The bottom line here is that Quinn has given lawmakers a template to do what he repeatedly has told them needs to be done. He’s given them plenty of time to debate this, to adjust, to add their own proposals before this legislative session’s scheduled conclusion May 31. All good.
The rendezvous with reality starts now. The Legislature is notorious for pushing off tough decisions to another day, another year, another decade. That can’t happen this time. “If we don’t make those changes, we won’t have a system at all,” Quinn said Thursday. He’s right.
So let’s get to it. Lawmakers, if you don’t like the governor’s solutions, let’s hear yours. Only one thing can’t change: The number is $2.7 billion.
“We commend Gov. Quinn for stepping forward in a timely fashion with a plan to save the Medicaid program — a plan that is reasonable, given the magnitude of the crisis,” says federation President Laurence Msall in an email. “We call on the General Assembly to adopt this plan or identify other comparable combinations of program cuts that are reasonable.”
* Quinn has said that anything short of that $2.7 billion goal will have to come out of other state programs. And since legislators have already cut Quinn’s proposed budget spending by $700 million, that means they’ll have to find more than $1.1 billion in cuts to Quinn’s introduced budget if they abandon the cigarette tax idea and don’t make up for the lost cash, for instance (the cig tax would raise about $336 million, which is doubled by the federal Medicaid match, so state spending would have to be cut by a like amount to make up for that approximately $700 million from the cig tax hike). No provider cuts means either $700 million in additional Medicaid service cuts or another $350 million in state budget cuts. The Republicans, however, are calling Quinn’s bluff…
But leading Republicans on the issue — Rep. Patti Bellock, R-Hinsdale, and Sen. Dale Righter, R-Mattoon — said they don’t believe Quinn will follow through on his threat of massive cuts.
* Polls consistently show that tax hikes on cigarettes are popular with a strong majority of Illinoisans. But the Republicans say they want Medicaid expenditure cuts instead…
The top Republicans in the Illinois Legislature say they won’t go along with Gov. Pat Quinn’s call for higher cigarette taxes to help the state’s struggling Medicaid program.
House Minority Leader Tom Cross and Senate Minority Leader Christine Radogno oppose “any tax increase to solve our Medicaid crisis.”
They noted that the Democratic governor said in his budget address that the state needs to reduce Medicaid expenditures and didn’t mention a tax increase. Cross and Radogno said they’ll hold Quinn to his word.
The Repubs don’t want cuts to providers, so they want the greatest pain to fall mainly on current recipients. That’s a political non-starter because there’s no way that Democratic lawmakers can agree to it. And the House Democrats clearly want a bipartisan proposal, so the cig tax hike might very well be dead if the Republican remain opposed…
House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, will keep working with the governor, but finding a solution will require a “bipartisan coalition to get it all done,” said Steve Brown, the speaker’s spokesman.
Asked about the cigarette tax increase, Brown said, “I think anybody would say that you’re going to need a lot of other pieces of the puzzle to come together before you find a coalition to pass a revenue increase.”
* But Rep. Bellock is optimistic that a tax-free solution can be found…
Republicans on the working group said more cuts should be made.
Rep. Patricia Bellock, R-Hinsdale, said a number of cost-savings reforms passed by lawmakers last year still haven’t been implemented.
“We feel if we can get all of these reforms done and continue on a few major ones, we can get to $2.7 billion without increasing a tax on anybody,” Bellock said. “If we have a couple of more weeks to work on this, we think we can get to the $2.7 billion.”
* Courtesy of BlueRoomStream.com, here’s Gov. Pat Quinn’s full press conference on Medicaid…
* And here’s the Republican press conference on Medicaid…
Illinois already has the lowest reimbursement rate in the region. In many cases, they don’t even cover the actual cost to provide services.
The program reimburses doctors so poorly that many simply cannot afford to take more Medicaid patients. This leaves most Medicaid patients competing with each other for fewer and fewer doctors willing to see them. In Chicago, for example, children with throat cancer have only a one-in-three chance of seeing a specialist if they’re enrolled in Medicaid. For those with juvenile diabetes or epilepsy, the odds of seeing a specialist are one-in-two. And even when they can get an appointment, they have to wait months just to see the doctor. Cutting those rates even further doesn’t solve the problem. It just leaves the poorest and most vulnerable with even fewer options to receive quality care.
* The Illinois Hospital Association’s reaction to Gov. Pat Quinn’s Medicaid proposal yesterday is worth reading in full…
The Illinois Hospital Association (IHA) and the hospital community are deeply concerned about the Governor’s Medicaid proposal calling for a major rate cut to hospitals of about $350 million or approximately 8 percent. This proposed rate cut is in addition to about $150 million in other proposed reductions directly targeted at hospitals.
While we commend the Governor for taking some positive steps – including incorporating several of IHA’s savings alternatives – the proposal is still too drastic and too rash to impose on the state’s already fragile health care system. Simply engaging in a math exercise to fill a budget gap is the wrong approach that will hurt patients.
