Illinois freezing enrollment for noncitizen health care program

Beginning July 1, the HBIA program, for people between the ages of 42 to 64, will not take new enrollees. HFS said it would also close enrollment before July 1 if the number of individuals enrolled in the program reaches 16,500.

The enrollment stoppage will not affect anyone who is already enrolled in the program and remains eligible for coverage, HFS said in the statement.

HFS will also put in place co-pays for HBIA and HBIS enrollees for hospital services when they are not eligible for federal match. Program participants would pay a $250 co-pay for inpatient visits, $100 for emergency room visits and 10% co-insurance for any outpatient treatment at a hospital or ambulatory surgery center.

The program would limit rates paid to large public hospitals, as well.

“Any large public hospitals that receive payments in excess of the rates paid to non-large public hospitals shall be required to reimburse the state for any excess payment in a method and amount determined by the department,” the statement said.

Immigrant rights advocates condemned the plan.

“This decision will inevitably be at a greater cost to Illinois taxpayers,” Ald. Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez, 33rd, said in a statement. “This is because noncitizens will more than likely end up in the emergency room since they were denied preventative care.”

Rodriguez-Sanchez is chair of the Chicago City Council’s 15-member Latino Caucus.

The health care advocacy group Healthy Illinois said Gov. J.B. Pritzker was turning his back on communities and slashing life-saving health care.

The coalition “calls on Gov. Pritzker to reverse his decision immediately and work in good faith with advocates and members of the Illinois General Assembly to ensure that health care truly is a right, not a privilege, in our state,” Healthy Illinois said in a statement.

It called the move “immoral and fiscally short-sighted,” echoing in the statement what it said were Pritzker’s own words: “We save money when we invest in health care for undocumented immigrants. . . .If they don’t get basic health care, they end up in an emergency room and we all end up paying for that at a much highest cost than if we have regular care and preventative care for people.”

HFS said in its statement that changes were needed to keep within the budgeted amount for the next year’s budget, beginning July 1.

Costs for immigrant care programs have already ballooned from what was expected, and estimates of unchecked spending for the next fiscal year topped $1.2 billion. The cost of the program for noncitizens, who cannot be covered by traditional Medicaid, were a major sticking point in Illinois General Assembly negotiations around the 2024 budget.

HFS said that compared with the traditional Medicaid population, enrollment and costs have been higher among the HBIA and HBIS-enrolled populations due to more prevalent, untreated chronic conditions and higher hospital costs.

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