For More Information, Contact:

Janet Firshein or Joe Sutherland at 301/652-1558

FOR RELEASE WITH A.M. PAPERS ON

FRIDAY, JANUARY 30, 2004

NATIONAL REPORT PRAISES ILLINOIS FOR

NEW AWAKENING TO HEALTH CARE NEEDS

WASHINGTON, D.C. (January 30, 2004) – An assessment of health care in the 50 states, released here today, finds that although Illinois has not been a leader in children’s health in the past, it has now made that effort a priority. The report touts the state’s move in July 2003 to increase eligibility levels for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, opening it up to 20,000 additional children. This counters a national trend to confront the budget crisis by pulling back on children’s coverage. The article appears in the February 2004 issue of Governing magazine.

“Most of the states that are pulling back on children’s coverage are doing so in a way that can easily escape detection,” says Katherine Barrett, co-author of the report. “Instead of publicly lowering income levels for which children are covered, for example, they have made it more difficult to sign up for the coverage and have cut back on outreach to inform citizens of the benefits available to them. To their credit, Illinois and a handful of other states, have moved in the opposite direction.”

Illinois also received permission from the federal government to cover pre-natal care in its SCHIP program, expanding the numbers of pregnant women and fetuses covered by 41,000. About a half dozen states have gone down this path, although other states are wary because it implies an acceptance of the legal rights of the fetus.

On the negative side, the report shows that the state has work to do in bringing down the rate of uninsured children and adults. Both lag behind other Midwestern states, according to data provided by the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured. Illinois also continues to be unbalanced in its funding of long-term care services, the authors found. Some 81.8 percent of Illinois’ Medicaid spending in this area goes to institutional care as opposed to home or community-based care, a figure that is considerably higher than in most other states.

Governing’s analysis of state-funded health care is part of the Government Performance Project, a six-year-old effort, funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, to evaluate a wide range of state government management and policy functions. This year’s special report focuses on six critical health care problems facing states: long-term care, public health, mental health, prescription drugs, access to care for the uninsured, and care for children.

The Government Performance Project found and documented the inability of the 50 states’ health care system to deliver improvements in medicine fairly and consistently to many of their citizens. Health care in most states is not just inadequate, the study concluded--it’s deteriorating. “After exhaustive analysis and hundreds of interviews,” says Peter Harkness, Governing’s publisher and editor, “it became clear that there is a health care crisis in America. But it is in no way a medical crisis. It is a fiscal crisis.”

Governing is a policy and management magazine aimed at high-level state and local government officials. An online version of this report will be available at http://www.governing.com/gpp/2004/intro.htm as of January 29. Press releases for each of the 50 states can be found at http://www.governing.com/gpp/2004/press.htm.

###