Illinois is notorious for government corruption. Since 1976, the state has the third highest corruption convictions in the nation, including four out of the last 7 governors.
Chicago has been called “the most corrupt city in America.” A report by the University of Illinois-Chicago and the Better Government Association revealed that 150 top Cook County officials have been convicted in public corruption cases.
So it should come as no surprise that a program such as the state Medicaid program, which is to provide the base of expansion for Obamacare, is also corrupt and the people running it are at a minimum incompetent, according to an column by Scott Reeder in Friday’s Rockford Register Star.
According to Mr. Reeder, you can walk into a state government office; pick up $5000 in benefits from the Medicaid program without any verification of whether you qualify for the money!
Excerpt:
Folks who apply for the health insurance program, which is reserved for low-income Illinoisans, are granted the coverage, but not enough has been done to ensure that recipients are answering questions truthfully to determine whether they really qualify.
For some, basic questions are never verified, including: How much do applicants really earn? Do they really live in Illinois? Are they U.S. citizens?
The Illinois Auditor General discovered that about 60% of the first group inspected for qualifications weren’t eligible for Medicaid and that there were probably 300,000 that should be removed from the Medicaid rolls.
If these people were removed from Medicaid it could save $350M. The state Medicaid programs are the basis for Obamacare in states where Medicaid is being expanded.
Excerpt:
“Eligibility here in Illinois is broader than in most of our neighboring states,” said Jonathan Ingram, a senior fellow at the Illinois Policy Institute. “So it makes it attractive for people to enroll here who actually live elsewhere.”
Also, he said, little is done to weed out citizens from other countries unlawfully residing in the U.S. from being a part of the Medicaid system — for which they are not eligible.
Can you believe the way the people in this state will continue to vote for these Chicago Democrats that have run this state into the ground for years?
Now, the state public employee unions are objecting an outside firm with the experience and resources to come into the state and verify qualifications of recipients of Medicaid in Illinois. The unions think that AFSCME ought to do the work – more union dues.
The state had hired a Virginia firm to do the job, but an arbitrator has ruled that the state should hire more union workers from the state – the same public union who enrolled the ineligible Medicaid beneficiaries in the first place – only in Illinois!