling up. There was no radiologist to read them for
an extended period of time. And that's a very
detrimental and dangerous situation for patients.
>> So what is the mindset of the veterans? The VA cares
for? >> Well, I think, you know,
they're of two minds. There are group of veterans, a
significant group who voted for President Trump and
think he's doing the right thing in most cases. But
many have reservations in that group. And there is a
group, of course, who are extremely upset about what's
happening. Their whole goal is to privatize all medical
health care for veterans. The new budget for 26 has 4%
increase in the budget for the VA, but it's largely
earmarked to go for care in the community with private
providers. You know, the average private provider
visit is like 10 to 12 minutes. You know, wouldn't
probably be accurate or helpful for a patient who
has suicidality or PTSD or homelessness.
>> Because that's the kind of care that that the VA
kind of has a mission toward.
>> The mission is to take care of veterans. We've got
a system that tries to help them, but we're losing
psychologists. We're losing psychiatrists. So it's
becoming more difficult to take care of those people.
>> Thank you for your insight, doctor Michael
Sieber. >> It's my pleasure. Thank
you. >> As we discussed earlier,
cuts and changes to social safety net programs figure
prominently in political discourse right now in
Wisconsin. By the numbers nearly 1.3 million children
and adults are enrolled in Medicaid, and 700,000
receive food share. For a closer look at how
congressional changes to these programs could look in
Wisconsin, we turn to Bill Hanna Medicaid, director at
the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. And thanks
for being here. >> Thank you. Happy to be
here. House did on Medicaid and
nutritional assistance. Cuts could go deeper under the
Senate provisions. As it stands before Senate action,
some analyzes show nearly 230,000 people in Wisconsin
could lose Affordable Care Act. And Medicaid coverage.
Is that what your analysis is showing?
>> We're focused our analysis on Medicaid. That's
where we have the specific data. Wisconsin's part of
the National ACA plan. And really we rely on national
experts on the ACA data. But for Medicaid specifically,
we estimate that 63,000 adults without children
under the age of 18 would be at risk of losing their
Medicaid coverage. I think it's important to note that
the coverage won't just impact those individuals. It
really impacts all of us because those individuals
will still need to see their doctors or go to the
hospital. They'll just be uninsured. And those
additional costs get passed on to all healthcare
consumers. >> What is it in the bill
that prompts people to lose that coverage?
>> Yeah, the House bill creates a lot of additional
red tape for this population to maintain their
eligibility. First, it requires them to complete
their Medicaid application or renewals every six months
instead of once a year, as it is today. And it requires
them to submit documentation to prove that they are
meeting work requirements. >> So what costs to
provisions of the bill add for the state of Wisconsin
now fashioning its own budget?
>> Yeah, we take eligibility enrollment very seriously
here in Wisconsin. We run a very efficient program. We
have one of the lowest eligibility error rates in
the in the country. But this will require additional
costs. We are really doubling the amount of work
in a year to do eligibility for the 195,000 adults that
this would subject to, meaning the state and county
eligibility workers will need to hire more workers,
and we will need to make changes to our system in
order to verify and collect that work requirement
information. We estimate it will cost us about five and
a half million dollars each year to implement these
changes. In Wisconsin. >> On Foodshare, the House
bill would mean about 90,000 people would lose that
assistance. According to your office. How does the
bill result in those people losing those benefits?
>> Yeah, they're already work requirements in
Foodshare today, but the bill drastically changes.
Who is required to meet the food requirements. Today?
It's adults between 18 and 54 who do not have dependent
children. What the bill does is expands that to adults
between 18 and 65 and includes adults with
children if their children are not under age seven. So
you've really increased the number of adults that need
to meet work requirements in order to maintain their food
share benefits. And we estimate that about 90,000
individuals would likely lose their foodshare
benefits because of this expanded requirement.
>> So the bill would also start penalizing the state
for snap error rates, costing Wisconsin $207
million annually. What are those errors?
>> Yeah, errors are just that. They're errors, right?
It's not fraud. Determining Medicare or Food share
eligibility. It's complex. And occasionally there are
mistakes. If you think about doing your taxes and
occasionally there is a mistake, there's a lot that
changes in people's lives. Think about this population.
