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Gov. JB Pritzker’s administration vastly underestimated the cost and popularity of a pair of health insurance programs for immigrants who are not citizens that has ended up costing the state $1.6 billion since the initiative began in 2020, according to an audit report released Wednesday. The audit report is here.
Summary and audio linked here.
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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Another Illinois clusterf#ck? Say it isn’t so!
Illegal aliens in possession of SS numbers. DOJ, HHS, and DOGE need to find these criminals and who helped them.
The Feds need to subpoena all these records to identify the noncitizens, then ICE needs to pay each of them a visit.
The reports by Illinois Auditor General Frank Mautino’s office who still hasn’t produced ACFR?? Maybe are heroic highest paid in nation AFSCME state workers are understaffed as they heroically work remotely from home (they just won in latest JB contract) in between playing fantasy football, napping, etc on the taxpayer dime….
All while JB’s announcing additional medical debt relief for 170,000 for an additional $220 mil!!! who can keep up with where all the $100’s of millions are going?
https://www.riverbender.com/news/details/gov-pritzker-announces-medical-debt-erased-for-170000-additional-illinois-residents-80069.cfm?
It would be good to have access to the Cayman Island bank accounts.
As the riverbender article reports, medical debt relief is actually a good investment right now. Taxpayers spent $2 million to cover $345 million in debt. These are debts which have been sold to collection agencies, who may be willing to settle for 1% of the face value amount rather than get nothing. But I would be surprised if the favorable situation continues.
And who holds the bag? The patients who didn’t incur these costs and have to pay higher costs to make it up. This is another slush fund.
If this is “negligence,” when does it become criminal? If this is based on actuarial studies, what are the liabilities of the actuaries or of those who provided the assumptions? Did Pritzker sign the legislation? What are his fiduciary duties and is he personally liable? Few others in or out of government could afford it although professionals do have liability insurance and licenses. If police officers can be charged with murder and jailed, why can’t other government officials be liable for “equity and inclusion” in the downside?
Certainly something beyond negligence. Willful fraud on the taxpayers.
So are all the improperly enrolled going to be forced off the program? Jumbo JB is really being exposed lately in so many ways.
Please change the name you use.
So you let someone post over and over on here about Miller coming out of JB’s fat rolls but my name is not OK? So stupid.
We ask them regularly to cool it, too, and block the worst of them. And, Ben, we also block people who use multiple names.
To be clear, I try to be satirical in mocking Miller’s absurd attempts at “Journalism” and his laughable screeds disguised as ‘news’. Various news outlets pay Miller to write articles, but that doesn’t make him a journalist. A true journalist is unbiased and factual and vastly unlike the Democrat press release regurgitations of Miller. For decades, Miller reliably supported anything and everything of Mike Madigan, but quickly, shamelessly, obediently changed his muse to Pritzker once things went sour with Madigan. He is unable to journalistically survive without a benefactor. Or a host. Like a tick, a leech, a tapeworm. I… Read more »
Miller produces propaganda on behalf of the regime. It’s not even bias. He’s the blogger mouthpiece for the Democrat Party. It’s called Capital Fax because it used to be a daily fax that went out to paying customer to report to mainly Chicagoans what the party line news in Springfield was, because Springfield is really an entire world away from Chicago in so many ways. He gets away with it because there is so little interest in Illinois politics. My twitter feed has several prolific Illinois politics posters and there’s several dozen comments and likes per post. Wirepoints website here… Read more »
Will the taxpayer’s money be clawed back and the criminals spend time in prison? And the administrators that enabled this malfeasance.
Observance of laws has not been a strong feature of Illinois jurisprudence. Thanks Soros. Immunity and elected judges add to the difficulties of enforcement — plus who wants to pay the lawyers to run a test case? Seems to me there are some “equity actions” where at least no jury would be involved. I know that many actuaries ask muni officials to provide the actuarial assumptions, so their engagement letters probably have some exculpatory clauses to overcome if problems are actuarial. Most pension actuaries hold FSA certificates which I think are federally issued so there might be a federal nexus… Read more »
FSA = Fellow Society of Actuaries, not part of the government
Enrolled Actuary – deal with pensions, part of accreditation process is under the Dept of Treasury. Perhaps Mary Pat can give a better explanation
Correction noted and appreciated. There are provisions for complaints against “enrolled” actuaries found in IRS FAQ’s at http://www.irs.gov · tax-professionals · enrolled-actuaries IF state and municipal actuaries are enrolled (as seems likely) then a stumbling block might be encountered if the IRS chooses to deflect complaints involving non-ERISA plans. However, if such actuaries are in fact using unreasonable actuarial assumptions provided by public employees or unions, there might be grounds to censure the actuaries based on their professionalism. As a private sector retiree, I don’t have a dog in the fight other than as an unhappy taxpayer but someone somewhere might… Read more »
Mark,
When does this become actionable in a court?
I think that would be a long way away, but I want to think about it more. The lying that was done initially is astonishing. The cost of the first tranche of of migrants covered was 94X the estimates provided by its sponsor, Dalia Ramirez, who is now in US Congress. I wrote about it at the time:https://wirepoints.org/new-report-exposes-growing-billion-dollar-budget-fiasco-in-illinois-free-medicaid-program-for-undocumented-immigrants-wirepoints/
I love the phrase and concept of “clawback”. As an Illinois taxpayer the visceral nature of it gives me hope for the future.
There will be no political accountability. But the federal funds will likely stop flowing soon enough, which will quickly put the state into a financial crisis. Especially if the SCOTUS rules that all federal funds can be withheld because it’s too difficult to parse out what goes to illegals and what doesn’t, so until the sanctuary policies are over, no federal funds will flow.