Courtesy of Mish.
Illinois Threatens to Halt All Health Insurance Payments
Unpaid bills in Illinois now stand at $8.5 billion. Some project the total will reach an all-time high of $10.5 billion by December. Total accumulated liabilities counting pensions are on the order of $163 billion.
Illinois is flat out broke, and without a budget cannot legally pay some bills. In what I see as a sideshow, Illinois has not been paying lotto winners.
Far more serious issues are on the horizon. For example, the State Journal-Register reports Gov. Rauner threatens to halt health insurance payments to providers for state workers.
As Illinois approaches its 11th week without a state budget, Gov. Bruce Rauner has threatened to take the unprecedented step of stopping all payments to doctors, hospitals and others providing health care to the almost 363,000 state workers, university employees, retirees and others covered by the state’s group insurance plan.
“All health care services will continue to be paid as long as possible,” said Meredith Krantz, spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Central Management Services.
“However, in the near future, we will no longer have the legal authority to continue to pay health care vendors for their services,” she wrote in an email Friday to The State Journal-Register.
“All applicable fiscal 2015 funding has now been exhausted,” she said. “Without a budget in place, there is no appropriation or legal authority to continue to pay health care providers.”
Dental Payments Halted
In addition to the administration’s threatened shutoff of reimbursements to health care providers and health insurance companies, the state recently halted all payments to dentists for services to the 359,325 state workers, university employees, retirees and dependents with dental coverage.
The CMS notice says a few health care providers in the state’s self-insured plans — which include Delta Dental, Cigna, and the HealthLink and Coventry open access plans — have asked people insured through the state plan to pay cash at the time of service to cover the total cost.
Legislature Gets Paid
No matter whether the legislators do their job or not, they get paid. Their pay is guaranteed via a bill the legislature passed last year….