They're often doing gig work, meaning their income
can change. There's a lot of deductions that go into
calculating it, so it's complex in getting it to the
dollar. Accurate. We already have one of the lowest error
rates in the country. In fact error rate went down
last year were well below the national average. The
national average is 11.7. Wisconsin is at 4.4. But the
bill continues to sort of narrow that tolerance for
any even $1 error in calculating payments. It
also is an incredible cost shift, not just for the
error rate, because what it does for the first time is
requires states to contribute towards food
share benefits, which at a minimum will cost us $69
million a year in Wisconsin. It also changes the amount
of the administrative costs that the federal government
will pay. Today. They pay 50% of those costs, split
5050 with the state going forward, they would only
cover 25% of the cost. So that's an additional $51
million for us to just run the program that we run
today. That is a well run program, and the bill gives
us no additional tools to control costs or any other
flexibilities to try to. Really control costs in the
in the food share program. >> Well, we appreciate your
information. Bill Hanna. Thanks very much.
>> Thank you. >> On the picket line,
hundreds of nurses at Meriter Hospital in Madison
went out on strike Tuesday. Negotiations resumed
Thursday and Friday. Even in the midst of picketing.
>> Union union. Mighty, mighty union.
>> In the hospital's first ever strike, the nurses
called for a wage hike higher than the 3.68%
offered better security and better patient to staff
ratios. Meriter says throughout the strike, the
hospital has remained fully operational and is running
smoothly with the hiring of travel nurses. SEIU
represents nearly 1000 nurses at the hospital. The
union filed an unfair labor practices complaint against
Meriter over threats to strip striking nurses of
benefits. >> There's a lot of people
rallying around health care workers, especially after
Covid, and we are finally standing up for ourselves
and fighting for what we need and deserve.
>> We just want what's best. We love what we do, and
we're here trying to advocate for what's best for
our patients. [MUSIC]
addressing violence against health care workers are two
points addressed in the Wisconsin Hospital
Association's 2025 Workforce Report. However, in a turn
from recent years, the health care workforce is
making gains slowly. >> We've actually upgraded
our workforce condition in Wisconsin from critical but
stable to serious but stable. We've made some real
good gains in some professions, like certified
nursing assistant, where we're actually seeing
vacancy rates go down. We're also seeing improved
retention, less turnover, really helps, not just in
numbers but in expertise in our annual workforce report.
The last several years, we've talked about violence
against health care workers, new data just out from the
Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that despite great
effort and partnerships between hospital leaders,
their workforce, state policymakers, law
enforcement that the incidents of intentional
injury against healthcare workers by another person is
actually higher. And so we need to continue every
effort we can to report and take action on any incident
that occurs. Wisconsin actually was the first in
the nation to create an enhanced penalty. A class H
felony, for violence against healthcare workers, and
threats of violence. We have to grow the workforce
faster, but with the demographic changes going
on, it's unlikely that our workforce will grow fast
enough. So we're asking for good health care policy that
supports faster growth. Costs are rising, salaries
are rising, supply costs are rising, and reimbursement,
especially from Medicaid and Medicare, what we call
government payers, is not keeping pace. So to support
and sustain our workforce, we need better reimbursement.
>> At the state Capitol. With all the talk of
political gridlock, it's hard to remember a time when
Wisconsin politics were less partisan. But one Assembly
Republican is trying to recapture that feeling.
Representative Dean Crawford originally served from 1991
to 2014, but was recruited to run again when the last
round of redistricting made his old seat much more
competitive. Kaufert won last fall by just 365 votes.
Here and now, senior political reporter Zach
Schultz sat down with Crawford this week to talk
about what's changed and what he hopes to accomplish.
>> Well, representative, thanks for meeting with us.
What's it like to be back in the state Capitol?
>> Well, it's exciting. On one hand, you know, I still
tell people when they ask me that question, I still get
those good fuzzy feelings driving down East Washington
Street. You come into the Capitol, and the Capitol
comes into view as you're driving, and there's still
an electric feeling. And then I know at that point I
kind of went, you know, I did the right thing by
coming back because it's still exciting to walk into
this building. >> Is it fair, though, to
say that you wouldn't be here today if the maps
hadn't been redrawn to make it a district where
Republicans needed you to run in order to win it?
