Lawsuit filed over state health insurance
Thursday, Apr 14, 2016 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Sun-Times…
A state employee filed a class-action lawsuit against Gov. Bruce Rauner and several other high-ranking state officials Wednesday, alleging the state’s budget impasse has effectively left some state employees without health insurance.
The lawsuit was filed in Cook County Circuit Court by Carrie Weeks-Kinowski, a nonunion civil service employee at Northern Illinois University. Weeks-Kinowski alleges that in September 2015, the state stopped giving nonunion employees’ insurance withholdings to the insurance companies, which stopped covering medical expenses.
Despite not turning over the withholdings, the state continues to dock employees’ paychecks, the suit alleges. The failure to pay, which in turn has left nonunion state employees to cover all of their medical expenses, was brought on by the continuing lack of a state budget.
Weeks-Kinowski alleged Rauner “suspended claim payments to insurance companies for about 146,000 state workers, retirees, and their families receiving coverage through plans where state funds pay for health-care costs” in September 2015.
* Meanwhile, WBEZ has a really good story on the budget. Here’s just part of it…
Cynthia Williams started Austin People’s Action Center 35 years ago. It was just her, one room, in a church. By last June, she had 50 employees at three sites, implementing nutrition, social services and employment programs.
Now, she has laid off at least half the staff and closed two of the three sites.
But the expenses haven’t stopped.
“We still have those buildings,” she says. “We’ve got mortgages. We’ve got rent. We’ve got lights. We’ve got the water bill. That didn’t go anywhere.” Those services and others, including internet access and copy machines, are on long-term contracts. […]
Williams still has some private dollars for job-training, allowing her to serve eight students. On the day WBEZ visits, they work out math problems with pencil and paper.
And Austin People’s Action Center has not come roaring back. It can’t. With workers laid off, they lost touch with the clients.
No clients means no services, and no dollars. “We have to start from scratch,” Williams says.
Cynthia Williams spent 35 years building this agency up. It’s effectively been dismantled. And, it’s in debt: She borrowed money to maintain a state-funded program. That hasn’t come back at all.
“We’re now $97,000 in the hole,” she says. “Could somebody have come and told us, ‘Stop the program’?”
* Related…
* Senate approves bill for human services, higher-education spending
* Rauner to veto ‘phony’ appropriations bill
* Senate sends Rauner higher education funding bill he’s vowed to veto
- Honeybear - Thursday, Apr 14, 16 @ 10:11 am:
Very very happy someone brought the suit. It is unbelievably galling that I am still paying my premiums but the state is not paying their end of it. It’s a huge problem with my daughters braces. The insurance company is not paying and the orthodontist is having a hissy fit.
- SAP - Thursday, Apr 14, 16 @ 10:15 am:
The Austin People’s Action Center story really nails it for me. If, someday, funding is restored to the multitude of social service agencies that are currently hanging out to dry, simply restoring FY15 funding will leave most of them way less effective than they once were just because so many of them will have to reinvent the wheel.
- Grimm - Thursday, Apr 14, 16 @ 10:19 am:
I have received two bills totaling $1970 from an ER visit last November. I have been told that since my insurance is not paying, I am responsible for the full amount. And yet, those premium payments just keep on coming out of my paycheck…
- Thoughts Matter - Thursday, Apr 14, 16 @ 10:19 am:
Thank you filing the lawsuit. I am having to deal with billing services for some very old health insurance claims. My dentist is also making disparaging comments about our insurance, but has yet cut us off from services. Just think, we could soon be paying double the premiums with no payouts. Meanwhile, my ‘friends’ believe Rauner when he says our insurance is too good.
- thoughts matter - Thursday, Apr 14, 16 @ 10:21 am:
phone typos. thank you FOR filing the lawsuit, and dentist has yet TO cut us off.
- cdog - Thursday, Apr 14, 16 @ 10:31 am:
“The failure to pay, which in turn has left nonunion state employees to cover all of their medical expenses…”
Let that sink in… all for “structural reform.”
Very happy to see a lawsuit filed. My elderly parents, retired professor and former combat Marine, are receiving medical bills totaling over $100,000. As lifelong Republicans, they do not understand the merits of the “deadbeat strategy.”
- RNUG - Thursday, Apr 14, 16 @ 10:55 am:
Guess Rauner can’t do anything without a court ordering it.
I should have started counting the lawsuits a year and a half ago.
- illinois manufacturer - Thursday, Apr 14, 16 @ 10:56 am:
He has to have Blago beat on suits
- RIJ - Thursday, Apr 14, 16 @ 11:12 am:
The dental practice I use in Moline will not currently accept state employee/retiree health insurance. And I’ve been their patient for 18 years!
- Langhorne - Thursday, Apr 14, 16 @ 11:12 am:
This is winnin, right radogno and durkin?
- RIJ - Thursday, Apr 14, 16 @ 11:18 am:
Bad math - I’ve actually been their patient for 27 years.
