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Across Wisconsin on Civic Media, you're listening to Mornings with Pat Critello, powered by Up North News.
Now, from our Lake Wissota studio, here's the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Critello.
Hey,
good morning, 8.06.
Nice to have you back here up north on a Tuesday morning, November 25th, getting close to the big travel crunch for Thanksgiving, just in time for a winter storm to be slamming into Northwest Wisconsin, starting later tonight.
Pay attention to that forecast because we're talking, you know, high winds, lots of snow in the Lake Superior snow belt, Iron County.
Parts of the UP are going to see one to three inches per hour.
You could also see one to three inches all the way down through central Wisconsin, but there's a winter storm warning starting tonight for pretty much everything north of Highway 8 and then a large swath of eastern and central Minnesota as well.
So
make your travel plans accordingly.
We're going to talk to Cam Stevenson from Courier Newsroom in just a little bit and then we'll have Erica Gunn from the Wisconsin Examiner in to talk more about what the state legislature got done and what it didn't get done in its most recent fall session.
Remember, you can keep in touch with everything that we're up to here by going to upnorthnewswi.com slash mornings.
At upnorthnewswi.com slash mornings, you can sign up for our newsletters, including our Sunday morning political newsletter.
You can subscribe to the show as a podcast right from that page.
And you can read all my latest stories on our website.
There's also a link to our YouTube channel, upnorthnewswi.com slash mornings.
And I know what you're thinking, Pat, you do.
You do all this stuff for civic media in the morning, then you do all this up north news stuff the rest of the day.
Are you the hardest working guy at the plate?
No, not even close.
Here's the guy that is Cam Stephenson from Courier Newsroom.
is working up on Capitol Hill, harder than pretty much all the rest of us at Courier Newsroom put together and puts together things like Below the Beltway.
You can subscribe to Cam Stevenson's newsletter at beltway.news or through couriernewsroom.com for plenty of updates and insight from Capitol Hill.
Cam, how are you?
You know, I am blown away by that intro.
That was something else.
I'm sorry.
Did
I create a database, a searchable database with 20,000 Epstein files?
No, you did that, along with all of your other day-to-day reporting.
So, you know, just take the W, Cam.
I appreciate it.
You know, I'll take it.
It's a week of thankfulness, and I thank you.
There you go.
We'll go with that.
You know, we actually have some
I guess good news, positive news would be the way to put it that we'll be talking about in this segment.
Just basically some of the pushback on the authoritarian state that's going on here.
But let's start with concepts of a plan, which is what Donald Trump said he had last year while running for president again.
that he was still after all these years, he's only at concepts of a plan, then came reports that he was getting set to unveil a healthcare plan.
Finally, now he's not.
What exactly happened or didn't happen over these past, I don't know, 48 hours or so?
Yeah, well, I mean, on one end, he campaigned on concepts of a plan, so I guess promises made, promises kept.
But the reality is that
President Trump, he wanted to have a big win on healthcare.
You know, he made his own Trump Rx brand where people can get redirected to other medical sites.
And he knows, because now he's being told, and now he's seen at first hand, that the cuts to our healthcare laws and the affordable care subsidies in his budget are going to be detrimental not just to lower income people who rely on those,
But all of us who now our insurance premiums are going to go up so that we can offset that cost to the insurance companies.
And so the word was that he came up with a plan, which was essentially a more generous version of Democrats plan, which was to extend these health care laws for two years.
Democrats originally, their compromise was to extend these subsidies for one year and then figure it out after that.
Trump wanted to do it for two.
I don't know if it was a change of heart because he met with the mayor-elect of New York and is warming up to more left-leaning principles, or if he just liked a good solid win.
But that's what he was about to unveil yesterday, and then apparently a lot of Republicans in Congress who just spent the past almost two months avoiding
Washington DC entirely to keep the government shut down so that they wouldn't have to bend on on health care.
They weren't too happy about that.
And so they started calling the White House.
They started telling him not to do it.
And, you know, in classic Trump fashion, you know, today's Taco Tuesday, but yesterday.
chickened out
taco taco always trumps oh Trump always chickens out yes it is it is definitely a taco Tuesday when it comes to health care and look we don't we don't even know how serious he was about it because he has this habit of basically thinking out loud but you know it never becomes an actual proposal because that gives him plausible deniability so we we don't even know where all this was going if nothing else just simply
makes House Republicans and Senate as well, who really wanted this all to go away.
