PolicyGuy

Thursday, July 31, 2003


Illinois Freeloads off Pharmacists
Here's another reason why Medicaid needs reforming: it's gotten to large that it is threatening the livelihood of small business owners.

According to the Springfield Journal-Register, the state of Illinois has $2 billion-plus in outstanding Medicaid bills, going back to March. The Journal-Register tells the story of a Springfield-area pharmacist, John Watt, who has been an unwilling banker to the state. The state is now in arrears to the tune of $200,000. He has had to take out loans and even a second mortage on his house to keep his business afloat--now that he's floating money to the state--and has had to stop taking new Medicaid patients.

Drug chain giant Walgreens, meanwhile, says that the state owes that company "tens and tens of millions of dollars."

(Thanks to Greg Blankenship of A New Can of Worms for the pointer.)

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"Justice Louis D. Brandeis'?s metaphor of the states as "laboratories" for policy experiments ... had almost nothing to do with federalism and everything to do with his commitment to scientific socialism. .... To this day, it continues to inhibit a truly experimental, federalist politics." -- Michael S. Greve

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