Illinois

Illinois lawmakers brace for possible federal cuts to Medicaid

Published

12 months ago

March 5, 2025

Illinois lawmakers brace for possible federal cuts to Medicaid

SPRINGFIELD — Health care advocates, hospital officials and people who rely on Medicaid for their medical coverage warned state lawmakers Wednesday of consequences that could result from proposed cuts in federal Medicaid funding.

The video in the player above is from a previous report.

“This is it. This is absolutely it. This is the line,” said Carrie Chapman, senior director of litigation and advocacy at Legal Council for Health Justice, a Chicago-based advocacy group. “Medicaid stays or goes as the program that we’ve know it right now.”

Chapman was among nearly a dozen people who spoke Wednesday to an Illinois House budget committee that oversees spending for human services, including Medicaid, the public health insurance program that covers about 3.4 million lower-income people in Illinois.

Established in 1965 alongside Medicare, the federally funded health insurance program for seniors, Medicaid has traditionally targeted lower-income pregnant women, children, seniors, parents, and people with disabilities. In Illinois, the federal government pays approximately 51% of the cost of covering those individuals’ care.

However, with passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, Medicaid eligibility was expanded to include working-age adults with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty level. Approximately 770,000 people in that category are covered by Illinois Medicaid and the federal government pays 90% of the cost for that expansion group.

Currently, according to the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services, Medicaid pays for about half of all child births in Illinois and two-thirds of all nursing home days. Nearly 50% of Illinoisians living with HIV are covered by Medicaid, as well as almost 80% of people served by community mental health centers.

All told, according to the state comptroller’s office, Illinois spent about $36.9 billion on Medicaid in the fiscal year that ended June 30. Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services Director Lizzie Whitehorn said about 62% of total state Medicaid spending comes from the federal government.

At issue was a budget resolution that recently passed the Republican-controlled U.S. House in Washington, which calls for deep cuts in federal spending. Part of that resolution calls on the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which has jurisdiction over Medicaid, to cut $880 billion from the federal budget deficit over the next 10 years.

Because Medicaid makes up a large part of all the programs the Energy and Commerce Committee oversees, many have assumed that cuts of that size would have to include substantial cuts to Medicaid.

“There’s no way they can cut that much out of the federal budget without touching Medicaid, because Medicaid is such a substantial portion of the discretionary funds that they have access to,” Rep. Anna Moeller, D-Elgin, who chairs the legislative appropriations committee, said after the hearing.

Whitehorn noted that the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act resulted in cutting the state’s uninsured rate in half and reducing the amount of uncompensated care delivered in Illinois by more than a third.

“Federal cuts would mean we have to limit services or eligibility,” she told the committee. “And we don’t have the money as a state to make up the difference.”

A.J. Wilhelmi, president and CEO of the Illinois Health and Hospital Association, described the list of proposals being considered in Washington as “both sweeping and shocking.” He said they include turning federal Medicaid spending into a block grant to states, establishing per capita caps on Medicaid benefits, and eliminating certain funding mechanisms, known as provider taxes, that are used to draw down additional federal matching funds to support the cost of operating hospitals.

“And make no mistake, there would be no hospital Medicaid program without hospital provider taxes,” he said.

Last month, Gov. JB Pritzker laid out a $55.2 billion budget proposal to the Democratic-controlled General Assembly to fund state government operations over the 2026 fiscal year, which begins July 1. In his budget address, however, he noted the uncertainty of various streams of federal funds that are used to help pay the cost of many state operations, including Medicaid.

Rep. Bob Morgan, D-Deerfield, who serves on the committee, said Wednesday that the decision about future federal Medicaid funding is in the hands of the Republican-controlled Congress. He urged GOP members of the General Assembly to use their influence to persuade the three Illinois Republicans in the U.S. House to vote against cutting Medicaid funding.

“So I’ll just close with my request to the minority spokesmen and the minority members of this committee to come back in a week to share with this entire committee those letters and those emails and those texts in discussion with us about the things they have done to make sure that the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate and the president do not make these horrible, horrible, damaging, life-impacting cuts to our Medicaid system,” he said.