And it simply brings it back up to the forefront that 22 million Americans are having these enhanced benefits expire.
And, you know, there are Republicans who, when the president was actually ready to have a change of heart, said, no, no, no, we're
We want these price hikes to go forward.
Another thing that was put out there was, you know, Trump talks about this a lot, putting money right into the hands of Americans, you know, just making direct payments and then let Americans buy the health insurance they want.
That sure sounds to me like just going back to pre affordable care act and yeah, we can give you money, but is it going to keep up with, you know, the how high your premiums are going to go?
That's a whole another question.
Right.
Well, I feel like it also ties into his recent push to try and give everyone $2,000 as a kind of a tariff bonus.
Yes.
Where, you know, which I believe Senator Johnson in Wisconsin is kind of the one who put the kibosh on that and told him that that wasn't going to happen.
But I feel like Trump has this internal struggle where he wants to be popular.
He wants to be liked.
He knows.
you know deep down that he he's hated and so he hears about these things that would be popular like oh people like money i'll give him money oh people want health care i'll give him health care um but because they're not fleshed out because he's not really uh a detail oriented individual uh
i guess you
could say uh that he just throws it out uh you know he vomits this stuff out on social media and then the
the more established Republicans who don't want people to have money and they don't want people to have healthcare, they rein that in because there's no way they're gonna vote for those things.
We're talking to Cam Stevenson, national correspondent for Courier Newsroom from Capitol Hill in Washington.
Now some of the pushback on, again, some of the extreme authoritarian law enforcement tactics that are out there.
And I will say again, what I've said before, this is not about being anti-law enforcement, but everybody should be against,
enforcement that crosses the line or the military where somebody gives an illegal order and just expects people to follow along.
Well, now there's there's been some pushback from, you know, from the good people in Charlotte, North Carolina, from the customers at Home Depot.
Do you want to take either one of those and give a few more details?
Yeah, these these are both very, very good examples of ways that they
grassroots opposition has found a way to effectively combat the authoritarianism that's attacking their neighborhoods and communities because you're exactly right.
I mean, you can't call something law enforcement when they're not, when those doing the enforcing are not following the law, you know, when they're illegally abducting people, when they're, you know, shutting down people's businesses, when they are harassing and intimidating employees.
Those
That's not enforcing the law.
That's just brutality.
And so in Charlotte, it's more of an evolution of what those who want to stop ICE from abducting their neighbors have learned in different cities.
We saw mass protests in LA.
We've seen here in DC, there's a lot of watch groups where people will take shifts standing watch and let people know if ICE is going to be in the neighborhood.
That's happening in Chicago and in Charlotte, it became an incredibly effective way to protect community members.
There are thousands of volunteers in Charlotte who are essentially taking shifts doing a combination of things.
They'll watch areas that ICE is known to hit to do their raids, like Home Depot's or like restaurants or busy sectors like where there's a lot of service industry workers.
And they'll also have people
standing by and watching ICE facilities.
And what they do is they're tracking movement, you know, they're saying, oh, there's, you know, there's a bunch of vans showing up at this ICE facility on a Tuesday morning.
They are close to these areas where they usually go, and then they put out word to their network and alert people and let them know, hey, you know, don't don't take 47th into work today, take 45th, or, you know, don't go to the target in
you know on this block because that one it looks like there's going to be ice activity and in doing this charlotte residents have really effectively been able to get people
To safety to protect them so they're not in those places where ice agents are And like I said, it's it's something that's evolved, you know from LA to Chicago to here in DC Where activists are learning they're they're sharing these others notes and they're letting each other know how they can protect people because You know once ice is there in a combative situation They're not trained for de-escalation
and so
they're going to they're gonna shoot you they're going to
detain you and they're going to cause the violence and crime that the administration claims of their stuff.
Exactly.
And again, instead of going after people who are a genuine threat to public safety, they're going after the people who are, you know, re-shingling our roofs and taking care of our children and things like that.
We're talking to Cam Stevenson from Courier Newsroom from Washington, D.C.
