Sunday, October 12, 2008

A Liberal Dose of Reality

Damn-the-torpedoes Blagojevich has once again led the nation in health care for all. Bless his heart. He went against his own party (and the law itself as it turns out) to provide prescriptions for the poor under his FamilyCare program.

But the courts have ruled that the Gov can’t just start up a prescription program. He needs the authority to do that, something about this checks-and-balances nonsense. And he needs some sort of accounting process.

So, who gets left holding the bag? The pharmacists of course!

In this story the governor of Illinois unilaterally began a program in December of last year that would give health care benefits to families making less than $83K a year. A court issued an order to halt the program less than five months later because state government "cannot identify program participants" or say "where the premiums they have collected are kept and how much remains."

So far the pharmacists have been the only ones getting letters saying, “Tough luck, the court told us we can’t pay you.”

But I’m guessing that other providers will also get notices. In the genius of Illinois government, vendors don’t even expect to be paid for about a year after they send the invoice. You must be very patient to do business with Springfield.

It seems that we are missing something in our practice of socialism. We are really good at giving stuff away but are a bit sloppy in the execution.

Another case in point was Blago’s effort to open Welcome Centers for illegal aliens. They opened up one with fanfare and the promise that Illinois would pay $25 MILLION to teach people English. Well, that $25 MILLION turned out to be $300K. Such is life when you govern by Executive Orders rather than through the Legislature.

On another note, Tony Rezko was due for sentencing this month. Instead he's singing. And the feds are listening. The man who can change a vote with a cough and a nod is now telling the feds who his customers were.

Poor Blago. First the GOP dislikes him, then his father-in-law, then his own party leaders, and now the U S Attorney. The poor man can't buy a break.

All the clout he has left is the power to appoint an Obama replacement.

No comments:

Post a Comment