Illinois continues to fall farther and farther behind on its overdue bills. And a new report says payments for employee health insurance costs will be delayed by an additional 70 days. The Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability says a proposed cut to state workers health insurance programs will force the state to drag out payments even further. Illinois is already 218 days late on medical payments, and it's not likely to get any better. "If the state can't pay its regular bills how is it going to pay the bills plus interest, so that is a concern." State Senator Dave Syverson says the Governor's office has promised to pay high interest rates on overdue state employee medical bills. To prevent healthcare providers from cutting off care. But he says that may not be enough to convince a hospital's lender. "How long will the banks allow that kind of practice before they say, you know what, we don't feel confident giving you six months or seven months in advance of the payments." Swedish American Hospital says the state owes it 30 million dollars. And that's not an easy amount to ignore. "Should they continue to withhold payments, in fact they're looking at going a whole year, it could be very difficult for us." DeWane says without that money, the hospital can't invest extra cash. Or make major improvements. "There have been a lot of things that we want to do that we couldn't and really we feel, there are things we should be doing for our population and we just can't." And Syverson says lawmakers will be forced to make unpopular cuts when they build the budget. "Very difficult, adult decision have to be made in Illinois, will they make them, I don't know." Under the current proposed budget, the state has no money to start paying back its nine point five billion dollar backlog of bills.
http://mystateline.com/fulltext-news?nxd_id=330272
That is $9.5 Billion in unpaid bills with no plan on any way to repay them. Just wait folks for Obamacare and see that number in our state alone EXPLODE.