A reduction of this magnitude will jeopardize patients’ access to quality health care, cause irreparable harm to the Medicaid program and the health care system, and undermine hospitals in their critical roles as health care providers and major job creators. About one-third of Illinois hospitals are now losing money, and Illinois currently ranks 44th in the U.S. in per beneficiary Medicaid spending. Under the Governor’s proposed rate cut, many hospitals will be forced to reduce or eliminate key services or lay off staff – or both – and some hospitals may close.
The hospital community recognizes that the state’s budget challenges are significant. We want to partner with the Governor and the General Assembly on workable solutions that will help address those challenges. To that end, IHA and the hospital community have offered a series of alternatives to generate substantial cost savings and new revenues for the Medicaid program, totaling as much as $1.4 billion. (See IHA’s alternatives at: http://tinyurl.com/6t8doaw)
We urge the General Assembly to consider several alternatives that are either excluded from or undervalued in the Governor’s proposal in order to avoid blunt rate cuts, including:
· Maximizing revenues – both federal and other revenues – including enhancing the Hospital Assessment Program;
· Improving verification of eligibility for new and current beneficiaries; and
· Increasing provider based care coordination by enhancing the current Primary Care Case Management Program (which has saved the Medicaid program than $400 million since 2007).
IHA and the hospital community are firmly committed to working with the General Assembly on meaningful solutions – in a multi-year approach – to address the state’s budget challenges while transforming the Medicaid program to be sustainable and cost effective for the people of Illinois.
* Statement from Health Care Council of Illinois Executive Director Pat Comstock…
Our initial review of the governor’s proposal suggests there is a $237 million cut for nursing homes, an enormous amount. Such a cut would be devastating for resident care at nursing homes throughout the state. If that dollar amount proves to be accurate, it would decimate the money we generated by taxing ourselves to pay for recent safety reforms.
Illinois Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka suffered a minor fracture of her left hip after a speech this week, but she’s already had minor surgery and was “up and about,” a spokesman said Thursday.
Topinka, 68, had just finished a speech to the Illinois Public Health Association’s annual meeting at a downtown Springfield hotel Wednesday. When she was getting into an elevator, she fell and landed on her left hip, said Brad Hahn, her spokesman.
She went to Memorial Medical Center and had minor surgery that involved putting a couple of pins in her hip Wednesday night, Hahn said.
She could be out of the hospital by today. But she also has a big knot on her head from her fall.
* I cannot believe I missed this poll from the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute last month. 48.8 percent of southern Illinoisans said Cook County should be separated from Illinois, while 39 percent were opposed…
There has been a proposal to have Cook County separated from the rest of Illinois and to form its own state. Would you strongly favor, favor, oppose, or strongly oppose this proposal?
And what do you think about government spending in your area of the state? In terms of its share of state spending, do you think your part of the state gets more than its fair share, about the right amount, or less than its fair share of state spending?
More than its fair share 3.3%
About the right amount 13.3%
Less than its fair share 79.3%
Donʼt know 4.3%
Charles Leonard, a visiting professor at the Institute who supervised the poll, said, “This notion that downstate Illinois somehow does not belong with Cook County is consistent with the results of our 2010 Southern Illinois poll, in which large numbers of respondents also expressed antipathy toward Chicago.”
The poll also showed voters in the Southern Illinois region do not believe they are getting their fair share of state government spending. Almost eight in 10 (79 percent) said Southern Illinois gets “less than its fair share,” while only 3 percent said the region gets “more than our fair share.” About one in eight (13 percent) said the area gets “about the right amount.”
John Jackson, a visiting professor at the Institute and one of the authors of the poll, said: “Given that many political leaders and others constantly complain about Chicago, and about how badly Southern Illinois is treated by the state, and that significant portions of the media in Southern Illinois routinely echo that complaint, the belief in a downtrodden Southern Illinois has become a part of the conventional wisdom in this region.
“The belief is so embedded in the political culture that it undoubtedly is a root cause of the dominant attitude toward Cook County reflected in this question,” Jackson continued.
Which of these statements comes closer to your own views – even if neither is exactly right?
Most rich people today are wealthy mainly because of their own hard work, ambition, or education. 31.3%
Most rich people today are wealthy mainly because they know the right people or were born into a wealthy family. 51.5%
Neither 1.5%
Both equally 12.8%
Donʼt know 3.0%
Do you feel that the distribution of money and wealth in this country today is fair, or do you feel that the money and wealth in this country should be more evenly distributed among a larger percentage of the people?
Fair now 30.5%
Should be more even 59.0%
Donʼt know 10.5%
Do you think the federal government should or should not pursue policies that try to reduce the gap between wealthy and less well-off Americans?
