MADISON, Wis. – Last year, Congressman Tom Tiffany voted to make health care more expensive for hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites who get care through the Affordable Care Act and cut Medicaid to pay for tax cuts for billionaires. Now, as a candidate for governor, Congressman Tiffany is proposing to change state law to allow a group whose PAC is supporting his election sell “health benefit coverage” exempt from critical consumer protections and insurance regulations.
“Congressman Tiffany voted to make health insurance more expensive and less accessible for hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites,” commented A Better Wisconsin Together spokesperson Mike Browne. “And now he’s trying to sell a pseudo-insurance scheme run by supporters of his campaign as a fix.”
According to Tiffany’s gubernatorial campaign website and public statements, he supports “allowing the Wisconsin Farm Bureau to offer health plans to its members.” The political arm of the Wisconsin Farm Bureau, Volunteers for Agriculture, announced their endorsement of Tiffany’s gubernatorial campaign in June of this year and followed up with a $10,000 PAC contribution in August.
A version of the scheme being promoted by MAGA Congressman Tiffany was introduced as a bill in the 2025-26 state legislative session and was opposed by a broad coalition of health care advocates and roundly denounced at a public hearing. Registering formal opposition were the American Cancer Society, American Diabetes Association, American Heart Association, American Lung Association in Wisconsin, Wisconsin Farmers Union, and others.
Among the serious pitfalls of this proposed pseudo-health care insurance is that it would be exempted from consumer protections in federal law and therefore allow people to be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions or women to be charged more than men for the same coverage. The product would also not be required to cover other important health care like cancer screenings, routine immunizations, and high blood pressure and diabetes screenings.
Consumers with complaints would also be left in the lurch because the Wisconsin Office of the Commissioner of Insurance would have no oversight of the product or power to help.
The lead state Senate author of the bill even admitted in his testimony that, “Under the proposed legislation, Farm Bureau plans would be exempt from insurance regulations …” and that they, “… wouldn’t qualify as traditional healthcare coverage …”
