‘Affordable health insurance for all’ means Welfare for 17 million more Americans.

To all voters who moved ‘Forward’ with Barack Obama in this last election cycle. I know the President promised that his health care law would guarantee ‘Affordable Health Insurance” for every American. The truth is, your President lied to you. According to the CBO, his health care law will leave 27 million of you UNINSURED after it’s full implementation. Worse yet, according to the CBO his health care law will place 16 to 17 million of you on a Government WELFARE program known as Medicaid. It is important to understand that Medicaid is nothing like private health insurance. Medicaid does not pay medical providers on time. And, when it does it pay – often many months later – it pays a small fraction of what private health insurance pays.

According to multiple studies completed by Johns Hopkins, the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Columbia-Cornell, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Pittsburgh and the American Academy of Cardiology.  Medicaid surgical patients have far worse health outcomes than those with private insurance. In fact, in the largest study of it’s kind (with nearly 1,000,000 participants) the University of Virginia found that Medicaid surgical patients are 97% more like to DIE than surgical patients with private health insurance.

According to the New England Journal of Medicine, Medicaid patients in bankrupt states like Illinois & California wait twice as long to see a doctor or specialist as those with private health insurance. And, often times they are denied the care they need. The Medicaid system in Illinois is looking more bleak every day. On January 30, 2012, the Civic Federation released its “Budget Roadmap” for the coming fiscal year. In it, they highlight the fact that state officials now believe that the Illinois Medicaid program will have between $21 and $23 billion in unpaid bills by 2017.

Because providers are not getting paid, many Doctors, Specialist and other medical providers will simply stop taking Medicaid altogether, as many in Illinois already have. And, they stopped long before the PPACA.

If you do not believe that many of you will be enrolled onto our bankrupt Medicaid system instead of private health insurance plans. You should know that this is already happening at Walmart.

Below is an excerpt from the November 2012  update from the Illinois HFS (Health & Family Services) department.

“It is estimated that Illinois has approximately 1.1 million people without health insurance. About 50% of them will be able to buy health insurance on the Health Insurance Exchange, and based on their income, individuals will qualify for tax subsidies to help pay for their health insurance. Illinois will have an Exchange, operating as a state-federal partnership the first year. If the legislature adopts authorizing legislation, it will become a state exchange; if not, the federal government will continue to operate it. Enrollment on the Exchange will open on October 1, 2013, with plans effective on January 1, 2014.

The other 50% of uninsured citizens will qualify for Medicaid, if the legislature adopts authorizing legislation. Today, there is a gap in Medicaid coverage: adults without dependent children, no matter how poor, are not eligible for Medicaid. Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the federal government is offering generous federal matching funds to the states to cover this newly eligible population: 100% reimbursement for the first three years then phased down to 90% by 2020.

Newly introduced legislation, House Bill 6253, will take advantage of the ACA to provide healthcare under Medicaid to about 342,000 low-income Illinois citizens who are currently uninsured (the remaining 168,000 citizens currently uninsured, are already eligible for Medicaid but have not enrolled yet). Read the rest of the Illinois  HFS update here.

When you look at the map below, understand that it was completed in 2011. Three years before 17 million more Americans will be enrolled in our bankrupt Medicaid rolls as a result of the “Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act”.

Their are intelligent alternatives to simply flooding our bankrupt Medicaid rolls with 17 million more Americans. In fact, these alternatives have already been proven successful in states like Florida, Indiana and Louisiana. Sadly, even with these proven reforms, Republican governors like Arizona’s Jan Brewer and Ohio’s John Kasich haven’t learned a thing from these successful reforms. Instead, they have chosen to double down on failure by expanding Medicaid to historic proportions. Worse yet, they want you to pay for their wrong headed decisions via higher taxes and more ‘cost shifting‘. Both of which will do nothing but continue increase the cost of health insurance for everyone else. What did the President say back in 2010? Oh, that’s right. “It’s estimated that your employers premiums will decrease by as much as 3,000%”. – Barack Obama.