>> Yeah. I mean, this wasn't in my wife and my plan to do
this. I was happy being semi-retired, owning,
running a business. >> Well, how did you did you
get recruited? How did that process happen?
>> Some people talked to me. Some of the leaders talked
to me and asked if I would have any interest. Numerous
there's only one guy who can win this. This seat. And it
just got me thinking. And it is important who's in charge
here? You know, the majority party has a lot more power,
and I and, you know, the second best job I had being
mayor was being chair of finance committee, because
that taught me all about government. And I loved
government. I hate politics. My entire years in the
legislature, we were we were responsible for our own
fundraising. It was all local. The most we spent was
39,000 bucks, I think was the highest that I ever
spent in my campaign. And, you know, now it's millions
of dollars. The Democrats and their friends spent $3.8
million against me. Our side, I think, spent 1.3
million job pays 57,000 a year. It is crazy. But $3.8
million against you every day. Getting your head
pounded in every day. Both parties. And, you know,
Republicans and Democrats, because I watched ads from
both parties all over the state. Lies, fabrications.
It's just not good. And there's nothing you can do
about it. I mean, at night, I mean, I'm not afraid to
say my wife and I would go, what the hell did we do this
for? Because you'd come home at night after watching the
TV. You know, having, you know, ten ads during a TV
show that were just blatant lies. And there's nothing
you can do about it. It's no fun. It's no fun for you.
It's no fun for your family. And then the hardest part is
when you come, you get here and then people say, are you
going to be bipartisan? Can can we work together? Well,
you just spent three months, four months telling people
in my district what a bad person I was.
>> Compare and contrast how the budget was done back in
the 2000. Governor Doyle, Democrat versus today.
Governor Evers, a Democrat with no Republican
legislative majorities. >> Yeah, that's a great
question, especially in this environment that we're in.
And, you know, we were able to do things together even
back then when Jim Doyle was governor. The Republicans
had the legislature and I was the chair, joint
finance. There was a lot more communication between
the governor's office and between the finance
committee and the legislative leaders. You
know, I respect Governor Evers, and I met with him
after I came back here because Governor Evers knows
that I was one one of the more moderate members of the
Republican caucus. And you got to be when the district
that I represent is 45% Republican, 55% Democrat.
And so I represent the district. And that
communication just doesn't seem to be there. And I told
the governor, I said, governor, you got to reach
out. You got to extend that olive branch. You're the
governor. >> So you are the chair of
corrections. Is that something you requested? Is
there? Do you have a mission in your in your second wind
here? Corrections is going to have
some pretty heavy stuff this time, so I requested it. And
now, as it turns out, the governor's in his budget.
You know, it's a very complex problem. And he has
a solution that's going to cost a lot of money. But,
you know, at the end of the day, closing green Bay, I'm
touring it on Thursday morning. I toured Waupan
last week, and green Bay needs to come down. So we
need to figure out here's another issue that
Republicans and Democrats. This shouldn't be political,
but we should be able to figure out a way how to make
sure our inmates are safe and our correctional
officers are safe. So I'm dedicated to doing that.
>> Is it is it fun to have a purpose where you can see
something that may be a little easier to get
consensus on? >> Yeah. And that's that's
what I'm best at. You know, I mean, is getting people
together. I know that I'm going to only be here 2 or 4
years, probably four. I'm going to try for four, but I
won't. I don't have an agenda. I don't have to
appease anybody. I can do what Dean Crawford thinks is
right, whether it's Republican or Democrat. And
I've been known to lead my leave my party. But I will
be with him 95% of the time. But I also will chastise him
when I think they're doing something wrong. I will try
to convince them to massage it. I've already had some
successes where I've said in caucus, I've said, you know,
your bill is okay, but this needs to change. And you
know, they respect me enough to make that change and say,
hey, we're okay with that. It makes it better. And so I
do have a purpose for a couple of years or four
years. And that's to try to make this place better, try
to make this place run better. And see if we can't
change the political climate. I don't know if
we're going to be able to, because there's too darn
much money involved in politics. But I'm going to
sure try. >> For more on this and
other issues facing Wisconsin, visit our website
at PBS Wisconsin. Org and then click on the news tab.
That's our program for tonight. I'm Frederica
Freyberg. Have a good weekend.
[MUSIC] >> Funding for "Here& Now"
is provided by the Focus Fund for Journalism and