And in Home Depot, which again was allowing ICE, you know, seemingly unfettered access, customers
figured out how to do something as simple as the return policy on a 17 cent scraper to kind of gum up the works, Cam.
You've seen that, right?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
And this is something that's being done in cities all throughout the country.
If anyone in Wisconsin is interested in a little
you know, borderline harmless opposition that is having an effect.
This is a very easy tactic to implement anywhere that is actually making a difference.
So what Pat was talking about is people who want Home Depot to stop collaborating with ICE.
And essentially what's been happening is
typically outside of Home Depot's there are day laborers mostly usually immigrants who are who get who's you know sit outside there four or five o'clock in the morning get picked up by contractors and then they go and do construction work Home Depot employees have been alerting ICE agents when there's a large presence of day laborers and then ICE comes and just arrests all of them which is
a pretty dirty way to do things and people have taken notice and have called for an economic boycott.
And instead of, you know, just the boycott cam, because we've got less than a minute left here, they've just figured out a way to go in, purchase something, and you see this long line of people returning a 17-cent scraper, and that's, again, it kind of slows down traffic in the rest of Home Depot and hurts their sales, and so it's not staying away to boycott it, it's actually frustrating them with a boycott, and Home Depot appears to be backing off their cooperation as a result.
Oh, we've got Cam on mute for some reason here.
Let me see if he's good.
Oh, he might be muted.
And let's see if he can get that unmuted real quick.
Isn't that fun when you use computers and iPads that way?
Oh shucks.
I'm not sure how it happened, but that's where Cam was.
Cam's waving to the camera, so we're going to check in with Cam next week and get the conclusion of our story of people pushing back against an authoritarian state at Home Depot, doing something as basic as long lines at the return counter.
Still ahead, Eric Gunn from the Wisconsin Examiner will be along.
I'm Pat Critello from Up North News, and this is the Civic Media Radio Network.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Stay up to date on the latest news and information for your local community and Wisconsin by signing up for our free email newsletter.
Visit civicmedia.us slash email to get started.
Got to get that plug in for Cam one more time for his Below the Beltway newsletter.
Head to beltway.news or couriernewsroom.com for updates and insight from Cam Stevenson over on Capitol Hill.
And because we had a little technical snafu there with his audio, I thought I'd come back to, again, what was happening at Home Depot.
And in this case, we were talking about Charlotte, North Carolina, and how people are, again, warning of when.
these, you know, authoritarian and illegal, you know, drag nets are out there.
And, you know, essentially playing the role of, of patriots, you know, versus the redcoats back in the revolutionary era, when again, you had a, you know, an illegal occupation force there.
But in the case of Home Depot, this actually got going according to a CBS News report.
in Los Angeles County at a Home Depot store where people would go in and purchase an ice
See what I did there?
Ice scraper for 17 cents.
And they'd buy it for 17 cents, then they'd get right back into a line to return them.
The act clogged up customer service lines, a political act urging Home Depot to keep federal agents out of their stores.
For nearly an hour, the buy-in operation stalled the store from operating as usual.
The protesters then marched through the aisles of Home Depot, which led management to close the store down.
And again, Home Depot is getting the message.
Home Depot communications has said repeatedly that they do not cooperate with ICE agents and are not notified of operations before they happen.
But clearly there are folks who do not believe that or who have witnessed things otherwise and are doing their part.
To again, try to keep, if nothing else, it's about keeping the Trump administration honest to their promises.
The promise was to go after the terrorists, to go after the drug pushers.
And by the way, those exist.
That happens.
There are people here, undocumented immigrants, who commit crimes, who do some bad things, just as there are many, many, many, many, many more people who are citizens, who commit all of these crimes.
That's what law enforcement is supposed to be.
In fact, there was a story recently.
I don't have in front of me here, but there was somebody from China who's just been deported back to China and who was looking at essentially using a type of, was it a fungus to create agricultural bio warfare and they were discovered and they've been deported.
It's an example of the system working.
But if you're taking those resources,
that should be used for genuine real law enforcement.
And if you're pulling back from that, as they are in white collar crimes, in sex crimes against children, and in so many areas, if you're pulling those people back and applying those resources and those people to go after Maria from housekeeping, or Miguel who's putting shingles on your roof, or somebody who's taking care of your kids, or somebody who is milking the cows,
And they're all doing an honest day's work, and they have never committed a crime, and they're the people we need to alleviate a labor shortage.
