Spring Session Update

The very contentious spring session of the General Assembly has ended, and  now we will continue to work throughout the summer.  I am happy to say that legislation I introduced was passed by both the House and the Senate and is now on its way to the Governor:

• Nursing Home Cameras. In conjunction with Attorney General Lisa Madigan this legislation allows nursing home residents, their families or guardians to install video monitoring equipment in nursing home rooms as an added measure of safety and protection against any abuse or neglect.  You can see the legislation here

• Right To Try. This legislation would allow a terminally ill person access to medication that has not yet fully completed the FDA approval process.  In conjunction with their physician, patients who have exhausted all approved options could obtain potentially life-saving medicines or treatments that have completed Stage 1 Clinical Trials.  You can see the legislation here

• Property Fraud Protection. In conjunction with Cook County Recorder of Deeds Karen Yarbrough, this legislation allows property owners to sign up for an electronic alert system that would notify them any time a change was made to property title documents at the Recorder’s Office. This is to prevent identity and property theft crimes and the legislation may be seen here

• Medicaid Efficiency and Reform. This law would bring in savings and additional federal revenue of about $400 million to the Illinois Medicaid system. Here are some of the key components:
  • Requires DHFS to competitively bid and obtain lower prices on certain durable medical supplies
  • Codifies the 2.25% reduction in rates for Medicaid providers to reflect the savings represented in the annual appropriation, and allows for the hospital assessment to be increased to offset those reductions for hospitals statewide
  • Codifies the deadlines for Accountable Care Entities and Coordinated Care Entities to move to full risk, and extends the Care Coordination fee.
  • Requests DHFS to seek retroactive claiming for newly eligible persons under the ACA400 assessment to maximize federal matching revenue
  • Requests DCFS to move Wards of the State into coordinated care and maximize federal matching revenue
  • Requires DHFS to include quality metrics in the MCO auto-assignment algorithm by January 2017
  • Requires establishment of a publicly available Medicaid Managed Care policy manual which will be regularly updated
  • Requires audits of nursing homes with Medicaid patients to assure proper eligibility and claiming, and also provides provisional Medicaid cards to eligible new nursing home residents
  • Requires the State to appeal the federal denial of SLF assessment application
  • Requires the Inspector General to prioritize investigations of Medicaid fraud.
  • Establishes a bipartisan and bicameral 1115 Waiver working group
  • Provides for the Illinois Poison Control Center.
• You can read the entire bill and see all of its provisions in additions to those listed above here in House Amendments #2 and #4.

As you know, Governor Rauner introduced a budget which made devastating cuts to a variety of human service programs such as Autism, after-school programming, Early Intervention, Respite Care, Immigrant/Refugee programs, senior and disability services, etc.  On top of all these program cuts and eliminations the Governor’s introduced budget still relied on a 31% cut to higher education, underfunding pension liabilities by $2.2 billion, cuts to local governments of over $800 million and $1.5 billion in cuts to hospitals, nursing homes and Medicaid.  These proposed “cuts” relied on ignoring existing laws.  Without ignoring laws requiring us to fully fund pensions and Medicaid, etc. the Governor’s proposed budget is in reality nearly $4 billion out of balance.

The House and Senate took a different approach to budgeting.  We refused to make draconian cuts to education and human services.  We believed that supporting communities, families and youth were high value priorities, and that those values ought to be reflected in a budget which we passed.   We understood there have to be cuts to live within our means. In fact, we made cuts in all areas except elementary and secondary education which received an increase.

The Speaker of the House held a press conference to make it clear that to fully fund the spending plan we are proposing, new revenue in the area of $3.3 billion would be needed.  I think that it is important to acknowledge that the state needs additional resources to meet our pension obligations, pay down our debts and fund education, human service and public safety programs.

I chair the Appropriations—Human Services Committee.  We restored the Governor’s proposed programs and the budgets he slashed. Yet we were still able to save $134 million with 2.75% reductions to state employee payroll lines, 4% to departmental operations and 2.25% to most community grant lines.

There were some major exceptions where we believed that investing in programs that served the most at-risk populations, supported families, seniors and youth reflected our values, and should receive priority.  Here is a list of some of the programs whose funding we considered a priority (n.b. respite care and epilepsy are shown as part of DD Long Term Care).  [also please note that the table below is excerpted from a budget table of many thousands of lines, and shows some of those lines which have major changes.  Many other lines are included in the underlying workbook and you will not see them in this table]

These items and all the other items approved by the House and Senate now are on their way to Governor Rauner for his actions.  If you have questions regarding any other items within the budget, or any comments I am always happy to assist you and can be reached at 773 348 3434 or greg@gregharris.org.