After nearly 12 weeks of false bravado and bluster over negotiating a workable state budget, Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner has stopped all payments to doctors, hospitals and others that provide health care to the more than 360,000 state and university employees, retirees and their families covered by the state’s insurance plan.
“The extent to which the situation prompts health-care providers to request or demand patients pay the entire cost of medical services up front remains to be seen,” the (Springfield) State Journal-Register reported, “but it’s unprecedented for the state to stop paying claims, even temporarily, for large numbers of people.”
“The state has never said, 'We're not paying claims,' before,” said Anders Lindall, spokesman for AFSCME Council 31, which represents more than 40,000 state and university employees who participate in the health plan.
Council 31 has filed suit seeking a court order to compel the Rauner administration to make the health care payments.
Social service groups are also sounding alarms that some services are at risk unless a budget deal is made soon. After-school programs for teens, early childhood intervention, autism assistance, domestic violence shelters and services, funeral and burial services for the poor, and programs to help parents prevent Sudden Infant Death Syndrome all may be suspended.
“It won’t be long before damage is longstanding,” said Emily Miller, policy and advocacy director for the nonprofit group Voices for Illinois Children.
The Rauner administration has denied that the threat of halting payments for health care was designed to put pressure on the General Assembly to adopt the governor's so-called "turnaround agenda," pro-business and anti-labor initiatives that he claims are needed for a budget to be finalized.
“It’s long past due for the governor to stop political posturing, drop his extraneous preconditions and get down to the work of developing a budget plan together with state lawmakers,” Lindall told the State Journal-Register.