Illinois Labor Law News: Health Care
Posted by Mark Hathaway, Human Resource Advisory Department
http://blog.laborlawcenter.com
That Governor Rod R. Blagojevich didn’t stop at just reforming the Prevailing Wage Act or the workers’ comp system in Illinois. He and the state legislator, as well as business leaders and union organization leaders in the state of Illinois has sought to also change how health care is done by employers in the state.
What they have done is essentially attempted to expand the health care system in Illinois for all working families. The estimates are that since Governor Rod R. Blagojevich took office earlier in the new century, more than 313,000 men, women and children have received new health care benefits thanks to the KidCare and FamilyCare health care programs in Illinois.
These laws are ways for the state to pay for working families who do not necessarily get health care coverage through the employers to get the health care coverage through the state of Illinois. The Kaiser Foundation, a non profit think tank type organization, actually has rated Illinois before, thanks to these two systems, as the best state in the whole United States for providing health care to people who need it but otherwise couldn’t get it.
Health care, as we all know well, is a major issue facing every employer in the state of Illinois in the whole country. Health care costs continue to keep going up, and projections according to the experts have costs in the future pointed in the same direction, despite the good effects that tort reform in certain states is having on medical malpractice lawsuits.
Governor Rod R. Blagojevich, with his initiatives and those of the legislature, are helping to minimize the effects of these high costs, by providing health care to employees who cannot get insurance from their employers because of those high prices. Stay tuned for whether or not this progress continues in Illinois, and is repeated by other states.
