Quality Health Care For All
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I support comprehensive Illinois fiscal reform to end the state’s deferment of Medicaid liabilities.  Although the state constitution requires a balanced budget annually, our revenue system does not generate enough revenue each year to cover expenditure obligations, especially Medicaid obligations.  To deal with this in the health care context, every year the state simply defers payments to health care providers from one year to the next.  But delaying reimbursements to doctors, hospitals, pharmacists, nursing homes and other providers puts a huge and unfair burden on health care professionals who depend on these payments to keep their doors open.  This practice also provides a financial disincentive for health providers to serve our most vulnerable citizens.  This is a social cost we cannot afford.  The amount of health care services provided under Medicaid would increase if Illinois paid its health care providers on time.

I support enforcement of existing law to increase the amount of charitable care that non-profit hospitals provide.  Charity care is free or reduced-cost medical delivered to poor and low-income individuals.  Under Illinois law, non-profit charitable hospitals must provide charity care in order to qualify for the exemptions they enjoy from state and local sales taxes and local property taxes.  These exemptions (as distinguished from the state and federal income tax exemptions they also have) account for 91% of all tax benefits granted to non-profit hospitals.  However, Illinois law is not being enforced.  Non-profit hospitals, including those in the 13th State Senate District, receive tax breaks ($490 million) worth about three times the cost of the charity care they provide ($176 million).  This amount of excess tax benefit would cover the cost of providing charity care to an additional 48,000 low-income, uninsured patients throughout Illinois.  In light of the cost of health care and especially during a recession (when public health care dollars are extremely limited), Illinois has a responsibility to ensure that the public dollars in the form of the tax breaks given are used for their intended purposes and that the dollar amount of tax breaks is equivalent to the dollar value of the care actually provided.

In addition, I support:

• increases in funding for mental health services.  Illinois is currently in the bottom 10 among all states in all areas of mental health services funding.

• a switch from more expensive nursing homes to a model of community-based care with supportive services.  This will both increase the quality of life for seniors and reduce the state’s cost of caring for them.
  
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