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IL governor proposes plan to insure more children

Case Management Weekly, October 26, 2005

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A new plan to offer health insurance to uninsured children in Illinois is being proposed by Governor Rod Blagojevich. Under the proposal, uninsured children would have access to doctor's visits, hospital stays, vision, dental and hearing care, and prescription drugs. Their parents would pay a premium based on their income, with no income cap.

In Illinois, 253,000 children do not have health insurance, half because their parents do not earn enough to purchase private healthcare but are not eligible for the state-sponsored KidCare program - which offers insurance to children from low-income families - and the other half because they simply aren't enrolled in KidCare, a spokesperson for the governor said in an article in The St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Blagojevich's plan would be financed by the savings resulting from the state's switch to a managed care plan, in which each patient would have a "primary care case manager" instead of randomly visiting doctors, clinics, and emergency rooms. Twenty-nine states have already adopted a primary care case management model for their Medicaid programs

The plan is projected to save the state $45 million in the first year and could insure all the state's uninsured children in five years. If approved, the new program would begin July 1, 2006.

Source: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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