Can I talk to you about health reform, I asked twenty-eight-year-old Michelle Zywicki, who was working at a computer in the Waukesha public library. She and her husband have so little income that they can’t afford the cable charges for Internet access. “Nobody wants to talk about health reform because they are so angry,” she practically screamed at me. Zywicki was one of those angry people. You know what health reform means to me? I can’t get on BadgerCare Plus, she said.

She had heard that she could get insurance through a state Medicaid program for uninsured, childless adults with very low incomes. So she and her husband, a construction worker who is now disabled and recovering from shoulder surgery, applied about a year ago. “We got a letter saying there was a waiting list of 7000,” she told me. At about the same time, the state stopped enrolling new applicants. It didn’t have the funds to cover all those who needed the coverage. “I’ve given up hope on it,” Zywicki told me.

Zywicki may be right to forget about it. The day I chatted with her, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ran an ominous story about the state seeking $675 million more to fund health programs, including BadgerCare Plus, one of Wisconsin’s fastest-growing services. Both gubernatorial candidates say they want to find savings in the program. Republican Scott Walker hopes to limit the number of people BadgerCare Plus can serve by making it harder to qualify. Democrat Tom Barrett wants to trim $200 million from the program by insisting that participants become more cost conscious.

Zywicki is already all too aware of the costs of medical care. She and her husband are struggling to pay down a $15,000 hospital bill for his shoulder surgery. It’s tough, considering that she works only twenty hours a week at Dollar General and can’t find a full-time job that pays more. She brings home about $130 each week after taxes, with $90 going to pay the rent. The family gets $367 worth of food stamps every month. When she calmed down about BadgerCare Plus, she was able to talk about health reform. That subject made her almost as angry.

“So they will fine low income families for not being able to pay for crap policies,” she said. That made no sense to her. “What’s more important, a roof over my head or health insurance? I’ll take a roof over my head any day. Why make a person more in debt than they are already. It’s all screwy.” When I told her she would probably qualify for subsidies to help pay for the insurance, she said: “Why hasn’t anyone told me that?”

Russell Mueller, who had recently retired and was working at a model railroad shop in Green Bay, had a lot to say about health reform. He didn’t like it, but he wasn’t going to hold that against Democratic senator Russ Feingold. He had other gripes about him. What bothered him most was that, as he understood it, insurers could not sell across state lines to bring down the price of coverage. When I explained that in a few years states would be able to form compacts and allow such cross-border sales, he insisted that Congress did not deal with the issue. Nor had it dealt with tort reform, in his opinion. “I would have liked to see drastic tort reform,” he said. “When you have a doctor who pays in insurance premiums what I make in ten years, something is wrong.”