BLAGOJEVICH: We're creating affordable healthcare for all

By Gov. Rod Blagojevich, For The Southern

There are 45 million uninsured people in America. That's 45 million too many. I believe that health care is a right, not a privilege. And that's why I have made health care my top priority as Governor.

Over the last four years, we have helped more than 850,000 people in Illinois get access to affordable health care. We made Illinois the first state in the nation to guarantee access to comprehensive health care for every child through our All Kids program, helping more than 255,000 children get the health care they need. All Kids makes comprehensive health insurance available to all children - regardless of family income - with parents paying monthly premiums and co-payments for doctor's visits and prescription drugs at affordable rates.

We expanded Family Care to provide coverage to an additional 210,000 adults. We created Illinois Cares Rx to fill in the holes in the federal Medciare Part D prescription drug program, helping 250,000 senior citizens afford the medicine their doctor prescribes.

As a result, Illinois is now ranked No. 1 by the Kaiser Family Foundation when it comes to providing access to affordable health care to working adults. It's why we're the most generous state when it comes to providing senior citizens with prescription drug coverage. It's why we became the first state to make safe, affordable prescription drugs from Europe and Canada widely available. We passed comprehensive medical malpractice reform, we launched a new effort to end the nursing shortage, and we've helped Illinois hospitals generate hundreds of millions of dollars in new funding.

I have also worked to reduce the Medicaid payment cycle. I inherited a health care debt of $2.2 billion and a 125-day payment cycle from the previous Republican administration. During the overtime session two years ago, the Republican legislators refused to fully fund health care expenditures. Through our efforts, we have reduced the payment cycle significantly and today it is under 50 days.

Starting in 2005 my administration implemented a series of cost savings initiatives that have dramatically reduced annual increase in the state's Medicaid program. This has resulted in a mere 1.4 percent growth in Medicaid bills - the sixth lowest nationwide, and the lowest rate of growth for Illinois since 1996.

My efforts to provide accessible affordable coverage for all stand in stark contrast to those of Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka. Treasurer Topinka's Medicaid cut plan, that would adopt block grants, would be devastating for the citizen of Illinois. Her proposed $2.9 billion of cuts would mean that 450,000 children or 275,000 parents or 44,500 persons with disability or 100,000 seniors would be cut off from service.

Block grants do not make financial sense; they are risky, unreliable and inflexible. The state is reimbursed by the Federal Government by a 50 percent match on every state dollar spent on Medicaid. Under our current system the federal government shares half of our Medicare costs. A block grant puts pressure on states to cut health care benefits, to no longer provide or cover medicine, to avoid covering the sickest and frailest, as recently seen in Missouri where the Governor cut 90,000 people off the health care roles.

I believe that as Governor, you can't just talk and talk about the things you want to do. You have to take action and if you truly believe in something, you have to use all of the tools at your disposal to do so. I have done that on an array of issues including my efforts to provide affordable accessible health care to children, seniors and working families in Illinois.

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