Wisconsin
Assisted living industry works to provide quality care. Small number highlighted in report.
In 2023 over 72% of assisted living facilities in Wisconsin received zero complaints
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There’s no question that Wisconsin’s aging population will present challenges in the healthcare industry in the coming years, including the state’s assisted living industry, which is experiencing a steady increase in seniors utilizing services at more than 4,000 facilities throughout the state.
According to the Wisconsin’s Department of Health Services, “The state’s population aged 65 and older is expected to grow by 640,000, or 72%, between 2015 and 2040, which is six times higher than the projected overall Wisconsin population growth of 12%.”
Many of those seniors can expect to find quality care in assisted living facilities throughout Wisconsin, which are already serving well over 40,000 individuals with very diverse needs, ranging from relatively independent seniors to those experiencing advanced stages of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, developmental and physical disabilities. It’s an important industry and one that is highly regulated.
Journal Sentinel series focused on small percentage of facilities
Providing care to such a vulnerable population warrants government oversight and understandably draws attention from the media and public at-large. A recent series of stories published by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel focused on challenges facing a small percentage of assisted living facilities in Wisconsin, highlighting some unfortunate and tragic circumstances involving residents.
To be sure, our industry is committed to providing safe and quality care to its residents, and while those situations highlighted in the Journal Sentinel’s coverage should not be downplayed, they are also in the minority. In 2023 over 72% of facilities received zero complaints. And, of the complaints received, over half were unsubstantiated.
Exceptional investigation on assisted living care forces uncomfortable conversations
Anyone interested in learning more about Wisconsin’s assisted living industry can access the most recent report from the Department of Health Services Division of Quality Assurance titled the “State of Assisted Living,” it reviews the 4,005 assisted living providers in Wisconsin. Our state has a two-pronged regulatory approach that incorporates unannounced survey visits and investigating complaints.
In short, the vast majority of Wisconsin’s assisted living providers are doing a tremendous job of providing quality care and services.
It is also important to clarify that assisted living facilities are meant to be an individual’s home that can help provide activities of daily living. Admission into an assisted living facility requires an assessment that involves input from the resident (or legally authorized individual), and the resident’s physician. The state holds providers accountable to that assessment.
The state can grant waivers to allow for additional hours of nursing/specialized care, but approval is on a case-by-case basis. The assessment dictates what and how care services will be provided and staffed. As in other healthcare facilities, failure to follow through would lead to regulatory action from DQA.
Medicaid funding is top challenge for assisted living facilities
The top challenges facing assisted living today are competing in the labor market for quality caregivers and a woefully underfunded state Medicaid long-term care program, i.e., Family Care. Further, the need for assisted living will grow as Wisconsin’s population continues to age.
An increasing number of seniors are having to rely on Family Care to obtain their long-term care services. Family Care pays much less than the actual cost of providing care – a situation that puts providers at a further disadvantage of being able to offer competitive wages and benefits compared with the service and light industry sectors. For example, the Family Care program has assumed caregiver wages are $13.02 per hour wherein reality, caregiver wages average $17 per hour.
The Family Care program was not designed to quickly react to economic market fluctuations compared with other industries that can simply raise prices to offset higher costs. Therefore, it is impossible for assisted living providers to compete with other industries and companies such as warehousing, restaurants, retail, gas/convenience stores, etc. when hiring workers.
Finding hope while friends faced loss. We feared for dad’s life after selling our dairy herd.
The state needs to continue instituting much needed changes to its Medicaid Family Care program to recognize actual costs, such as caregiver wages and inflation on goodsservices. On Aug. 1, Gov. Tony Evers directed DHS to invest $258 million into the Family Care program. The funding will raise caregiver wage assumptions from $13.02 to $15.75 per hour. This investment is desperately needed and will be a lifeline to assisted living providers who are struggling to make ends meet – and in particular, avoid assisted living facilities from shutting down or exiting the Family Care program.
Overall, assisted living facilities are committed to providing outstanding quality and compassionate care required to meet the ever-changing needs of Wisconsin’s frail elderly and disabled citizens. While the state’s recent investment in Family Care is greatly needed and appreciated, more work will need to be done to support the growing care and living needs of Wisconsin’s aging population.
Michael S. Pochowski is president and CEO of the Wisconsin Assisted Living Association.
