Health


The Shriver Center develops comprehensive policies that ensure adequate personal and family health care that is crucial to productive work and upward mobility. Health care is a right, not a privilege. We support national health care policies that ensure quality, affordable health care for all. We believe in progressive policies and the possibility that universal coverage may be accomplished in significant increments.

ARRA Impact on Illinois Health: Ways in which the stimulus package will impact health care policy in Illinois
National Health Care Reform 2009 (a quick course): What's at stake in the health care reform debate, what our options are, and how to get reform accomplished this year

PowerPoint Presentations

ARRA Impact on Illinois Health
Ways in which the stimulus package will impact health care policy in Illinois.

National Health Care Reform 2009 (a quick course)
What's at stake in the health care reform debate, what our options are, and how to get reform accomplished this year.

Getting Health Insurance and Health Care in Illinois
Information about All Kids, FamilyCare, and Moms & Babies, as well as how to enroll in all three.  Also included are guidelines on eligibility, from income caps to citizenship requirements.  

Court Preliminarily Approves Settlement of
Nationwide Medicare Prescription Drug Case,
Orders Notice to Class Members

On July 9, 2008, the federal court in San Francisco issued an order preliminarily approving settlement in Situ v. Leavitt, a nationwide class action challenging systemic problems encountered by 6.2 million individuals eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid whose poverty qualifies them for Medicare Part D's Low Income Subsidy and the corresponding nominal payments for their medications. Read more.

Story Collection & Newslettters

Story Collection

The Shriver Center collects stories from Illinois state residents that describes their experiences with the health care system. We are interested in all types of stories—positive stories, negative stories, stories about people who are uninsured, who are underinsured or who are on the verge of losing their medical coverage. We want to speak with people who are enrolled in publicly funded medical assistance programs as well as people who have group policies or individual policies through private insurance companies. We use these stories to highlight the need for cost controls, insurance reforms. All stories are kept confidential unless first cleared by the provider and patient. The Shriver Center’s intent is to show the reality of health care in Illinois. Our hope is that this reality will help Illinois celebrate, use and safeguard what already works and drive Illinois forward toward constant improvement and healthcare for all.

Share a Story!

Illinois Health Matters
Illinois Health Matters is a monthly Shriver Center newsletter that describes health care in Illinois through the stories of state residents. It is sent to over a thousand different supporters including health consumers, advocates, social workers, health care providers, and every member of the Illinois State General Assembly.

Health Care Expansion

A Move Towards Univeral Health Care
The Shriver Center continuously works to drive advocacy efforts forward with regards to our broader goal, healthcare for all! 

Background Materials on Family Care

The Power of Working with Community Organizations:
The Illinois FamilyCare Campaign
In 2002 the Illinois legislature passed FamilyCare, a program that offers health insurance coverage to tens of thousands of working parents in low-income families, many of whom recently left public assistance. The campaign for FamilyCare was led by an unusual and symbiotic alliance between the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty law and United Power for Action and Justice, a Chicago-area community organization. The allies brought different but complementary world views and skills that proved to be an effective combination offering lessons for future collaboration of lawyers and policy advocates with community organizers.

Recent Expansions
With SB5 stalled in the Senate  FamilyCare, Illinois Breast and Cervical Cancer Program (IBCCP), All Kids Bridge

Children's Health

Illinois Covers All Kids
Illinois residents should safeguard and celebrate All Kids, a strong, successful program that provides comprehensive, quality, affordable healthcare to all children regardless of their parent's income. When Illinois kids are healthy everybody wins!

The Path to Universal Health Coverage for Children in Illinois
Illinois's All Kids program provides health insurance to every child in Illinois regardless of income or status. With the passage of this program in November 2005, Illinois became the first state in the country to offer health insurance to literally every child. As other states and Congress consider, in the midst of persistent state and national fiscal troubles, whether to pursue the All Kids strategy to provide health coverage to all children, the path to All Kids in Illinois may be a useful case study.

Access and Delivery

Illinois Health Connect--Primary Care Case Management
A medical home is where patients go to see their Primary Care Provider. A medical home — a solo or group practice, clinic, or health center—houses a patient’s medical records.

Most Medicaid patients in Illinois are now required to select a medical home.

Illinois Health Connect Seminars.

Litigation to Improve Access to Health Care for Children: Lessons from Memisovski v. Maram
Memisovski v. Maram, a federal class action lawsuit on behalf of some 600,000 Cook County, Illinois, children receiving Medicaid, has led to improved ways of delivering health care services. In a bench trial plaintiffs used the state's own data to show the low level of care that the class received, showed through expert analysis of reimbursement rates how the state discouraged doctors from serving Medicaid children, and gave testimony from the children's parents about their difficult experience with health care. The court rejected the state's argument that plaintiffs had no enforceable rights and ruled that the state was out of compliance with the Medicaid Act. The parties then negotiated a consent decree of multiple approaches, including higher reimbursement rates, to ensure that children have access to and receive mandated health care services. This article, published in the May-June 2007 issue of Clearinghouse Review, outlines the history of the case.

Federal Court Finds That Illinois Has Failed to Provide Timely EPSDT Services to Medicaid-Eligible Children
This landmark Medicaid suit, challenging the Illinois Departments of Public Aid and Human Services' failure to provide adequate services to low-income children, went to trial in May 2004.

Ensuring Equal Access to Preventive Care for Illinois Children
This PowerPoint presentation describes the consent decree in Memisovski v. Maram and what it means for low-income children and health care providers in Illinois.

Medicaid Citizenship Documentation

Medicaid Citizenship Documentation

Federal Legislation

Medicare, Medicaid and SCHIP Extension Act of 2007

President Bush signed the Medicare, Medicaid and SCHIP Extension Act of 2007 on December 29, 2007, a health bill encompassing fairly straightforward extensions of federal health care assistance programs.