Republicans on the panel argued that the subject of federal budget negotiations was beyond the scope of the state legislative committee’s purview and suggested Wednesday’s hearing was more about partisan politics than solving the state’s budget issues.

“And so this, I think, is performative,” said Rep. William Hauter, R-Morton. “We don’t know what will happen. There’s a lot of things that we have no control over, budget negotiations going on at the national level.”

Moeller argued the hearing was more than a stage show, noting that Congress faces a March 14 deadline to pass a bill to renew federal spending authority or face a partial shutdown of the federal government.

“This hearing this morning is far more than performative,” she said. “We are going to be heading into our budget cycle, our budget making process, with huge uncertainty hanging over our heads. What happens on March 15, in the next few weeks, in Washington, D.C., will have a direct impact on the level of funding that we will have available for all of these important programs.”

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

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Illinois

2 men shot, 1 fatally, outside bar in Morris, police say

Published

3 hours ago

March 2, 2026

Press Room

2 men shot, 1 fatally, outside bar in Morris, police say

MORRIS, Ill. (WLS) — A man was killed and another was injured in a shooting outside of a bar in Grundy County.

The shooting happened early Saturday outside of Clayton’s Tap in the 100 block of West Washington Street in Morris, Illinois, officials said.

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The Grundy County Sheriff’s Office responded to the scene, where they found two men with gunshot wounds. One was pronounced dead at the scene and the other was taken to a hospital in critical condition.

The victim who died was identified by the Grundy County Coroner’s Office as 35-year-old Julian Rosario of Channahon.

A suspect in the shooting, 22-year-old Marshall Szpara of Seneca, was arrested and “initially charged with two counts of aggravated battery with a firearm, pending further review from the Grundy County States Attorney’s office,” Morris police said.

No further information was available.

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Illinois

Firefighter faces arson charges after Illinois wildfire burns hundreds of acres

Published

15 hours ago

March 1, 2026

Press Room

Firefighter faces arson charges after Illinois wildfire burns hundreds of acres

A volunteer firefighter is facing arson charges after he allegedly set a fire in a Lee County wildlife preserve, scorching hundreds of acres.

According to authorities, 21-year-old Trent Schaefer, a volunteer firefighter in Ohio, Illinois, was charged with one count of arson in connection to a fire that occurred in the Green River State Wildlife Management Area Friday.

On that date, temperatures had soared into the 60s, winds were whipping at more than 30 miles per hour, and humidity plunged below 30%, leading the National Weather Service to issue warnings on the danger of wildfires in Illinois.

It is alleged that Schaefer was seen by witnesses getting out of a vehicle and igniting multiple small fires within the nature preserve, which then coalesced into a larger blaze.

Those witnesses were able to restrain the suspect until Lee County sheriff’s deputies arrested him.

Image taken by Lee County Sheriff’s Office

By the time firefighters arrived on scene the blaze had already spread, and multiple departments were called in to assist with the fire, including the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

Firefighters were able to bring the blaze under control by the late afternoon, but not before it burned more than 700 acres, according to authorities.

Schaefer is also a suspect in several other arsons around Lee County, but he has not been charged in any other fires at this time.

Illinois State Police are assisting with the investigation, and no further information was immediately available.

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Illinois

Who is running for Illinois governor in 2026? What to know as primary Early Voting sites open

Published

1 day ago

March 1, 2026

Press Room

Who is running for Illinois governor in 2026? What to know as primary Early Voting sites open

With Election Day for the 2026 Primary quickly approaching, many voters are considering who to mark their support for when they cast their ballot.

There are several big races on the ballot, including the gubernatorial race that has the potential to make history.

Though rumors are swirling that sitting Governor J.B. Pritzker has his eyes on a potential run for president in 2028, he’s still in the running for re-election. If he retains his seat, he’ll be the first Democratic governor to secure a third term in office in Illinois history.

While Pritzker is the only Democrat aiming for governor on the ballot, there is a slew of Republican candidates vying for a face-off with the incumbent in November.

Voters with their mind made up on which candidate they support can head to their local early voting site to cast their ballot before Election Day.

Though downtown sites and some across the suburbs have been open since early February, early voting sites will open in all 50 of Chicago’s and in several suburb on Monday, March 2.