Wisconsin
Wisconsin Weekend: Pride bar crawl, Father’s Day deals, and more
MILWAUKEE — Milwaukee has no shortage of ways to celebrate this weekend, from a Pride bar crawl to Father’s Day deals around the city and Juneteenth celebrations.
Summerfest and Northcott Neighborhood House are hosting a Juneteenth celebration filled with music and culture at the Summerfest grounds.
Watch: Kidd O’Shea breaks down this weekend’s events:
Wisconsin Weekend in a Minute: June 19-21
The event kicks off right after the traditional Juneteenth Day Festival wraps up.
Pride Bar Crawl
The 9th annual Pride Bar Crawl kicks off Saturday at 4 p.m. at Walker’s Pint.
Tickets include drinks and access to exclusive specials at partner bars. Twenty percent of proceeds will benefit the Milwaukee LGBT Community Center.
The crawl wraps up with an after-party and drag show at La Cage Nightclub.
Father’s Day
On Sunday, The Motor Restaurant at the Harley-Davidson Museum is offering a free beer for dad when purchased with a meal, along with free admission to the museum. Reservations are highly encouraged.
Families can also take dad to the Milwaukee County Zoo, where all fathers receive free admission on Sunday.
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Wisconsin
These Wisconsin swing voters say Trump’s war in Iran wasn’t worth it
Vessels are anchored along the Strait of Hormuz.
Amirhossein Khorgooei/ISNA/AFP via Getty Images
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Amirhossein Khorgooei/ISNA/AFP via Getty Images
The war in Iran was a costly blunder, according to swing voters in the battleground state of Wisconsin.
NPR observed two online focus groups on Tuesday featuring voters who supported Joe Biden in 2020 and then Donald Trump in 2024.
President Trump had just announced a framework agreement to end the war, which he signed on Wednesday.
Yet among the focus groups’ 13 participants, no one said they thought the conflict with Iran was “worth it,” and nine said they felt that the U.S. is coming out of this conflict weaker than before.
Corey M., a 33-year-old independent voter, said he is concerned that the U.S. expended “so much financially and so much of our arsenal,” with little to show for it. (All participants agreed to be part of the focus groups on the condition that they be identified by their first name and last initial only.)
“We essentially got nothing out of it,” he said. “It’s hurt our economy and increased expenses for the everyday American, and it accomplished the square root of nothing.”
Focus groups are not scientifically significant like polling. But they provide insight into how Americans are thinking about what they see in the news.

These focus groups — made up of 10 self-described independents, two Democrats and one Republican — were conducted by messaging and market research firms Engagious and Sago as part of the Swing Voter Project. NPR is a partner on the project.
Rich Thau, president of Engagious, moderated the focus groups. He has been asking voters in key states about this conflict since March. And he said voters have been consistent.
“They were never on board,” Thau said. “Not the beginning. Not in the middle. And as we just learned, not at the end either, judging from what we heard from Wisconsin swing voters.”
Sam M., a 30-year-old independent, said from what he read about the deal, it wasn’t leaving the U.S. in a better position than before the war. In fact, he said he thought the Iran nuclear deal brokered by the Obama administration — which Trump backed out of — was a better deal for the United States.
Anger over high gas prices
For most voters, though, their biggest concern has remained the high gas prices that are a consequence of the war.
Tammy S., a 53-year-old independent voter, said Americans have been unfairly caught in the middle.
“I just don’t think the way that everybody else had to suffer through the tantrums of these two playing tug-of-war — I just don’t think that it was fair to the American people,” she said. “I don’t think that anybody was a real winner here.”

Several voters said they’ve felt squeezed by costs and as a result have given up something that had been a regular part of their life. They’ve cut vacations and eating out or are getting their hair done less often.
“I’ve given up all my extracurricular hobbies … paddleboarding, yoga,” said Jaylyn M., a 27-year-old who identifies as a Republican. “And then a lot of my subscriptions I’ve cut out, along with my daily coffee, which is minor, but all things that I’ve had to give up to make ends meet.”
“I had to raise all my deductibles on everything — my car insurance, my health insurance — to lower my premiums, so that I can continue to make it,” added Robyn T., a 63-year-old independent.
Trump owns the economic problems
The latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll, out Thursday, finds that only a third of Americans approve of how Trump is handling the economy.
In the focus groups, nine of the 13 voters said they are more anxious about the economy than they were before Trump took office last year. And all but one voter said that “President Trump himself is responsible for those higher prices” because of the war.
