Scott Walker's ruthless agenda to slash government spending at the expense of those who need help was largely hidden during his campaign for governor.
Although he said for a year he wanted to put time limits on BadgerCare Plus, for example, which could mean kicking 150,000 people off the program, when it became news he changed course and denied that was his plan.
Now that he's won, of course, everything is fair game. You can bet BadgerCare is back on the cutting board.
But SeniorCare, not discussed during the campaign, made be the top priority for cuts or elimination.
Walker's appointment of Dennis Smith as secretary of the Dept. of Health Services should have seniors and their families very concerned. Smith was the Medicaid chief under President George W. Bush, and was the lead person in the federal effort to kill Wisconsin's SeniorCare program.
In fact, SeniorCare was dead until Sen. Herb Kohl resuscitated it by getting an amendment passed as part of a spending bill to fund the war in Iraq -- the kind of spending the Bush administration preferred. (It's all about priorities.)
More than 100,000 Wisconsin seniors are enrolled in SeniorCare, which offers prescription drug coverage through it instead of Medicare Part D.
With the point person for killing SeniorCare to be the top health official in Wisconsin, don't be at all surprised if the move to kill SeniorCare now comes from the Walker administration and not the feds. The Obama administration has embraced the program, by the way.