Should pursue 51.0%
Should not pursue 38.3%
Donʼt know 10.8%
* There’s also been a statistically significant shift on gay marriage/civil unions since the Institute’s last poll in 2010…
The poll of 400 registered voters covered the 18 southernmost counties in Illinois: Alexander, Franklin, Gallatin, Hamilton, Hardin, Jackson, Jefferson, Johnson, Massac, Perry, Pope, Pulaski, Randolph, Saline, Union, Washington, White, and Williamson. Live phone interviews were conducted February 23-28. The sample of 400 has a margin of error of 4.9 percent at the 95 percent confidence level. This means that if we conducted the survey 100 times, in 95 of those instances, the result would be within plus or minus 4.9 percentage points from the results obtained here. We also included a special sample of cell phone users to ensure greater accuracy.
The poll was conducted by Issues & Answers of Virginia Beach, VA. It reports no Illinois political figures as clients. The poll was paid for with non-tax dollars from the Institute’s endowment fund.
But legislators on a committee assigned to suggest fixes to the severely underfunded retirement program said they were told Quinn wants workers to put more of their paychecks toward their nest eggs, though they wouldn’t provide specifics. The plan also will call for an adjustment to cost-of-living increases for retirees. […]
Quinn, whose plan will also include a 30-year schedule for catching up on the funding backlog, according to the legislators, will forge forward even though the committee advised the governor’s office they had not reached agreement on a complete package of reforms. They intend to keep working. […]
Sen. Bill Brady, a Republican committee member from Bloomington, said the plan will include the “best mix” of ideas, including an adjusted COLA that “we can afford” but which “maintains the value of the pensions.”
But Republicans say more could be done to stop fraud in the Medicaid program.
“And you don’t have other people in the system that drive away in a Cadillac and a Lexus and have people in the program that shouldn’t be in the program,” said Rep Patti Bellock, (R) Westmont.
Illinois ranked third while Wisconsin placed 42nd in the most recent Bloomberg Economic Evaluation of States index, which includes personal income, tax revenue and employment.
Illinois gained 32,000 jobs in the 12 months ending in February, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found. Wisconsin, where [Gov. Scott Walker] promised to create 250,000 jobs with the help of business-tax breaks, lost 16,900. […]
Illinois ranked behind only North Dakota and Michigan in the Bloomberg economic index, which also measures home prices, mortgage delinquency rates and the equity performance of companies headquartered in each state. The index ranked Wisconsin 42nd among the states when comparing the fourth quarter of 2011 with the same period of 2010.
First, we invited Walker for a very simple reason — he has turned his state around. While we fully agree not all of his policies would work in Illinois, we agree with his general philosophy — which is that jobs and prosperity are created by the private sector and government should get out of the way. Our members wanted to hear his side of the story. Goodness knows they’ve heard plenty from his critics, whose public tantrums and bullying tactics have attracted international media coverage.
It’s also worth noting that Walker has acknowledged that perhaps he moved too aggressively in the beginning and that he should have taken more time to build broader support for his reforms. However, it is important to note that swift action meant an even swifter economic recovery for his state.
* And Gov. Pat Quinn reacted via press release to news that Illinois’ unemployment fell to 8.8 percent while 9,100 jobs were created in March…
“Our commitment to putting Illinois residents back to work is paying off. For the seventh straight month, unemployment numbers in Illinois have continued to fall. Last month, unemployment fell to 8.8 percent – the lowest it has been since February 2009. Today’s number is a testament to our solid efforts to create good jobs in Illinois.
“During March alone, we created 9,100 jobs. Since Illinois began its recovery in January 2010, we have added more than 142,100 private sector jobs. And the good news is that these jobs are being created in growing fields that pay a good wage: education, health services, professional sectors and manufacturing. In fact, today an international healthcare company announced plans to expand in Illinois.
“Baxter International, Inc. is the latest company to choose to expand operations in Illinois. Baxter will create more than 200 new, high-tech jobs as it expands a manufacturing facility in Round Lake. Baxter Chief Scientific and Innovation Officer Norbert Riedel is a member of my Innovation Council, which is one of the many tools we have implemented to help meet the needs of growing companies.”
Friday, Apr 20, 2012 - Posted by Advertising Department
[The following is a paid advertisement.]
Opponents of SB 678 and the Taylorville Energy Center have a math problem.
Since Illinois law limits any rate increase associated with the project to 2.015% over 30 years, or about $1.67/month for a “typical residential customer” according to the ICC, their math has to be pretty creative to scare the public.
After all, if they were honest and said, “it may cost you less than a ½ gallon of gas per month,” few people would be too concerned. Instead they’ve unleashed their robocall invasion around the state to scare seniors into believing electric bills will go up NINE times, which is only an 898% exaggeration.
And because an 898% exaggeration wasn’t enough, last month Exelon paid $40,000 for a bogus study claiming the Taylorville rate impact has spiked.
The Truth?
While projected natural gas and power price decreases have caused a modest rate impact increase, 40% lower interest rates (which will save the project nearly $900 million over 30 years) have more than offset any increased rate impact.
Remember the SJR warning:
“ComEd would do anything necessary to protect its bottom line and keep competition away, no matter how much hyperbole and alarmism was necessary.”
Springfield Journal-Register Editorial – September 13, 2011
So next time the Exelon-funded STOP coalition tries to scare you and your constituents about SB 678 and Tenaska, remember: there they go again.
