The for-profit insurance companies running Illinois Medicaid collected hundreds of millions of dollars in extra profits during the COVID-19 pandemic — much of it for services never provided to patients,
Room rates at the Knox County Nursing Home will be increasing starting July 1. The County Board approved the rate increases at their meeting on Wednesday. On April 1, 2021, The Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services issued an increased rate of reimbursement. This rate is above the current private semi-private room rate being charged at the nursing home. The nursing home is required to increase this charge to ensure that the state is paying the highest possible rate. Rates for a semi-private room increase to $185 a day. Private rooms on wings 2, 3, and 4 increase to $195 a day; and, private suite on wings 2, 3, and 4 for those grandfathered in from wing one, will go up to $195. Nursing Home Committee Chair John Hunigan talked of balancing the desire to be inexpensive for residents while also needing to be competitive at last week's meeting. "We're kind of on the low-end. So we have to look at, again we're a county nursing home, we want to provide the
In a followup email earlier this month, Eagleson’s top spokeswoman said, “purely as a snapshot in time, initial incomplete figures indicate HFS would recoup over $120 million” from the insurance firms for calendar year 2020. Those funds will come through a program called a “risk corridor” that reallocates money if the companies exceed or fall short of targets for medical care.
“Illinois was one of the first states in the country to implement risk corridors during the pandemic to further restrict possible profit margins,” said Jamie Munks, Eagleson’s spokeswoman. “We will recoup more from the health plans than we otherwise would have.”
Illinois officials are calling for a fundamental shift in how the state pays nursing homes, a move they say will increase staffing and improve care instead of increasing profits for poor care.