“Some governors chose not to take the [Medicaid] expansion. Some chose to take it,” he said. “I wanted to find a way to reduce the number of people who were uninsured and still do something in a way that did not put my taxpayers on the hook.”

“Once this is up and going, … for the first time in our state’s history, everyone in poverty will be covered,” he added.

Critics see political calculation. It would have been smarter, simpler and better for the state’s bottom line, they say, to just take the big payment the feds were offering for expansion.

“You don’t turn away $4 billion in federal funding and try to do it in a way that’s more complicated, more expensive and hurts more people unless you’re trying to stake a new path, a new direction,” said Robert Peterson, executive director of ABC for Health, a Wisconsin-based health care advocacy group. “The political motivation behind those moves is crystal clear. It makes no moral sense. The only sense it makes is political sense.”