Well, if we're cracking down on that, then that's how you keep the Trump administration honest, to say that, you know, this is what you told us you were gonna go after the bad people.
And don't give me this BS about crossing the border as a crime.
Crossing the border is a misdemeanor.
That's where you're putting your resources.
Well, that's not law enforcement.
That's just racism.
And we're not here to do anything about it.
We've got people who are campaigning.
Somebody recently announced a campaign.
Was it the ShamWow guy?
I don't know if you've ever seen the infomercials.
And there was one for ShamWow.
And this guy is running for Congress in his hometown now.
And he says the whole point of his running is to destroy wokeism.
I have an idea.
How about if instead of destroying wokeism, we destroy racism?
How about if in destroying wokeism, we destroy bigotry?
How about if we take a big old chunk out of misogyny while we're at it?
There are all kinds of things that we could be doing to improve life in this country instead of racial profiling people who are trying to work hard and achieve the American dream.
And if you didn't like the fact that they came over the border because our system is broken,
Fix the damn system.
The system's broken by everyone's admission.
And who stopped it from being fixed?
One guy.
He got elected president of the United States saying, I can do a better job than bipartisan immigration reform and border security.
His idea to do a better job is to promise he's going after just the bad guys and instead is
pulling teachers' aides out of the classroom in front of screaming and crying children.
That's nothing to be proud of, not even remotely so.
You want to fix the problem?
You know it's already on paper.
There was already a bipartisan plan to do it.
Put it up for a vote.
I dare you.
Put it up for a vote right now and watch how many Republicans actually get it.
that instead of letting, you know, racism and bigotry run amuck in this country, we actually want a path to citizenship.
The baby boomers, forgive me for being direct, they're dropping.
They're dropping like crazy.
Because time, time is undefeated.
And my generation, early Gen X, you know, we're right on the doorstep of retirement.
And
There's no baby boom behind us.
So if you want to maintain a good, healthy economy, as I've said over and over again, there has never been a more important time for bipartisan immigration reform and border security that helps bring people into this country who want to work hard, follow the rules, chase their dreams and live in greater security than what they have right now.
But we got to do one thing first.
and we got to get rid of the haters.
And right now they're infesting the White House, they're infesting the Capitol.
It was bad enough when they were just infesting talk radio in the comment sections.
But now they're in high places and it's high time for that to be undone.
Coming up next, we'll put the focus back on Wisconsin politics with Eric Gunn of the Wisconsin Examiner.
And then tomorrow, Representative Christian Phelps and State Senator Jeff Smith will be in our homeroom segment talking about the realities of finding a bipartisan way to fix school funding in Wisconsin.
I'm Pat Crightlum.
You're up north.
nice to have you back here on this Tuesday morning 8 35 so one hour ago we spoke with Ashland area Democratic State Representative Angela Stroud about the fall session of the legislature things that got done things that didn't get done some very strong feelings on the subject and if you missed it you can listen back by subscribing to our show as a podcast head over to Spotify
or Apple and follow us that way.
You can also head to civicmedia.us and click on shows.
All the civic media shows are there broken down hour by hour and you can listen back to any particular hour.
But we'd love to have you as a podcast follower as well.
So let's continue talking about things that are getting done in Madison and things that are being considered and may or may not make it to the finish line before the 2025-26 session of the Wisconsin Legislature ends and to help us with that.
We're going to talk to Eric Gunn, Deputy Editor of the Wisconsin Examiner over at WisconsinExaminer.com.
Eric, good morning.
How are you?
Good.
How are you
today?
Very good.
Thank you very much for being here today.
And as I'm looking at, I mean, obviously the examiner covers everything that happens in the state capital.
But one issue that I wanted to get to that we haven't really talked about on this program is about unemployment, unemployment insurance.
And you would think that there are pretty traditional
partisan breakdowns in unemployment insurance.
The hoops you have to jump through, the amount of the payments and things like that.
But there actually appears to be something here.
where a joint labor management advisory council on unemployment insurance has put together something and Democrats are strongly opposed to what this joint labor management group has done.
