Health Policy Expert Endorses Governor Blagojevich’s Illinois Covered Plan

Kenneth Thorpe, former deputy assistant secretary for health policy in the Clinton administration, last month released a report detailing how Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s Illinois Covered plan would yield a net savings of nearly $9 billion between 2008 and 2011 for Illinois families and businesses.

Thorpe’s Estimated Savings to Employers and Workers Under the Illinois Covered Plan predicts what Illinois’s health care system will look like in four years if the system is unchanged. Thorpe finds that if no changes are made, in 2011 employers will spend 10.25 percent of payroll on health care expenditures, employees will collectively have spent $4.4 billion on health care premiums over the next four years, health care costs will have grown more than twice as fast as wage inflation, and there will be an additional 500,000 uninsured Illinoisans by 2010—bringing the total of uninsured to 2.3 million. According to Thorpe, who is a professor of health policy management at Emory University, this spike in the number of uninsured will shift costs to those with insurance and increase private health insurance expenditures by 9 percent.

Thorpe outlines each initiative in Governor Blagojevich’s Illinois Covered plan and projects a 9 percent savings on premiums following the full implementation of the program in 2011: 3.8 percent savings from Roadmap to Health, a program aimed at improving preventive care and the management of chronic illnesses; 2.5 percent savings from Electronic Records and Information Technology, a mandate to institute electronic medical records and to improve technological resources; and 2.7 percent savings from Reduction in Cost Shifting, due to the reduction in the number of uninsured Illinoisans.

Thorpe emphasizes the necessity for health care reform in Illinois not only because medical coverage for the uninsured is needed but also because millions of Illinoisans are financially threatened by job layoffs, benefit cutbacks, and skyrocketing medical bills. If Illinois Covered is adopted, Illinoisans covered on the private market can expect to save $675 for an individual contract and $1,775 for a family policy.

Thorpe’s final argument is that Illinois Covered is good for business. His report demonstrates that businesses will save nearly $2.5 billion by 2011 due to reduced cost sharing and reasonable regulation of the insurance industry.

Estimated Savings concludes that Governor Blagojevich’s Illinois Covered plan will accrue $8.4 billion in net savings and that each $1 of public revenues spent on Illinois Covered will generate more than $2 in new health care savings mainly through reduced growth of health insurance premiums paid by Illinois businesses, families, and individuals.

To learn more about Thorpe’s report, visit http://www.americasagenda.org/. To learn more about Illinois Covered, visit http://www.illinoiscovered.com/. To learn more about what you can do to support Governor Blagojevich’s Illinois Covered plan, visit http://www.povertylaw.org//advocacy/health/illinoiscovered.html.