Health care savings–at what cost?

A recent piece in the Huffington Post profiled a young man named Greg Hartman. While Hartman was working his way through college in Manitowoc, WI, he learned that a close friend had been infected with hepatitis C. Hartman thought about getting tested as himself, but with his restaurant job only pulling in about $150 a week, he couldn’t afford the $300 for testing. Instead, he went to the University of Wisconsin’s campus health center and applied for BadgerCare, Wisconsin’s Medicaid-funded family planning program, which reimburses low-income individuals for preventative reproductive health needs, such as STI testing and birth control. Hartman was then able to get tested for both hepatitis C and HIV, and tested positive for the former. Without affordable medical coverage like BadgerCare, Hartman notes, he wouldn’t have bothered to get tested.