Can you give us a little bit more background and detail about what's being considered?
Certainly can.
Let's start with the fact that over the last several years Republicans have repeatedly brought into the legislature
of various changes that basically sum up, make it a lot harder to collect unemployment, create a lot more administrative burden.
And those have been repeatedly vetoed.
They have not gone through what has been a feature of our UI system in Wisconsin for decades and decades back to the 30s, namely the Joint Labor Management Unemployment Advisory Council.
Now the advisory council has put together a proposed bill and involves a lot of things that the Republicans have been seeking and people aren't exactly sure why this joint labor management council came up with that this way, except that they were going to get a $25 increase.
in the maximum benefit that can be collected by people on unemployment all the way up to $395 a week, which they haven't gotten an increase in that maximum benefit for, you know, more than more than 10 years.
But there are other changes in that that lead some people to believe that
Despite the fact that it came out of the advisory council, the governor is likely to think for that, but that some people are speculating around here.
All of this kind of revolved around a particular issue, which was the ability or for.
a period of time, the inability of people who are on social security disability insurance income to collect unemployment compensation if they lose a job.
Just because you're on SSDI doesn't mean you're not working at all.
A lot of people on SSDI maybe have some kind of part-time job, often because their SSDI payments each month aren't really enough.
In 2013, under Governor Walker, the legislature just said, flat out, if you're on SSDI, you can't collect unemployment insurance payments, period.
That's some kind of double dipping.
And for several years, that was the case.
2021, a lawyer named Victor Forberger, who has been kind of one of the principal lawyers in Wisconsin to represent people with problems in the unemployment system.
And a team of some other lawyers with some other big firms sued and got that ban on SSDI thrown out.
Well, and this gets really complicated.
I'm trying not to get too far into the weeds here, but
uh as part of this combined bill this this this joint bill that came out uh they were going to say okay we're letting people collect ssdi but now they got to pay half of it back we're letting people on ssdi collect unemployment but now they have to you know pay half of it back so
we're really talking about people that continue to see
any kind of disability as some kind of, not just a safety net, but as a lifestyle.
And you know the caricature of people who are claiming a disability, they're getting a check from the government, but they're otherwise perfectly fine as far as people can tell and what do you really know about somebody.
But this mindset that started under the Walker administration and continues to this day is even if your disability payments
While they're there, they're not enough to live on and you decide to work and you get wages, but now you get laid off from that work.
It's a matter of whether you should be able to collect unemployment and then whether there should be some kind of a penalty on this.
And this is where you get, like you said, that joint labor management council, you know, wants an update on the jobless pay, but by, you know, as you just said, by
bringing the maximum benefit to $395 a week.
I mean, compare that, as you say in your article, to Minnesota, $914 a week, Iowa, $602 a week.
Michigan is going up to $530 a week.
So I mean, you've got, if you're living on the maximum payment in Wisconsin, you're not necessarily keeping up with inflation much less other states.
Exactly, exactly.
We don't know what happens in those individual caucus meetings, you know, the labor folks caucus, the management folks caucus, but it's very clear from the, from what came out of that bill that on the management side, which is among other things headed by the chief lobbyist for Wisconsin manufacturers and commerce, they must have pushed very, very hard for some of
not only that, but for some of these other provisions that have previously been separately vetoed, things relating to how often there are audits of work searches and getting penalized for ghosting if you don't show up for a job interview when you're collecting unemployment, and all of those things, they pushed very hard to get in that.
It sounds like they drove a very hard bargain with the labor folks for them to get any kind of increase at all and that they ended up, that everybody ended up going with this bill that is otherwise very unpopular in terms of what it does and doesn't do for workers.
Yeah, we're talking Eric Gunn from the Wisconsin Examiner about this bill that would reform how unemployment insurance works in Wisconsin, but appears to have these poison pills that are attached.
And as was noted in committee testimony in the legislature, a lot of these provisions about work searches and, you know, ghosting of job interviews, you know, these are things that are either not necessary or ineffectual.
I also think of the people who
maybe they have scheduled a job interview, but now they've got a sick kid or they've got some other circumstance where they can't go to that job interview and we're supposed to now just assume that they're a freeloader going through the motions just to live off, you know, an already small unemployment check.
