Obamacare poised to put the stake in the heart of Illinois' bankrupt Medicaid program

It isn't well-publicized, but the only reason Illinois was able to pay its Medicaid bills over the last three years was the vast spigot of "Stimulus" spending offered by you, the American taxpayer. And that money has officially run out.

With a state budget quagmire still complicating business, providers of health care services and products reimbursed by Medicaid are wondering what new plan Illinois officials will scrape together in the coming months to continue — or continue to delay — paying them.

The state has hundreds of millions of dollars in backlogged Medicaid bills, and its new fiscal year starts July 1. Officials can’t agree on a budget cure for the state’s ailing debt, and an $8.75 billion borrowing plan favored by Gov. Pat Quinn appears to be going nowhere.

Hospitals, doctors and nursing homes experienced some relief during the past two years because state officials started expediting reimbursements to them so the state could benefit from increased matching money offered by the federal stimulus package. But that increased money — and the incentive to pay on time — expires June 30.

So state officials are scrambling for a solution and may rely on a backup plan tested last fall that would “sell” Medicaid vendors’ debt to banks and financial institutions willing to front vendors the money they’re owed and wait to be repaid by the state... hospitals are being paid now in less than 60 days, but in the past the state has delayed payments as long as eight or nine months.

Far from creating jobs, $158 billion in "Stimulus" spending was used to help balance state budgets, of which Medicaid represents roughly a third.

And Obamacare is poised to make the Medicaid burden on states far, far worse.

So it's quite fitting that Obama's home state of Illinois will be the first domino to fall in the Democrats' bizarre, Soviet-style central planning exercise known throughout history as socialized medicine.