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The General Assembly left Springfield in May and left behind a $1 billion pile of unpaid Medicaid bills. Though Medicaid has received much attention, there remains a "mythology" about it, according to Lawrence B. Joseph and Henry S. Webber, two researchers at the University of Chicago. Their report, "Medicaid Myths and Realities," is the source of the charts on this page.
Medicaid myths, they contend, are based on such misperceptions as: Most of the money is spent on welfare families;
spending is "out of control"; and spending on Medicaid has elbowed out other programs, such as education.
The study found that low-income families account for only 30 percent of Medicaid spending though they account for 70 percent of clients. People with disabilities accounted for nearly half of the Medicaid spending in 1994. Figure 2 also shows that poor people who qualified for no other aid had lost medical aid by 1994 after General Assistance was eliminated. Also, the study showed that yearly growth in Illinois Medicaid spending rose an average of 11 percent between 1983 and 1994, compared to an annual growth rate nationally of 14 percent.
Donald Sevener
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