From 1972 - 1983, WHA dealt with a variety of political and policy pressures related to hospital costs and various proposals to address the issue. Events included the creation of a voluntary Rate Review Program; attempts by the Wisconsin Legislature to make rate setting mandatory; the addition of the State of Wisconsin as a partner in the Rate Review Program; negotiation of a major revision of Rate Review to strengthen it; initial opposition, then support by the Wisconsin Hospital Association for the revised program; and finally, establishment of the Wisconsin Hospital Rate-Setting Commission.
The Commission became effective January 1, 1985. It represented yet another approach to a decade-long effort in Wisconsin to address hospital costs.
The story is a complex one that encompasses a variety of initiatives and events. This
booklet gives a development-by-development description of how WHA navigated the times and how the Wisconsin Hospital Rate-Setting Commission came to be.
Many health care issues develop over years, not months – and that was certainly the case with the Hospital Rate-Setting Commission. With the election of Governor Tommy G. Thompson in 1986, WHA had the opportunity to work with a new administration more philosophically inclined to support a non-regulatory approach to containing health care costs. With WHA’s strong support (including this
folder of information created by WHA in 1986 to make the case of allowing the HRSC to sunset in 1987), the Hospital Rate-Setting Commission sunset on June 30, 1987. A health care data mandate was enacted in its place to frame a less regulated, more competitive health care industry.
You can read more about this saga in the
1986 WHA Annual Report from WHA Chair Joe Neidenbach, including comments from Governor Thompson and WHA Chair-Elect Ed Howe.