Today the Barrett for Governor campaign released its second television ad, which pledges to end “Cadillac health care for convicted felons.” The accompanying plan from the campaign includes this detail on savings in this regard:
Cut Prison Health Care Costs. One way to cut costs is simply by reducing spending for inmate medical services, which are notoriously inefficient – not to mention outrageous. Taxpayers having trouble paying their own health insurance shouldn’t be paying for Cadillac coverage for criminals. We should eliminate elective procedures – such as sex-change operations – consolidate services, reduce the number of contracts, improve efficiency, and cut costs.
A writer at the Isthmus Daily Page criticizes him for picking on prisoners as a particularly easy, politically vulnerable population. That’s true enough, although I think we should cut all kinds of spending.
What I want to focus in on, though, is the sex-change operations mention. First, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, through Judge Charles Clevert, recently ruled that sexual identity disorder is a “serious health condition” and that a state statute banning taxpayer-funded sex-change operations is unconstitutional. The Wisconsin Department of Justice is appealing the decision. So I’m not sure how Barrett plans to save money on this one – there’s already a state statute banning sex-change operations, but a Clinton-appointed federal judge has held it unconstitutional, something that Gov. Barrett couldn’t just change.
Second, I wonder how Barrett’s friends in the LGBT community feel about this. Fair Wisconsin, the leading LGBT rights group in Wisconsin, has endorsed his campaign for the governorship. FW followed up its endorsement with a fundraiser to benefit Barrett’s campaign. Cong. Tammy Baldwin said that Barrett “unabashedly” stood forward for gay rights as a member of congress. Is he going to stand now “unabashedly” for the proposition that gender identity disorder is a “serious health condition”? Or will he abandon the LGBT community on some of these tougher political stances (by which I mean, something that is easy in the eyes of the vast majority of Wisconsinites, but does not align with the LGBT agenda)?
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[...] Daniel Suhr at GOP3 pointed this out earlier, but it's always interesting to see when it gets picked up by a national newspaper. Good thing DPW Chairman Mike Tate is likely using whatever connections he had with Fair Wisconsin from his days there in 2006 to keep them quiet about the point that what Barrett wants to do on the Department of Corrections and Inmate Sex-Changes was just last month declared unconstitutional. [...]
Do you know of anyone in a Wisconsin prison that has had “cadillac” health care? Most times they can’t get medical attention at all. My son witnessed someone die as a result of not getting medical attention. In all things there are people who abuse the system, like people on welfare, but you can’t say something is bad when the majority of people are in desperate need of the service.