Healthcare, small business advocates urge reversing healthcare cuts, boost Democrats

Healthcare and small business advocates crossed Wisconsin Wednesday to call on the federal government to reverse policies they said were thwarting healthcare access and support Democrats running for Congress and other offices in the Nov. 3 election.

Protect Our Care is sending a bus across Wisconsin and other Midwestern states to call attention to the importance of healthcare in this year’s election, said Joe Zepecki, Wisconsin director for the advocacy group. Main Street Action, representing small business owners, has joined the campaign. In Wisconsin it includes stops to highlight Democratic congressional candidates in the 1st and 3rd Congressional Districts.

At a stop in Madison, several speakers criticized Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who is running for governor, particularly for his vote in favor of the 2025 “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” that included cuts estimated at nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid over the next 10 years while making tax cuts that heavily favored the wealthy.

While that law was enacted, Congressional Republicans several times rejected attempts to extend enhanced subsidies for health insurance purchased at the federal healthcare marketplace under the Affordable Care Act.

Zepecki said advocates have three demands: restoring the enhanced ACA premium subsidies to lower the cost of health insurance; reversing the Medicaid cuts in the 2025 law; and passing legislation that would expand the authorization for Medicare to negotiate prices with drug companies.

Kyle LaFond, the owner of a manufacturing company and a member of Main Street Alliance, said his ACA coverage now costs him $2,600 more per year. But for other families who include people with disabilities or who are otherwise vulnerable, “these costs are devastating,” LaFond said.

“We can’t be complacent,” he said. “None of this should be considered normal. Healthcare is a fundamental human right.”

Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, who is running for reelection this year, recalled that when he ran for office in 2018, Wisconsin was among a group of states that joined a lawsuit to overturn the 2011 Affordable Care Act. Kaul’s predecessor as attorney general, Republican Brad Schimel, had signed on to the lawsuit on behalf of the state.

“One of the issues in our race was whether Wisconsin should be part of that suit,” said Kaul, a Democrat. After Kaul was elected, he withdrew Wisconsin from the lawsuit, which subsequently lost at the U.S. Supreme Court.

While that attack on affordable health insurance coverage failed, in the current administration of President Donald Trump “access to affordable healthcare remains under attack,” Kaul said.

The 2025 bill that cut Medicaid is just one example, he said. “But beyond that, the Trump administration has acted on its own without Congress to unilaterally make cuts designed to undermine access to affordable health insurance coverage or to make access to quality care less available,” Kaul added — citing the administration’s retreat from an evidence-based childhood vaccine schedule, cuts in funding for school mental health and public health and cuts to medical research.

Joining attorneys general in other states — all Democrats — Wisconsin has sued to block such actions and have won “significant victories,” he said, including the preservation of $200 million in public health funding for Wisconsin that had been threatened.