“And 10 said he’s out of touch with their economic concerns,” Thau told NPR. “So for them, there’s a clear disconnect between how the president’s operating on the economy and what their needs are.”
And heading into what could be some tough midterm elections for Republicans, voters are really frustrated that Trump isn’t delivering a better economy by now.
“It seems to me, like, pick your issue, and things are not going well for him,” said Josh K., a 29-year-old independent voter. “I mean, we got this stupid war in Iran, and it turns out that we actually aren’t getting anything out of it. I mean, all we got was $4 gas. I mean, pick your issue — the economy, things are more expensive.”
Wisconsin
President of Wisconsin’s largest mosque released from ICE custody
A federal judge has ordered the release of the president of Wisconsin’s largest mosque, after finding that immigration officials probably detained him in retaliation against his public advocacy for Palestinian rights, suppressing his first amendment rights in the process.
The US district judge James Patrick Hanlon’s order on Thursday marked a sharp rebuke against Trump officials, including the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who had tried to paint Salah Sarsour as a national security threat.
“Salah Sarsour, who has lived in this country for more than three decades and served as a core pillar in his community without any issues, should never have been detained in the first place,” his legal team wrote in a statement. “While we continue to fight these baseless claims in court, today is about celebrating a family being reunited. It is also a sober reminder that, if the government can target Mr Sarsour, everyone’s free speech rights are at risk.”
Sarsour describes himself as a stateless Palestinian, according to the order. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) says that he is a Jordanian citizen. He has lived in the United States for more than three decades, becoming a legal permanent resident in 1998. Immigration officials approved Sarsour’s citizenship application decades ago, though he did not naturalize.
Sarsour has garnered public attention as a champion for Palestinian rights, and serves as a board member of an advocacy group called American Muslims for Palestine.
But Rubio personally signed off on a memo to the DHS last year describing Sarsour as deportable despite his green card, because “his actions undermine US foreign policy to combat antisemitism around the world”. The memo, cited in Hanlon’s order, accuses Sarsour’s group of being “found to have been involved in activities providing funds to Hamas”.
A group of plainclothes ICE officers from at least 10 unmarked vehicles swarmed Sarsour on 30 March of this year, arresting him and putting him in deportation proceedings. ICE ultimately detained him in Clay county jail in Indiana.
Sarsour lost 30lb while detained, the order says. His lawyers told the court that he was “at constant risk of developing serious complications from diabetes given that the medical staff only checks his blood-sugar levels once a month”. Tightly controlling diabetes typically requires multiple glucose checks daily.
Hanlon’s order says that homeland security officials and Rubio probably trampled on Sarsour’s first amendment right to free speech and appeared to have arrested him in retaliation for his Palestinian rights advocacy.
The order cited a New York Times story and the website for the Heritage Foundation, the conservative thinktank that dreamed up Project 2025,
The Heritage Foundation presented the White House with the idea to present prominent foreign-born Muslims and Palestinian rights leaders as terrorists in order to sue them, deport them or pressure employers to fire them, the order says, citing reporting from the Times and Heritage’s own website. Sarsour was probably among the targets of that campaign, the order says.
The federal government, through its lawyers, contended that Sarsour should be deported based on two convictions from more than three decades ago in Israel – one for throwing a molotov cocktail and the other for attempting to store weapons and ammunition.
Sarsour denies having committed those crimes.
But Hanlon viewed those crimes as a non-issue for justifying his incarceration, noting that the federal government knew about them since the 1990s and approved his legal permanent residency and his citizenship application anyway.
Sarsour’s speech on Palestinian rights “is core political speech and squarely within the scope of the First Amendment”, the order says. “Mr Sarsour has submitted evidence allowing a reasonable inference that his protected speech was ‘at least a motivating factor’ in Respondents’ decision to detain him.”
A spokesperson for homeland security described Sarsour as a “terrorist”, citing the convictions from his youth in Israel.
Government lawyers had argued that Sarsour did not have the same first amendment rights as US citizens. If he were released, they said, he should have to pay a $25,000 bond, wear an ankle monitor, check in routinely with ICE and remain confined to his house.
Instead, Hanlon ordered his release on personal recognizance, meaning that Sarsour does not have to pay a cash bond to compel him to show up in court again. The order, however, requires him to remain in the state of Wisconsin.
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