It is welcome news that Senate Republican leader Christine Radogno expressed willingness, in “Managing Medicaid” (Voice of the People, April 29), to work together across the aisle to implement difficult Medicaid cuts.
However, Radogno and her colleagues have so far resisted the remaining steps needed to truly solve the state’s Medicaid crisis.
At Gov. Pat Quinn’s direction, the Department of Healthcare and Family Services has identified a list of more than 50 spending reductions. But these difficult cuts leave us only half way to the goal we must reach of filling a $2.7 billion budget hole, which the Civic Federation has said is needed to save Illinois’ Medicaid program from collapse.
Quinn has recommended a balanced approach that combines cuts in services, a rate cut for providers and a revenue increase in the form of a dollar-a-pack hike in the price of cigarettes.
The cigarette tax would generate a dollar-for-dollar federal match of $337 million and deliver economic and health benefits. It would reduce the number of smokers and cut the long-term burden of smoking on our health care system.
It will also shield health care providers from even steeper rate reductions than those we have proposed.
Radogno suggests we can make up the difference simply by tightening eligibility. But that process is already well under way. Anyone who thinks tighter eligibility screening will yield the savings we need is not reckoning with reality.
Tough decisions — and tough votes — will be needed to pull the state out of the deep hole that we are in. This is why we sincerely hope that Radogno and her colleagues will join us in taking a balanced approach to solving the Medicaid crisis. We can do this by enacting the tough but necessary measures that the governor has proposed.
— Julie Hamos, director, Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services, Springfield
