For Immediate Release
October 2, 2002 

More Than One Hundred State Candidates Pledge to Restore Medicaid Funding to Illinois Nursing Home Residents

(CHICAGO) – Concerned health care workers, families and senior citizens representing over 80,000 nursing home residents are urging lawmakers and political candidates to sign the "Commitment to Care," a pledge to restore $110 million cut in Medicaid funding to Illinois nursing homes. Already, more than 100 state candidates have signed the pledge, vowing to restore this Medicaid funding during the next upcoming legislative session. Several state candidates will add their signatures at 10 a.m. on Thursday, October 3 at Warren Barr Pavilion, 66 W. Oak Street in Chicago.

Candidates signing the pledge at the press conference include Senator Ira Silverstein, D-8, Chicago; Senator Terry Link, D-30, Vernon Hills; Representative Lou Lang, D-16, Skokie; Representative William Delgado, D-3, Chicago; Representative John Fritchey, D-11, Chicago; Senate candidate Jeff Schoenberg, D-9, Wilmette; Senate candidate Michael Minton, D-27, Inverness; Senate candidate Robert Dallas, R-4, Chicago; House candidate Marc Brown, R-58, Deerfield; House candidate Elizabeth Hernandez, D-24, Cicero; House candidate Chris Wong, R-5, Chicago; House candidate Steve Bruesewitz, D-54, St. Charles; House candidate Fannie Kazi Taylor, R-14, Chicago; House candidate Elaine Nekritz, D-57, Northbrook; and House candidate Catherine Watson, R-38, Park Forest.

In addition, Reverend Carl Zimmerman, CEO of Lifelink Corporation, Bensenville, and nursing home resident Sylvia Howard, Westmont Convalescent Center, will be speaking at the conference about the devastating impact of the Medicaid cut.

The state legislature‘s $110 million budget reduction in Medicaid went into effect July 1. Because two-thirds of the total state nursing home population receives Medicaid, the cut will affect more than 50,000 residents and the facilities that serve them.

This comes at a time when Illinois boasts one of the ten largest economies in the country. Yet, with this cut to Medicaid, Illinois now ranks as 48^th in the nation for funding to nursing home residents – 27 percent below the national average.

"State legislators must recognize that a priority of government is to help those citizens who cannot help themselves," said Terrence Sullivan, Executive Director, Illinois Council on Long Term Care. "When tough budget decisions have to be made, the priority is for people not pork, caring not cement. When faced with a choice between building a community swimming pool and providing a nurse at the bedside of an elderly person, our current administration and legislature made the wrong choice."

Nursing home employees are taking care of more complex and needy patients than ten years ago. With more technology and more staff, the cost of caring for nursing home residents has risen in the past nine years twice as fast as what the state pays through Medicaid. In those nine years, costs of caring for residents have risen 61 percent while Medicaid rates have gone up only 31 percent. That kind of cost pressure affects jobs, wages, benefits and care for residents.

"The state budget should not be balanced on the backs of the frail and elderly nursing home residents of Illinois," said Ronald Walski, President of the Service Employees International Union, Local 4. "These nursing home residents represent our mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, people who have worked all of their lives to build our families, our neighborhoods and our country. The state has the moral obligation to make good on its social promise to take care of these individuals. By cutting $110 million to Medicaid, the state is turning its back on its most frail and vulnerable citizens."

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