Governor Quinn, Illinois Democrats and Republicans plan to vote on implementing Obamacare nearly 2 years early!

Illinois Democrats & Republicans plan to vote on implementing Obamacare in our State as early as this Tuesday May 22, 2012.

As early as this coming Tuesday, May 22^, 2012 Governor Quinn, Illinois Democrats and some Illinois Republicans will be voting to implement the most fiscally onerous part of Obamacare in our state nearly 2 years early. Namely, the massive expansion of Medicaid eligibility to nearly 800,000 new Illinois residents via a state based “Obamacare health insurance exchange”. Why are they attempting to do so now? Because, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) doled out another $181 million of your money in health insurance exchange establishment grants  this past Wednesday, bringing the total amount of money that the federal government has pumped into state efforts to craft the “Obamacare exchanges” to more than $1 Billion. Illinois’ share was $32.7 Million.

The Obamacare legislation mandates that States must demonstrate by Jan. 1, 2013, that they can operate an exchange (which opens for enrollment in October 2013) or that they manage a partnered exchange with the federal government. Otherwise, HHS will fully oversee the creation and management of a state’s exchange. Even though this timeline for this mandate is quickly forthcoming it is grossly irresponsible for Governor Quinn to threaten an executive order and subsequent vote to implement an Obamacare exchange when the Constitutionality of this legislation will be ruled on by the U.S. Supreme Court less than a month from today.

The following is an explanation of the failed rationale behind their attempt to do so and the reasons why all fiscally responsible, limited Government advocates must contact their local representatives tomorrow (Monday May 21, 2012) in order to inform them as to why they must vote to repeal this onerous additional burden to the tax payers of the state of Illinois as outlined, in part, in the following sections of the Obamacare legislation:

A.) 2001(b) of the Obamacare legislation outlining the “Medicaid Maintenance of Effort requirement (MOE)”

B.) Sections 1311, 1321 and 1401 of the Obamacare legislation which mandates Federally subsidized “premium tax credits” for “Obamacare insurance exchange” enrollees.

Under the Obamacare ‘MOE’, a state would lose all federal Medicaid funding if it makes even the slightest change to the current Medicaid eligibility standards that were in effect prior to the passage of Obamacare.

This essentially freezes our state’s eligibility requirements regardless of the impact on Illinois’ bottom line.  Not only is Illinois forced to keep eligibility at that level, but Illinois is also forced to raise payments to primary care physicians. Section 1202 of H.R. 4872 a.k.a. the “Health Care & Education Affordability Reconciliation Act of 2010” (which was used to pass the PPACA) requires that Illinois increase Medicaid reimbursement rates for primary care physicians to the same level as the applicable Medicare reimbursement rates for years 2013 and 2014. At first this sounds like a good idea however, this requirement, along with the federal funding for it, expires on January 1, 2015. Leaving the state of Illinois tax payer holding the bill to maintain this new physician reimbursement or make drastic cuts.

It is crucial to understand that this new burden placed upon the Illinois tax payer is in addition to the already unpaid Medicaid bills piling up in Illinois after lawmakers enacted a budget pushing $2.4 Billion of last year’s bills into this year.  On January 30, 2012, the Civic Federation released its “Budget Roadmap” for the coming fiscal year. In it, they highlight the fact that state officials now believe the Medicaid program will have between $21 and $23 billion in unpaid bills by 2017.

Medicaid patients are already suffering from Illinois’ low reimbursement rates and long payment delays. Nursing homes and hospitals are running out of time and money while they wait for reimbursement. Doctors are turning away poor patients or making them wait weeks or months or even longer to receive care, just to keep their doors open.

