Legislators thwart Blagojevich's health care end run

CHICAGO -- Gov. Rod Blagojevich's emergency government health care expansion was blocked Tuesday by lawmakers who doubted the emergency and questioned his motivation.

Undaunted, the administration said it would continue to pursue expansion of its Family Care program to offer government-subsidized coverage to more parents and caretakers of children.

Repeatedly rebuffed in his attempts to expand state health care rolls, the Democratic governor recently has taken it upon himself to try to force the issue on lawmakers.

His latest effort was to declare a state of emergency, immediately expanding eligibility to include families making upward of $83,000 annually, and then see if an obscure panel of lawmakers would block the move.

They did.

Democratic state Rep. Lou Lang of Skokie accused the governor of trying to circumvent the General Assembly by using President Bush as the fall guy. Nearly 20,000 Illinois parents could lose government coverage because Bush recently vetoed an extension of a federal health care program. The president argued it had strayed too far from its initial goal of insuring children.

"The whole purpose of this is to use the president's veto of the children's health care plan in a way that would enable him to try to broaden health care in Illinois, which is a noble goal, but broaden health care in a way that end runs the General Assembly, and we're just not interested in that," said Lang.

The governor's plan could add nearly 147,000 parents to government health care rolls. Lawmakers said it could cost taxpayers more than $300 million annually.

Blagojevich walked out of an unrelated news conference Tuesday without commenting on the 9-2 vote to block the expansion by the Joint Committee on Administrative rules.

Republican state Reps. Rosemary Mulligan of Des Plaines and Brent Hassert of Romeoville were the only members supporting the governor's plan.

Mulligan said the goal was laudable even if Blagojevich's tactics were suspect.

She was the last person on the roll call, and the program's fate was sealed before she voted.

"By the time it got to me, it was already prohibited, quite frankly," Mulligan said. "I'm not against providing health care to this group of people. I'd like to be part of the discussion about how we're going to provide it."

She said politics and upcoming elections were "very minimal" in deciding her vote.

Blagojevich spokeswoman Abby Ottenhoff said the administration plans to pursue expanding the program through routine, rather than emergency, state rulemaking procedures.

Since filing the emergency measure, the state signed up 500 families for the program. Tuesday's 9-2 vote by the panel does not take insurance away from those people because they would not have been covered until Dec. 1.

"They are still without insurance today and they would be without insurance tomorrow regardless of what this committee does," said Democratic state Rep. John Fritchey of Chicago.