Every individual who worked on the Tribune series exposing the Illinois Medicaid fiasco deserves high praise from the long-suffering taxpayers. Can anyone explain why politicians and government officials allow a program like Medicaid to become a cesspool where con artists flourish and decent patients get woefully inadequate care?
And now the same politicians who designed Medicaid want to reform health care for the rest of us. Wouldn’t it make sense to figure out how to control the Medicaid ripoffs before starting another program?
Wouldn’t it make sense to test some of the ideas in different states to see what works before plowing ahead and experimenting with everyone in some massive new program?
I hope the Tribune continues to pursue the Medicaid mess. You should confront both U.S. senators and every other politician elected to state and federal government from this area and ask them why the Medicaid program was allowed to fail so badly; what they individually intend to do to correct the problems identified in your series; and what effect any of this has on the proposed reform of health care now being considered.
Then keep watch to see what each of them does.
