Illinois elected to participate in the great Medicaid Expansion implemented by the health care reform law. It is not going well.
"Unprecedented demand for the taxpayer-funded coverage caught the state flat-footed."
A family of four with an income of 31k or so was suddenly eligible for Medicaid. (And in fact would be routed to Medicaid by the Healthcare.gov website.) Of course there was "unprecedented demand". It was an unprecedented law. People dropped the private plans they had been paying for, and piled into Medicaid.
Anyway, Illinois is failing to get all these people properly registered. They expected 20,000 new enrollees but have 40,000 trying so far, and there's no "open enrollment" cutoff date for Medicaid so people can just keep signing up, if qualified. Well, they can sign up if the state could only handle the volume.
Well, at least it's not a private company mishandling this process in order to profit from the misfortunes of others!
Public choice theory predicts that the state
hides motives that aren't all that great.
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