Adam Paul, who owns Vintage Rose Bakery & Sandwich Shop in west De Pere with his wife, says healthcare is the biggest financial stress he faces.<\/p>\n
He struggles with mental health, and his wife has a thyroid condition. For the last three months, Paul said they\u2019ve been negotiating with their insurance provider to try to get an MRI covered for his wife\u2019s condition.<\/p>\n
\u201cFighting with the insurance company, and owning a business at the same time, to get things covered is a nightmare,\u201d Paul said. \u201cIt\u2019s a constant fight of, \u2018OK what is my health worth?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
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As a business owner, he said he \u201cwould love\u201d to offer his employees insurance but his company is just \u201cway too small\u201d for him to make it work financially.<\/p>\n
Paul and other Brown County community members spoke at an affordability roundtable in De Pere last month, moderated by former Democratic Party of Wisconsin chair Ben Wikler. <\/p>\n
Paul wasn\u2019t the only one at the roundtable who spoke about healthcare costs being a major source of financial stress.<\/p>\n
Inflation and cost of living rank as the top issue among Wisconsin voters, according to a September Marquette Law School Poll<\/a>. Health insurance was the third highest ranking issue among voters, and outranked data centers, abortion, schools or crime.<\/p>\n Candidates running for Wisconsin governor, Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany and Democratic Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, both say they want to lower healthcare costs and make care more accessible. But they\u2019re offering different views on how to do that.<\/p>\n Wisconsin hospital prices among highest in nation as ACA coverage declines<\/p>\n From 2000 to 2025, the cost of many essential goods and services rose faster than median incomes<\/a> in Wisconsin, according to a recent report from Forward Analytics<\/a>, the research arm of the Wisconsin Counties Association.\u00a0<\/p>\n The biggest increase among essential costs came from hospital services, which increased by 274 percent, the report found. Median household incomes in Wisconsin increased by an estimated 90 percent over the same period.<\/p>\n Dan Sacks, a professor of risk and insurance at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business, said healthcare, in general, is expensive \u2014 accounting for around 18 percent of the nation\u2019s gross domestic product<\/a>.<\/p>\n He said Wisconsin\u2019s hospital prices are among the highest in the nation, as the healthcare sector has become \u201cdominated by a relatively small number of very important health systems.\u201d<\/p>\n He said those who buy insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace are seeing higher costs after pandemic-era subsidies ended at the start of the year. He said the subsidies helped keep ACA premiums down.<\/p>\n Sacks said tens of thousands fewer Wisconsinites<\/a> enrolled in ACA coverage this year than last year, and people are generally \u201cpaying more out of pocket for their healthcare.\u201d<\/p>\n Beyond the ACA marketplace, Medicaid work requirements included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act are set to begin at the start of 2027, which would affect those enrolled in BadgerCare, Sacks said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIn Wisconsin, the work requirements will apply only to childless adult BadgerCare members,\u201d Sacks said.<\/p>\n Crowley, Tiffany differ on the role government should play<\/p>\n While both candidates say they want to lower healthcare costs and expand access to care, Tiffany and Crowley differ on the role government should play in achieving those goals.<\/p>\n Crowley\u2019s healthcare proposal<\/a> calls for opening up BadgerCare enrollment to any household that wants it, making premiums based on income and giving targeted subsidies to small businesses, single parents, college students, farmers and gig workers.<\/p>\n The plan also proposes making BadgerCare comprehensive to include medical, dental, vision and mental health care.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s about creating BadgerCare as an alternative to for-profit insurance, giving our veterans, our entrepreneurs, our students, our childcare workers, anybody, the ability to pay into a system that\u2019s going to be cheaper and is going to work well for them, so they don\u2019t fall through the cracks,\u201d Crowley told WPR.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Tiffany\u2019s healthcare proposal<\/a> calls for requiring hospitals and insurance companies to provide upfront prices to patients, allowing primary care patients to pay their doctor directly through a subscription model and allowing the Wisconsin Farm Bureau to offer health plans to members.<\/p>\n The plan also calls for increased oversight of pharmacy benefit managers, which he says contribute to higher prescription drug costs.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re going to create a system that makes healthcare more affordable in Wisconsin and brings greater resources to the table to make sure that we have top-notch healthcare,\u201d Tiffany said. \u201cWe are going to make sure that all healthcare providers provide maximum transparency.\u201d<\/p>\n Crowley has been critical of Tiffany for his vote in favor of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and its Medicaid spending cuts. Tiffany has defended the bill for providing funding for rural healthcare<\/a> and said he supported a federal rule that could bring additional Medicaid funding<\/a> to the state.<\/p>\n Wisconsin Public Radio, \u00a9 Copyright 2026, Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System and Wisconsin Educational Communications Board.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Adam Paul, who owns Vintage Rose Bakery & Sandwich Shop in west De Pere with his wife, says…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":868436,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,253],"class_list":["post-868435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=868435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868435\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/868436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=868435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=868435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=868435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}