* This is just ducky…
The Blagojevich administration has stopped payment on most state-subsidized health care, asking a judge to clarify his order to shut down an illegal expansion of the FamilyCare program.
Court documents indicate state reimbursement to doctors treating more than 500,000 FamilyCare patients stopped Oct. 15, the day Cook County Circuit Judge James R. Epstein ordered the administration to halt an expansion of the program to people with higher incomes. […]
Although rejected repeatedly by the Legislature, Gov. Rod Blagojevich unilaterally reinstated the coverage and expanded it to 400 percent of the poverty level, or $83,000 for four. Participants are supposed to pay premiums on a sliding scale. […]
Two prominent businessmen and a lawyer sued, and after an appellate court upheld Epstein’s April ruling, the judge ordered the administration Oct. 15 to submit its plan for dismantling the program.
In it, the administration says Epstein’s order could be construed to cover nearly all 537,000 participants in FamilyCare, except those receiving welfare cash assistance. So it stopped submitting vouchers it receives from health care providers to the state comptroller for reimbursement.
In other words, the judge told the administration to stop funding the illegal aspect of the Family Care program, so the administration stopped funding everything.
Either they are so incompetent that they can’t tell the difference between the illegal program and the legal program, or they are deliberately creating a crisis of huge proportions. Or both.
Whatever the case, this could turn out to be a freaking disaster for thousands of innocent people caught in this power grab.
* Meanwhile…
State lawmakers might take up a bill this week that gives autistic children up to $36,000 a year in health care coverage to pay for diagnosis and treatment.
But there’s no guarantee the bill will pass, lawmakers and advocates say.
“I think it’s possible but I don’t think it’s likely,” said state Sen. Mike Jacobs, D-East Moline. “I think we’re going to see a lot of slow, measured movement.”
The reason it’s not likely to pass is that the House Speaker refuses to allow the governor to create implementation rules because the governor believes that the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules has no legal oversight authority, even though the governor himself signed a law giving JCAR more teeth. The Senate is sticking with the governor so far, and Speaker Madigan won’t budge from his position.
* And Mike Lawrence vents…
In addition to what he said is Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s abuse of the state constitution, Lawrence took to task Speaker of the House Michael Madigan for maintaining “animosity” toward the governor, a fellow Democrat, as well as a continued “distrust” of House Minority Leader Tom Cross.
I generally agree. Madigan has always found a way to deal with everyone else and keep the state moving forward except when it comes to Rod Blagojevich. But if the governor won’t follow the constitution, can’t be trusted to hold up his end of any deal and may be supremely incompetent (see top story), then why should anyone not have “animosity” towards him?
Discuss.
* Somewhat related…
* Scandal city: Merriner’s latest book is the just-published The Man Who Emptied Death Row: Governor George Ryan and the Politics of Crime. And though there’s lots about insider shenanigans in the book — Ryan remains in prison today, convicted of political corruption — Merriner understood there was more to the former Illinois governor’s story.
* Former Ryan prosecutors reunited
* SJ-R Opinion: FOIA needs reform — now: How many stories have to be written about Illinois’ broken Freedom of Information Act before Attorney General Lisa Madigan proposes an overhaul?