Again, it sounds more like we're dealing with rhetoric than reality in terms of what struggling families are going through in Wisconsin and how the legislature can best reform it.
Exactly, exactly.
So we'll see what happens.
It has to go through the actual votes in both houses at this point.
And depending on who you talk to, there's any number of scenarios that come play out.
Maybe it'll just die.
Maybe it will actually get through both houses.
If it does get through both houses, there are a lot of people who really wonder if the governor will sign it given the unpopularity of some of the provisions.
There are other stories that are happening, though, that I think we also ought to touch on.
Yeah, tell me some more of what you've been following and what the team at the Wisconsin Examiner has been following.
Well, I want to call attention to a story that Henry Redmond published about a week ago.
We have this problem, you know, the Sand Hill Crane has come back.
This has been, you know, it's a wonderful ecological success story.
But we've got kind of a problem with cranes basically ravaging farm fields during the spring planning season.
And then there are various ways to being talked about to address it.
Well, one way that
people have proposed is that there's some kind of a chemical that can be coated on seeds that basically discourages the cranes from from eating the seeds, right?
That's expensive to
have this applied and so on.
So there was talk about trying to provide state assistance to farmers to doing that.
Then there's a whole other group that is using this as an opportunity to say, let's hunt cranes.
They even have this idea of rib-eyes in the sky.
I believe Ted Nugent was talking about that.
There was a joint committee and Henry Redman has written all about this.
There was a Joint Committee that was working on this issue when they finally came out with the bill, however All that's in it is the Sandhill Crane Hunt and the the people who actually know about these issues From the Crane Foundation and and from farmer groups and so on
say, wait, the hunt is not going to do anything.
It's in the wrong season.
Right.
Because it's in the fall.
That's not when the problem happens.
So it's kind of pointless.
So Henry had a great story, basically.
The headline kind of says it all, but it's worth reading.
Last week, debate on sandhill crane hunting bill ditches expert recommendations.
Oh, gosh.
Yeah.
And again, WisconsinExaminer.com is where you can read more of Henry's story there.
We're talking to Eric Gunn of the Wisconsin Examiner.
And then the last one I wanted to mention, and we won't need a lot of time because it's pretty self-evident.
But as these enhanced subsidies for the Affordable Care Act go away, uncompensated care is going to rise.
I mean, that's just...
basic, and even though it's a basic point, it's a point that is not sitting well with not just hospitals all over, but especially rural health care.
Rural health care providers are scared to death of what's going to happen with uncompensated care levels.
It absolutely is.
And the Wisconsin Hospital Association every year puts out a report, and I wrote about that a couple weeks ago, basically looking at the financial condition of the state's hospital systems.
And the chief executive there said they're very concerned about uncompensated care rising because insurance coverage is likely to fall as a result of the expense of...
of insurance policies on the Affordable Care Act.
Right.
I mean, it's something that we've seen before.
We're talking to Erickon from the Wisconsin Examiner.
We'll have some final news and notes here from Lake Wissota.
Then Matt Naraner follows us from 9 to 11 here all across the Civic Media Radio Network.
I'm Pat Krightlow from Up North News.
Follow us at UpNorthNewsWI.com.
You're Up North.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Find the latest news, information, and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website, civicmedia.us.
A couple more minutes here with Eric Gunn, deputy editor of Wisconsin Examiner.
Head over to WisconsinExaminer.com to learn more.
And before the break, we were talking about uncompensated care as these enhanced premium credits under the Affordable Care Act are allowed to expire.
Yet the push goes on.
We were speaking with Kam Stevenson from Washington, DC earlier this hour about how President Trump apparently
briefly at least, was toying with the idea of extending the premium credits for the Affordable Care Act.
And as you note in one of your articles, Senator Tammy Baldwin, among others, is noting that health premiums are soaring.
And so even though the shutdown fight is over, the fight goes on to try to extend these enhanced health insurance tax credits, Eric.
That's correct.
We have to look back to
2021 when the American Rescue Plan was Act, one of the things that the Biden administration wanted to do was make sure more people had health insurance and they passed these enhanced tax credits that
made health insurance that people have to buy for themselves because they don't have an employer policy or they're not qualifying for Medicare or Medicaid or whatever, to make sure that that was really affordable for people.