For those still deciding how to mark their ballot, here’s a look at the gubernatorial candidates.

Democrats:

Governor J.B. Pritzker and Christian Mitchell

Current Governor of Illinois J.B. Pritzker is taking aim at a third term, promising to continue building on the work of his first two terms. According to his campaign website, some of his intentions for a third term include “[tackling] the affordability crisis,” continuing to protect access to reproductive health care in Illinois, and investing in education.

Chrisitan Mitchell is running alongside Pritzker for lieutenant governor. After representing the 26th District in the Illinois House of Representatives from 2013 to 2019, Mitchell served as deputy governor to Pritzker from 2019 to 2023. Mitchell led efforts to ban assault weapons, make Illinois a leader in clean energy and create jobs through infrastructure projects as deputy governor, according to his campaign bio.

Republicans:

Ted Dabrowski and Dr. Carrie Mendoza

Ted Dabrowski is a Wilmette resident and former president of Wirepoints, a media outlet focused on conservative economic policies and financial data. From 2011 to 2017, Dabrowski worked as a spokesperson and Vice President of Policy at the Illinois Policy Institute, a right-leaning think tank.

Dabrowski, who has never previously held political office, aims to cut and cap property tax rates, veto any and all tax increases, and repeal both Illinois’ sanctuary laws and zero-emissions energy policy, according to his campaign website.

“We must return power to the people, remove barriers to prosperity, embrace educational freedom, push political power down to its lowest level and restore the rule of law,” his campaign website says.

Dr. Carrie Mendoza, a Chicago-native with more than 25 years of experience as a physician, is running to be Dabrowski’s lieutenant governor, according to her campaign biography. Like Dabrowski, Mendoza has never held political office. Her campaign biography says she is “driven by innovation and a passion for justice.”

James Mendrick and Dr. Robert Renteria

The first Republican candidate to enter the race, DuPage County Sheriff James Mendrick is campaigning on a push for public safety initiatives.

Sheriff since 2018, Mendrick has partnered with DuPage County Health Department to provide Medicated Assisted Treatment to inmates fighting opioid addiction and advocated for the use of a drug deactivation pouch system to protect people and the state’s waterways from dangerous medications, according to his campaign website.

“He is committed to ending soft-on-crime policies, defending parental rights, and delivering quality education to every child in the state,” his campaign website says.

Dr. Roberta Renteria veteran of the U.S. Army and is a prolific author and activist, according to his campaign biography.

“Dr. Renteria uses his personal story, business acumen and leadership skills to address bullying, gangs, violence, drugs, suicides and school dropout,” his campaign biography says. His books and curriculums are taught in 25 countries around the world, and he has given many Ted Talks.

Darren Bailey and Aaron Del Mar

Former state senator Darren Bailey, who unsuccessfully ran for governor of Illinois in 2022, is giving another go at assuming the political seat. A third-generation downstate farmer, Bailey’s campaign is focused on reducing government spending, cutting taxes, and cracking down on crime, according to his campaign website.

In addition to his farm work, Bailey founded a private Christian school with his wife Cindy.

He fought against spending, raising taxes and sanctuary state policies while in the Illinois House and later in the State Senate.

Aaron Del Mar is an entrepreneur who became the youngest-ever Councilman for the Village of Palatine at 29 years old in 2016. He oversees public safety and infrastructure and guides community organizations in the position, according to his campaign biography.

Rick Heidner and Christina Neitzke-Troike

Though businessman Rick Heidner has never held office, he has led several notable companies, including Gold Rush Gaming, Ricky Rocket’s Fuel Centers, Prairie State Energy, and Heidner Properties, according to his campaign website.

A lifelong Illinoisian, Heidner is “running to make Illinois safe again, affordable again, and full of opportunity again,” his website says.

Christina Neitzke-Troike is looking to step up into the lieutenant governor seat from her current role as Mayor of Homer Glen after nearly two decades in several elected positions.

Neitzke-Troike hopes to bring her “unparalleled understanding of how state mandates affect local budgets, property taxes, and public services” to Springfield, according to her campaign biography.

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