6 Comments - Cassandra - Thursday, Aug 24, 06 @ 9:49 am: These are the questions which need to be asked about Allkids on a continuing basis: What is the status of the Medicaid reform which was supposed to pay for all this. Have the feds approved it? How many of the 66,000 who have signed up were already eligible for Kidcare, the precursor program directed at low income parents. How many were already insured. This may be difficult to determine, as one assumes the state agency managing the application process has little incentive to check the veracity of applications. How many were legal residents of Illinois. This may be difficult ascertain since the application process does not require verification of immigration status and the instructions I read said that the person taking the application should only verify residence (in Illinois)if they suspected fraud. Given the pressure for enrollment, I doubt there will be many suspicions. And residents of surrounding states will no doubt take advantage of this once word gets around that nobody will be checking. What happens when the parents stop paying. One suspects this program will be poorly managed like all Blago state programs and nothing will happen, the state-paid insurance will simply be free. My point here is not that helpless little children should go without insurance. My point is that with one million or so Illinois adults unable to get health insurance they can afford, because of pre-existing conditions and/or cost, Allkids simply does not address the real problem. Illinois needs guaranteed access and community rating of health insurance costs for all Illinois residents. Instead of managing the state’s current Medicaid dollars to achieve this, Blago has opted for the flashy Allkids program which provides expensive health insurance to the already-insured middle class and to illegals and non-residents in addition to the few children who really are uninsured. Another example of extremely poor fiscal management in addition to political grandstanding. I will acknowledge that JBT hasn’t dealt with this either. Are she and Blago unable to read? Reasonably priced health insurance or the lack thereof comes up across the country as a major issue for taxpayers, comparable to the Iraq war, gas prices, and other similar concerns. Yet our elected officials, or wannabees, ignore this even in blue Illinois. - DeepFriedOnAStick - Thursday, Aug 24, 06 @ 11:38 am: No, the switch to managed care hasn’t been approved by the feds. They have not even applied for the waiver! Only a handful of the 66,000 were not eligible for Medicaid. - Anon - Thursday, Aug 24, 06 @ 12:40 pm: Don’t worry, I am sure that Guv Blago’s AllCare insurance for everyone will be proposed about 2 weeks before the election to didtract from any legal problems the administration is dealing with! - Bill - Thursday, Aug 24, 06 @ 12:49 pm: AllCare…..I like it …let’s go for it….we can pay for it by selling the new Chicago casino! - Garp - Thursday, Aug 24, 06 @ 4:10 pm: Is anyone else sick of Bruce Dumont and his pet project “The Museum of Washed Up and Lame Entertainers?” How many tributes to Bozo Circus does there need to be? All kidding aside, why did he go to Blago whose word is straw. Daley can raise hundreds of millions for his pet projects at the drop of a hat. Maybe Dumont should have picked up that hat and came to Daley with it in hand. He would have saved himself a lot of aggravation. - NW burbs - Thursday, Aug 24, 06 @ 4:18 pm: Roskam focuses on tax cuts Morning Shorts, Thursday, Aug 24, 2006 Roskam defends federal pork support (Late) morning shorts, Tuesday, Aug 22, 2006 Flip… …Flop — Flip… …Flip I don’t want my kids (ages 3 and 1) paying off the Republicans’ debt to Red China their whole lives. They deserve better than Roskam’s More Debt to Communist China Plan. Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.