And what we saw over the last three years is that enrollment through the federal marketplace got to record highs in Wisconsin and across the country.
it seems absolutely unlikely that that trend will continue based on the prices that have come for the coming year on health insurance policies and the absence of these much higher tax credits that have made it possible for so many people to use that system.
And the result of that is we're gonna have people, if they have insurance,
They may be having higher deductibles, so they're going to be even reluctant to go to the doctor unless things get really bad.
Of course, the longer you wait, typically, then the more it's going to end up costing in the end.
Or they may decide to take a risk and go without insurance entirely and try to pay what they can out of pocket or not.
that also is going to probably lead to more people getting emergency room care.
Hospitals can't turn away a person just because they can't pay.
That's a
federal
law and they're the only
kind of segment of the healthcare institution, which actually has that restriction.
So that all leads to a likely increase in uncompensated care or people who can't pay their bills or medical debt, however you want to frame it.
And as reflecting before our break here, the president of the Wisconsin Hospital Association even told me when I interviewed him about their annual report that he's been trying to talk to the congressional delegation in Wisconsin to say, we need to do something about this.
We need to figure out a way to extend those.
those tax credits and keep insurance affordable.
Still efforts are being made.
I don't hear a lot of optimism that it's going to go anywhere.
But honestly, and honestly, even if it does, it should have happened to have had the maximum effect a few months ago because we're going to be going into
the new year with these higher prices, even if you can bring them down a little bit, it's not going to have the effect it would have.
Exactly.
It's already people are already seeing that that hike and any relief will have to come after you've started to pay, you know, the least temporarily higher premiums.
So that and more from Eric Gunn and the team over at WisconsinExaminer.com.
Eric, thanks for sticking around a few extra minutes.
Always great to catch up with you.
Happy Thanksgiving and thanks for being here.
And the same to you, and thanks for having me.
You bet.
Thank you very much.
One other story I wanted to call your attention to from Baylor Spears over at the Examiner, special education reimbursement payments.
Remember how in the state budget, we heard that there was going to be this increase to state aid that would cover something like 42% of special education costs?
Well, the numbers are out, and it's only going to be 35%.
of their costs because of the way that the numbers worked out.
So Baylor Spears has written that up over at WisconsinExaminer.com as well for you to follow.
All right, Matt near on air is coming up next yours truly will be one of her guests coming up about 9 30 or so 9 35 But first let's remind you that there's plenty of sports coming up for Thanksgiving Of course, we've got the Green Bay Packers who are playing at Detroit against the Lions coverage begins at 10 a.m On civic media stations in Richland Center Park Falls Racine and Watoma and so that'll be the Packer game followed by
There's gonna be a little Badger Men's Basketball on some of the other stations of the Civic Media Radio Network.
Coverage there begins at, oops, sorry, let me put up the right graphic for our social media viewers.
That coverage begins at 2.30 on stations in Wisconsin Rapids, Amory, Richland Center, and Ironwood, Michigan.
And then on Saturday, there is Badger Football at Minnesota.
Coverage will begin at 1230 on Saturday.
The kickoff is going to be 230 on stations in Richland Center, Amory, Wisconsin Rapids and Ripon.
So there's your little catch up on sports.
And if you missed it earlier, the Milwaukee Bucks are now riding a five game losing streak.
Yannis missed a third straight game with a strain in his left groin.
And as a result, the Bucks.
Losing five in a row after falling at home to the Portland Trail Blazers last night 115 to 103 I would like to thank Parker though that this is all this is all about the NBA Cup that Yanis is just missing the games that don't matter and the game that really does matter is for the NBA Cup
We're trying folks.
There's more charms about
it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, we're not.
But anyway, that game will be tomorrow in Miami and we'll see if the bucks can break out of their skid there.
It
will
be nice.
I'm
not.
I'll be nice.
I'm not optimistic.
Thank you, Parker.
Have a great day.
We'll see you tomorrow.
We'll see all the rest of you tomorrow as well.
I'm Pat Crightlow from Up North News, part of Courier Newsroom, a pro-democracy news network building a more informed, engaged, and representative America.
Enjoy the rest of your Tuesday.
We'll see you once more before the big holiday, 6 a.m., right and early, here up north.
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