About the Healthcare Council
The purpose of the Healthcare Council is to develop and take actions to achieve affordable, accessible, efficient, high quality healthcare for the employers and residents of our state. The Council represents employers in seeking market-based approaches to help them provide affordable, quality healthcare coverage for their employees and works closely with providers to help strengthen Illinois' healthcare system.
Currently there are four Issue Committees that correspond to major initiatives for 2008:
- Coverage Expansion and Accountability
- Health Information Exchange Development
- Health Information Technology
- Legislative
Recent actions:
- The Council formed three new subcommittees, which grew out of discussions of the Health Transformation Exchange working group late last year. These three subcommittees are currently meeting and working on three separate initiatives the Council identified as part of its 2008 agenda. These three committees are as follows:
- Healthcare Legislative Symposium Steering Committee: This committee held a symposium in mid-April for legislators to offer a peer-to-peer discussion, highlighting innovative approaches to healthcare reforms that have been successfully implemented in other states.
- Primary Care Case Management Committee (PCCM): The goal of this committee is to generate ideas on how to improve Illinois’ current Medicaid PCCM (called Illinois Health Connect); identify benchmarks to measure the success of the PCCM; and translate ideas/benchmarks into reform legislation.
- Wellness Best Practices Clearinghouse Committee: The purpose of this committee is to gather resources and information on wellness programs/initiatives that can be centralized to help employers, specifically small to medium-size employers, identify healthcare ways to improve healthcare while reducing overall costs.
- The Council has crafted legislation as part of its 2008 agenda to authorize health plans to provide incentives to enrollees engaged in wellness programs to influence their health behavior. SB 2486 is sponsored by Senator Dan Kotowski and the identical HB 4940 is sponsored by Representative Frank Mautino. Both bill sponsors have committed to moving the legislation forward this year. For more details on the legislation, please click here to access our key legislation page.
Major Issues
- Continued Response to Governor’s coverage expansion proposal – The Governor has once again identified healthcare expansion as his priority for 2008. In his 2008 budget address, delivered on February 20th, the Governor announced that he would once again pursue a 3% payroll tax on employers of 10 employees or more who do not spend at least 4% of their payroll on healthcare coverage for those employees. The Governor’s office has estimated that the new tax would bring in approximately $417 million for Fiscal Year 2009 and by Fiscal Year 2010, businesses would be forced to pay $1 billion to pay for his proposed Illinois Covered program.
The General Assembly rejected the Governor’s Illinois Covered proposal last year, which prompted him to pursue a portion of that proposal- the expansion of Family Care- through administrative rule. The Joint Committee on Administrative Rule (JCAR) has continued to block implementation of that rule, but members of that committee have now introduced HB 6297 to implement that coverage expansion legislatively.
- Medicaid Reform/Hospital Assessment Program – Council Chairman Doug O’Brien testified on behalf of the Chamber before the Senate Appropriations Committee last fall concerning the future of the state’s Medicaid hospital assessment program. The Senate Appropriations Committee is continuing to hold hearings on the program, which in its current form, expires June 30, 2008. At the most recent hearing held earlier in February, the Committee approved a crucial $1.2 billion supplemental funding bill for hospitals for the current fiscal year. The full Senate recently approved that bill and it now awaits House and Gubernatorial action.
Council Chairman Doug O’Brien and the Chamber have continued to stress the importance of this program, but have also maintained that reauthorization efforts must address the underlying instability of the state’s Medicaid funding system.
Future Initiatives
- Best Practices Clearinghouse – The Council has already formed a separate committee to begin working on this effort, but the initiative will entail a more long-term goal of establishing a stand-alone website that can provide small- to medium-sized employers access to information on innovative health and wellness programs.
- Medicaid Reform – The Primary Care Case Management committee is currently working on pulling together ideas and recommendations that can address concerns of the administration’s ability to track Illinois Health Connect program data and provide effective reinvestment of any cost savings achieved. These ideas will help form the basis for legislation that can address larger Medicaid reform issues.
Council Leadership:
Council Chair: Doug O'Brien, Res Publica
Executive Director: Jack Bernhardt, Illinois Chamber
Members:
Leaders in healthcare such as hospitals, insurance companies, third party administrators, physicians, nurses, healthcare consultants, and both public and private associations representing consumers, providers, and employers
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