What caused our Medicaid system to become so fiscally unsustainable? During Democrat Governor Rod Blagojevich’s Governorship, our Illinois Medicaid program was expanded far beyond simply providing health insurance for children of the poor (which was the original intent of the bi partisan Federal SCHIP bill). Blago expanded our Medicaid based state health insurance program to include 2 new programs that were designed to ‘supplement’ our “All Kids Covered”(www.allkidscovered.com) program (formerly “Kid Care”). These two new Medicaid based Entitlement programs (still in existence today) are called “Family Care”(www.familycareillinois.com) and “Mom’s & Babies” (www.allkids.com/pregnant.html). These programs go far beyond providing health insurance to children of the poor. In fact, they provide ‘free’ to nearly ‘free’ health insurance coverage for pregnant women and even the Father of a child who is enrolled on our “All Kids Covered” program. The program was also expanded to include coverage for those far beyond the existing Federal poverty levels. Adding to the rapid bankruptcy of our Illinois Medicaid program was the fact that under Blago’s Governorship, legal residency status was not required on the Illinois’ “All Kids Covered” Medicaid application. It took an investigation conducted by former Chicago Tribune reporter Dennis Byrne to determine just how many illegal aliens were enrolled on our “All Kids Covered” program. The shocking answer was 75%.
Source: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-05-25/news/ct-oped-0525-byrne-20100525_1_uninsured-illinois-children-blagojevich-illegal-immigrants

Obamacare simply repeats the same mistakes already made by our now bankrupt (and deeply in debt) Illinois Medicaid program. However, it does so, on a national level. It increases Medicaid eligibility to 15 million childless adults and another 9.5 million who are considered ‘old eligibles’. Those who were always eligible but never applied and will now be auto-enrolled. It also increases eligibility for Medicaid to incomes as high as 138% above the federal poverty level. What does this mean in dollars and cents? A report released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services shows the impact this massive expansion will have: “This expansion, together with greater participation by individuals eligible under current rules, is projected to add 14.9 million people to enrollment in 2014 and 25.9 million people by 2020—26 percent and 44 percent, respectively, compared to pre-[Obamacare] estimates.”

This means that by 2020, Medicaid enrollment will reach 85 million, or approximately one in four Americans. This level of Government dependency distorts the original purpose of the Medicaid program, which was intended to serve as a safety net for only the truly indigent.

As a result of the expansion, the report shows, Medicaid spending between 2011 and 2020 will increase under Obamacare by $619 billion. The federal government will initially pay for most of the new spending, totaling $572 billion. But the expansion will increasingly strain state budgets as well, since the federal contribution decreases rapidly leaving the state tax payer holding the bill. In fact, this massive expansion of Medicaid will bring total state Medicaid spending to $2.3 trillion through 2020. Illinois’ share will be another $10 Billion by the year 2020. Source: http://illinoispolicy.org/blog/blog.asp?ArticleSource=4660

If Illinois lawmakers want to ensure our Medicaid program is both sustainable and protects the most vulnerable, they must redesign it from the ground up in a way that meets the needs of Illinois’ unique population. The first step is transforming it from the broken fee-for-service design into a sliding-scale premium assistance program paired with health savings accounts. This would ensure the most vulnerable would have access to doctors and specialists, would be empowered to make healthy and cost-conscious health care choices and would no longer be trapped in government dependency. It worked in the state of Indiana under Governor Mitch Daniel and it can work here in Illinois as well. Read about the success of Governor Daniel’s Medicaid reforms here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2011/11/11/obama-administration-denies-waiver-for-indianas-popular-medicaid-reform/

What can you do to stop Governor Quinn, Illinois Democrats and those Republicans who support the implementation of Obamacare in our state nearly 2 years early? You can call your Illinois state representative and let them know that Illinois needs real Medicaid reform, not higher taxes and that you oppose Governor Quinn’s “Medicaid Reforms” and that you are against him establishing a state based Obamacare health insurance exchange via Executive order. Call the statehouse switchboard at (217) 782-2000 to be connected. Look up your legislator here. Again, they could vote as early as tomorrow or Tuesday.

Also call House Minority Leader Tom Cross. He seems to be ‘flip flopping’ and is ready to ‘cut a deal’. He needs to know that you value and expect principled leadership and rigorous policy reform. His statehouse number is (217) 782-1331. If the line is busy, call his district office at (815) 254-0000.