Last week, the Illinois House impeachment committee heard round after round of testimony about how Gov. Rod Blagojevich abused power by expanding the FamilyCare program despite legislative opposition. The topic was raised so often that Rep. Barbara Flynn Currie had to remind the committee that the relevance of the program wasn’t up for debate. “We’re not that kind of jury, I’m sorry to have to tell ya,” she said at one point.
Because of Blagojevich’s reach, attorney Margaret Stapleton of the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law—who has been defending FamilyCare’s 537,000 enrollees—acknowledges that the image of the progressive, state-backed insurance program has been bruised.
“It’s troubling that parties in the case are so hell-bent on taking away health care from low- and moderate-income people,” Stapleton told us. “[FamilyCare] has radically improved access to healthcare. People are getting good care and like [the program].”
While FamilyCare has been mired in controversy since Blagojevich decided to flout a legislative committee’s recommendation against expansion for families earning up to $83,000 a year. It hasn’t helped that former GOP gubernatorial candidate Ron Gidwitz joined a business-backed lawsuit to repeal the expansion, raising the profile of the case as a political fight.
John Bouman, director of the Shiver Center, cautions that people shouldn’t get sidetracked by the political fighting. The decision to draw more people into FamilyCare was based on a demonstrated need, as he explains in an op-ed in the State-Journal Register:
The governor … knew from the research of the legislative Adequate Healthcare Task Force that there were a number of families with higher incomes (up to $83,000 for a family of four — a little higher than the median income) unable to find or afford insurance, usually because of a parent having a pre-existing medical condition. He decided to cover these higher-income parents in FamilyCare, too, for which the parents would pay very significant premiums. The administration put that program expansion into the same regulatory change as the provisions needed to access federal Medicaid funding for everyone already in the program.
Ironically, it wasn’t the lack of need or the way the governor went about expanding the program that prompted Cook County Circuit Court Judge James Epstein to rule against it in October. Had enrollees been asked how much they work or whether they’re in school, a requirement under the public aid code, Epstein wouldn’t have ruled to shut the program down. As far as Stapleton is concerned, the issue is irrelevant since higher-earning enrollees pay near market-rate premiums, meaning sustainable income is needed to cover the costs.
Still, Blagojevich issued a temporary stop-payment order following the judge’s order. Only after the Illinois Supreme Court stepped in last month did the state begin paying the bills again.
For months, Stapleton has told us it’s probably going to take action by the legislature to sort the mess out. She sees SB1415 as the answer. Essentially, the bill clarifies the public aid code. Once that’s done, the state can begin accepting people into the program again. That measure “has been hanging out there for a while” with no substantive action, Stapleton says. The push for support hasn’t been helped by the governor’s decision to administer the program under a shroud of secrecy, as was highlighted in an AP investigation this fall.
In the meantime, FamilyCare is stuck in limbo. No new families are being added at any income level. Amid mounting job losses, the need has only grown. Clearly, the General Assembly needs to take action. As for why it hasn’t happened yet, Stapleton takes a gander.
“I think that the answer is that members of the General Assembly are hesitant for being responsible for taking health care away from people,” she tells us. “And they should be.”
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