Here’s a few key facts about about Republican U.S. Senate candidate Ron Johnson:
- At a candidate forum in Madison in July, Ron Johnson said that as company president of PACUR LLC, he has the same health insurance plan as other employees.
- Yesterday it was revealed five adult employees of PACUR – along with their ten children – receive BadgerCare, the state-subsidized health insurance plan for low-income workers. Obviously Ron Johnson’s too rich to receive BadgerCare, so I can’t help but wonder what Ron Johnson meant when he said he has the same health insurance plan as his employees.
- What’s more, it’s also been discovered several PACUR employees have had their wages garnished to pay medical bills. Ron Johnson has repeatedly said that he has a health care plan at PACUR in which employees are offered a health savings account, pay their own medical bills out of the account, and get to keep any of the money left over. What’s interesting is that among the health care “plans” proposed by Ron Johnson to replace the Democratic health care reform legislation passed earlier this year includes health savings accounts – the very same health savings accounts that have clearly failed to help Ron Johnson’s employees at PACUR to avoid being overwhelmed by health care costs.
If Ron Johnson were really interested in finding real non-governmental solutions to increase access to health insurance for all Americans, he could start by finding a non-governmental solution to provide access to health insurance for his employees at PACUR. The fact that employees of Ron Johnson have had to resort to obtaining government-provided health insurance coverage through the BadgerCare program speaks volumes about Ron Johnson’s failure as a CEO to address the issue of health insurance within his own company. If Ron Johnson can’t even figure out how to ensure all his employees get health insurance coverage without the government having to step in, then how can he be counted on to figure out how to increase access to health insurance coverage for Americans as a member of the United States Senate?
There are many reasons why these people are on BadgerCare. My questions is why the state even told released this information? I’m sure some HIPPA laws have been broken in this reporting.
Many people can quailfy for BadgerCare under ObamaCare.
This is not reporting, this is an invasion of privacy.
Badger Care has strict income limits. Strict.
You have to bring in a month of recent paystubs, etc etc
Badgercare also recently conducted (like last month) and extensive and very in-depth survey of ALL Badgercare recipients both those on the plan before and after Doyle opened it up to more people. This verification was mandatory for the people to continue to stay on the program and involved checks to screen for accuracy of all patient data and to screen for fraud.
If you didn’t prove the facts on record you are off the plan.
You are bluffing, sir.
One only has to look at how Johnson runs his company to know how he will run the state. God help us if he is elected…we’ll all be clamoring for decent wages and will be eligible for badger care (and both will be non existent if he has his way).
The employees can opt in to the health insurance plan that Pacur offers if they so choose. The sad fact is the state makes it cheaper to buy Badger Care which the rest of us pay for. I know several single moms that have Badger Care and full time jobs. This “news” says more about our entitlement society that Pacur.
Hi Pat. Are you aware of the income limits for recipients of BadgerCare? The limit on income for a family of three is $36,620, so we’re not talking about folks who are rolling in money getting BadgerCare.
Perhaps the fact that several single moms you know work full time and have BadgerCare says more about the wages they’re paid than it does about their sense of entitlement.
FYI – HSA’s, probably the most innovative health care saving vehicle over the past 10 years will soon be defunct under Obama Care. What a great idea – take away an affordable health care option in order to force more companies, Boeing, John Deere, McDonalds (they got a waiver) to drop their health care plans and dump the employees into the govt. pool.
This “benign” law will lead to a govt. run program because insurance companies are not in the business to lose money. At that point we will have long lines, rationing of care and no new products or technologies. Just like in FRANCE, UK, AND CANADA!!!
Good luck America!!!
As Zach pointed out working full-time does not mean you make enough to meet basic needs. let alone pay healthcare.
I personally think you made up that “I know several moms” etc.
I bet that’s not at all the kinda crowd you hang with.
I’m not sure if you have ever had a health care issue in Canada, UK, or France, but I can tell you I did not wait any longer to see a doctor than I did in the US. Not only that, bus fare to the hospital cost more than the doctor visit AND the medication. All I paid for was the medication, which in itself was hundreds of dollars if I had the same issue here. I made several visits to the doctor on my vacation, and the amount of time I spent waiting was nowhere near is claimed. It’s a bunch of BS by people that have a financial gain by denying people the right to necessary medical attention. God forbid if I lived in a country outside of ours and needed medical attention.
That most certainly is not true. You paid less, but that does not mean it costless. It’s one of those fundamental issues people need to understand to have before even getting started on the issue. Health care and health insurance are not the same thing, and neither are what you pay and what something costs.
When a service costs more money than you actually pay for it – somebody has to.
I meant it cost ME less. Yes, people in the UK pay their share for single payer care, and no one was whining about who has to take care the bill. To refuse to care for those who cannot afford it or will lose everything to pay the bills, that is inhumane. This is the crux of what makes me angry about the whole thing. It doesn’t have to be that way.
