More Citizens on Medicaid in Will County - Do We Have The Doctors and Funds to Cover It?

From ConnectTriStates.com (CBS 7 KHQA) 1/8/13:

"ILLINOIS (AP) -- A plan to expand the Medicaid program for low income residents in Illinois has been approved by an Illinois House committee.

The Human Service Appropriations Committee voted 9-5 to make up for 600,000 uninsured residents that are eligible for Medicaid.

The plan is necessary for the takeover of national health care plan.

Under the plan the federal government will pay all the new Medicaid costs for three years starting in 2014."

In Addition:

HB5007 (ObamaCare in Illinois) was passed in the House and voted YES by Illinois General Assembly House Rep. Jack McGuire (on March 8, 2012), just before he retired and then sent the bill to the Illinois Senate where 2 amendments were passed and voted YES by Illinois General Assembly Senator Pat McGuire (Jack’s Nephew).

According to the 2010 Will County Community Health Report:

"The Community Health Status Indicators (CHSI) Report for 2008, states that there were 60,168 Medicaid beneficiaries. According to the All Kids Preliminary Report for the same year, there were approximately 500 primary and specialty care physicians accepting Medicaid patients (a rate of 8.3 per 1,000 patients). Of these physicians:
* 166 were general practitioners
* 36 were family physicians
* 44 were internal medicine,
* 30 were gynecologists or obstetricians
* 13 were pediatricians
* An additional 212 were physicians in other specialties, including surgery, oncology, emergency medicine, etc."

The Community Health Report also states:

"Released in 2010, the University of Wisconsin and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation conducted a study on the health of counties around the United States. According to the report, in overall health outcomes, Will County ranked 17 out of 101 Illinois counties. In the area of clinical care, Will County ranked 51."

NOW REMEMBER the State of Illinois wants to add 600,000 uninsured residents that are eligible for Medicaid.  A portion of these new patients will reside in Will County!  Do we have the doctors to cover them?  Will they have longer wait times?  Will they get the proper medical care?  Will doctors feel overloaded taking on more Medicaid patients and start to drop these patients because they're not getting paid by the State (or getting paid 6 months to 1+ years late)?  When the State has been carrying-over $8+Billion ($2-Billion in Medicaid alone) in unpaid bills since 2010, how will they afford and even more costly program?  Higher and higher taxes?

CAN WE AFFORD IT?

20% of our Illinois State Budget goes towards Medicaid. Like it or not, its a contributing factor towards bankrupting our State.  ObamaCare is forcing an expansion of Medicaid upon the people of Illinois.

It is estimated to increase Medicaid enrollment by 25% or the equivalent of 700,000 additional persons covered under Medicaid.  In January, 2012, The Civic Federation warned that Illinois will face a $34.8 billion backlog of unpaid bills if no action is taken to reform Medicaid.

Using the Department of Health and Family Service's own projections, Medicaid will increase by more than 40% over the next five years (from $8.6 billion to $12.1 billion). Can we afford this?

As Reported June 2012:

"Illinois Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka warned lawmakers on Thursday that the Supreme Court’s ruling on the federal Affordable Care Act could lead to hundreds of thousands of new residents enrolling for Medicaid coverage, and cost the state up to $2.4 billion over the next six years.
Medicaid currently accounts for more than 20 percent of the state budget and continues to grow. Underfunded, the program will end the fiscal year June 30 with an estimated $2 billion in unpaid bills."


MORE DETAILS

Per Illinois Sunshine Review:

"The state began FY2013 with between $7.5 - $8 billion in unpaid bills.

Illinois' financial situation was said to be worse than any other state in the country according to a study by the National Conference of State Legislatures, with the state's budget situation called "tenuous at best." The state Auditor General William Holland reported in June 2012 that the state's budget deficit for FY2011 was $43.8 billion, the worst in the nation.

Illinois has a total state debt of approximately $271,111,148, when calculated by adding the total of outstanding official debt, pension and other post-employment benefits (OPEB) liabilities, Unemployment Trust Fund loans, and the FY2013 state budget gap. The prior year's total was $280,595,828,000, and the current debt total places it in the top 5 states with the highest amount of debt."