Gov. Jim Edgar`s administration has begun leaning hard on the state`s congressional delegation to protect from White House budget cutters a new Medicaid program that is critical in keeping the state`s tenuous budget balanced.
Edgar and state lawmakers are worried that the loss of the $600 million program would leave Illinois in dire fiscal straits after the spring session was sent into overtime to balance the fiscal 1992 budget.
Under the program, signed into law Wednesday by Edgar, the state will charge hospitals and nursing homes about $600 million in fees based on their costs in treating the poor. Those fees will be used to acquire a matching amount of federal dollars to supplement rising Medicaid costs. Nationwide, $3.5 billion is being raised by health-care providers in the states to capture another $5.2 billion in federal funds.
Medicaid is a federal-state partnership program that pays health-care providers for treating qualified public aid recipients. It is funded by federal and state funds.
Under the new program, health care providers will get back at least the amount of money they paid in state fees. Those hospitals that treat a larger share of the indigent will capture a larger share of the new federal dollars. Even as the issue was being debated by the General Assembly in its extended spring session, the federal Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of Management and Budget warned they would seek legislative and regulatory measures to restrict what the Bush administration has called
”sleight-of-hand” state tax or assessment programs on health-care providers.
The ominous warnings from Washington prompted Edgar and his administration to begin contacts with the state`s congressional delegation to protect the program from the suggested changes.
U.S. House Republican leader Robert Michel of Peoria, who spoke with Edgar last week, passed state officials` concerns to Budget Director Richard Darman at a meeting at the White House.
”(Darman) certainly knows it`s going to have a serious impact on Illinois,” said Ray LaHood, Michel`s chief of staff. ”The congressman expressed his concern on behalf of the governor.”
And after consulting with officials from Illinois` office in Washington, Democratic Sen. Alan Dixon is drafting a letter-to be signed by most if not all members of the state`s congressional delegation-in support of the program. The letter will be sent to Gail Wilensky, the federal administrator who oversees Medicaid and Medicare, a Dixon aide said.
The letter points out that Illinois` Medicaid population has risen by 19 percent in the last two years while program costs rose 30 percent.
Members of Illinois` Washington office also have been in touch with other members of the congressional delegation, including one of its most influential, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski, to enlist support.
Anticipating that new regulations could be proposed by the Bush administration as early as Aug. 1, state Sen. Howard Carroll (D-Chicago) said he believes Illinois` new Medicaid program is safe for at least two fiscal years.
But Carroll, a chief state budget negotiator, acknowledges that Illinois officials must act quickly to implement the program if the Bush administration decides that it will no longer cater to such Medicaid strategies after its proposed regulations have been filed.