- Foster brooks - Thursday, Apr 14, 16 @ 11:37 am:
Our “union” insurance is actually pretty good
- RNUG - Thursday, Apr 14, 16 @ 11:38 am:
Be interesting to know how the State is dealing with the Medicare Advantage prpgrams they baically forced the retirees into. I’d think the Feds might be interested in any diversion of those premium payments.
- Demoralized - Thursday, Apr 14, 16 @ 11:38 am:
Glad this lawsuit was finally filed. As far as I’m concerned the state is collecting money for a product that cannot offer. That sounds a lot like fraud to me.
- Stuff Happens - Thursday, Apr 14, 16 @ 11:47 am:
Sixteen months out and we’re still waiting for dental reimbursement on my wife’s crowns.
Some doctors won’t take state insurance any more and require that the patient pay up-front, then submit to insurance on their own. But the State isn’t paying.
I’m happy to see this lawsuit.
- Anotherretiree - Thursday, Apr 14, 16 @ 11:51 am:
I’m worried the lawsuit may run up against the no appropriation problem. Perhaps a better lawsuit would be for non Medicare retirees to claim diminishment. Not paying medical/dental bills for over a year is a diminishment in my book.
I’m waiting on pins and needles for what they have in store for Non Medicare/current employees in the benefit choice period that is normally May 1st.
- Huh? - Thursday, Apr 14, 16 @ 11:53 am:
Couldn’t the same kind of lawsuit be filed for the pensions. The employees have payroll deductions for pensions, but the State isn’t paying its share to the funds.
- RNUG - Thursday, Apr 14, 16 @ 12:23 pm:
== Couldn’t the same kind of lawsuit be filed for the pensions. The employees have payroll deductions for pensions, but the State isn’t paying its share to the funds. ==
-Huh-
The State has religiously put the EMPLOYEE deducted monies into the pension funds, even the few years when the State did a pension pickup instead of a raise. It’s the EMPLOYER monies that have been regularly shorted.
- Moroseness - Thursday, Apr 14, 16 @ 12:40 pm:
Dear RNUG,
I think you are misunderstanding ‘Huh?’
Ya’ll are saying the same thing — State isn’t paying its share, Employees always have via payroll deductions.
- Thoughts Matter - Thursday, Apr 14, 16 @ 12:43 pm:
It’s not the same. The employee payment is being taken out of paychecks and NOT being sent to the insurance company or being used to pay self insured claims, it’s possibly considered a fund to be swept.
- Moroseness - Thursday, Apr 14, 16 @ 12:51 pm:
Thoughts Matter:
You’re confusing insurance with pensions, apples and oranges.
- RIJ - Thursday, Apr 14, 16 @ 12:52 pm:
Not all retirees are eligible for Medicare and have full state insurance. Retirees are forced to Medicare at the eligible age.
- A Jack - Thursday, Apr 14, 16 @ 12:56 pm:
Refresher in history: AFSCME has filed suit about the pensions years ago. ILSC has ruled the state can short payments to the system, but must make the payments out to the pensioners. Thus, our continuing battle over the last few years as the Governor and GA have tried to get around that constitutional clause.
- Huh? - Thursday, Apr 14, 16 @ 12:57 pm:
I misread the thread where the State has stopped paying all premiums to the insurance companies. RNUG clarified that the State paid the employee deductions into the retirement plan. I see the difference.
- RDB - Thursday, Apr 14, 16 @ 1:04 pm:
Disappointed that it has to take someone filing a lawsuit but happy they have. I have a hospital bill from November, 2014 that still has not been paid.
- illinifan - Thursday, Apr 14, 16 @ 1:08 pm:
RNUG when I attended the workshop done by CMS we asked about payments and the rep said we should be happy to be in the MA plan as these were the only plans being paid by the state. Not sure if that was true or not, it however was the statement made.
- X-prof - Thursday, Apr 14, 16 @ 1:11 pm:
Happy to see this, too. I have a dependent with a chronic illness that requires monthly treatments that cost $10k a pop (at group insurance discount rates). So far, the providers are honoring the state’s insurance plan w/o payments, but if they ever stop, … I try not to think about this.
- illinifan - Thursday, Apr 14, 16 @ 1:16 pm:
Let me correct, MA plan costs are not being paid by the state, but the insurers are making the payments and opted to cover the costs until such time the state reimburses them. The insurers are not totally out money since they do get money from Medicare for each retiree.
- No Raise - Thursday, Apr 14, 16 @ 2:03 pm:
I have written my legislator about this. I have also contacted my insurance company and at least for medical, I have been advised that if the provider contracts with the State to be included in the plan, that provider cannot bill the consumer and must simply wait for payment. Of course, they receive 9% on the outstanding balance, which is better than any investment around. I don’t know if this only applies to managed plans but we are in an open access plan and various providers contract with CMS to be on the plan so please contact your insurance companies to verify what my insurance co OAP told to me.
- RNUG - Thursday, Apr 14, 16 @ 2:55 pm:
- illinifan -
Nice to know but I’m in the one over 65 / one under 65 mix at the moment so I’m not MA eligible.