I’m not one to defend Ron Johnson but is this information verified by a legitimate source?
I can hardly believe that someone can just call the Dept of Health and find out what employees are on Badgercare, not to mention if they have kids or not. That seems like a major violation of HIPPA laws…
I’m going to guess that either this info is crap or it was obtained illegally..because the WisDems have yet to jump on this.
From the HHS website:
HIPPA covers protected health information, such as medications you may be taking, treatments you may have received, etc.; the number of individuals (and dependents) who are receiving BadgerCare is not protected health information as far as I can tell. Obviously disclosing the names of those recipients might violate HIPPA, but I don’t think anyone’s alleging that the names of the individuals working at PACUR who are receiving BadgerCare have been released.
It is a kind of being “released” to say x employees and their x number of children, that seems to be protected to me, like okay you didn’t publish the names, but in order to write the post you have more information that maybe is supposed to be given out. The Logic Train goes flying by a few stops if you think about this situation for a while. Maybe the train arrived at the proper destination but maybe someone greased the tracks at some point of the journey too. It does seem a bit odd.
One of the pieces was from a woman I never paid attention to before, and the other from Jud Lounsbury, who is…interesting, and suddenly over on UppityWis/Rootswire of Cruiskeen etc.
He doesn’t say how he got that info. Even just using CCAP he’d have to get the employee’s names first and run them thru one by one and see how their legal lives have been, and if anything can be used to shed negative light on PACUR. If I was on the Republican side I’d just argue that the default on the bills was caused by bad personal financial decsions. Or refusal to pay. Even good insurance has deductibles, it could be that people have insurance but they don’t pay their part of the costs cuz they bought a hot tub for every room and 4 wheelers for each kid instead, and so they end up in court. We can’t tell. One of the stops the Train blew past.
I suppose there’s ways of getting lists of people who work places if you know…people.
It could easily be that the info IS true, that RoJo runs his business the way Wal-mart has been publicized as doing and the way my old employer did. But it’s also possible that it was obtained in ways or by people that no one wants to talk about and you know- DADT
Why I find Jud L interesting is that I’m seeing that name around WI when I hadn’t in years past, he writes like a heavy-hitter and turns out, he’s an old Washington person, aide to several people (ah-hem) and Al Gore’s press secretary
lol Now he’s at a Menomonie based blog? way to reel ’em in dude. Can’t for the life of me figure out why Jud doesn’t wanna contribute to EauSnap though, also mysterious and disturbingly illogical. Jud, I’m hurt.
Anyways, if you look you J.L. in the normal places you look up 30-something guys who have already had very impressive careers (I don’t mean Facebook), its funny when there ain’t nuthin’ on ‘im, like wiped clean, or never on it, or…something.
My current working theory is, Jud Lounsbury has a Harry Potter Invisibility Cloak. So he can “get places”. It was probably a Thank You gift from Al Gore after the campaign was over and Al said “Jud, I’d like you to have this as a token of my esteem. Now I’m going into seclusion for an extended period to grow some gnarly facial hair, see you when the planet starts to heat up!”
Pretty sure that’s how it all went down. I dunno about you but I’m done asking questions O_o
Heh — A conspiracy theory! I love it! ; ) Here’s how I got that info: I just did a CCAP search for Pacur and Rexam Extrusions. I was actually looking for something else at the time, but noticed that a lot of employees were getting their wages garnished and had those businesses listed as the garnishee.
It’s now on the Oshkosh Northwestern
After reading that really it doesn’t matter the details of how the info was gotten or what these people are “like”.
Ron Johnson is just another rich Republican who is out of touch with the real problems of this country. So we now find out he’s out of touch with several employees of his own company, who are on Badgercare.
Like Ron Johnson’s company, there are still companies that offer health insurance to employees. The cost of this benefit is the real issue. Republicans continue to chant the same mantra, hoping to find ignorant people to believe in their garbage. America has the finest healthcare system in the world.
Really? Wow, that’s great news! Wonderful trick how they dance around the issue. The issue is that most people simply cannot afford this fine healthcare. So therefore, we voted in Barack Obama. Now they would like us to believe that most people are satisfied with the current situation and never even wanted affordable healthcare.
Almost daily we find out more about Ron Johnson. Though I never needed to be enlightened. The basic Republican philosophy of life is not for me. A vote for Russ Feingold is the only choice.
Word to your Mother.
(I hadn’t noticed your name in comments before. Diggin’ the delectable diatribe!)
Badger Care has been an incredible help to those who need it the most. People who work full time I agree cannot always pay for the high priced and not very good coverage received from most employers. This is perfect for college students trying to get by with little to nothing and trying to take care of themself to one day be able to possibly afford the higher end and I will be glad to help someone else out with my tax dollars to get through like I did.