As long as the pain in the Julio’s abdominal area was so bad that he went to an emergency room in Chicago, doctors diagnosed him with a third -phase stomach cancer.
He remembers his wife crying when he learned at the end of 2022. Julio, who asked that his full name had not been published, began to go through the mathematics of diagnosis.
“Maybe she was thinking that it was a temporary illness for me that she could lose me,” Julio said in Spanish. “But I was thinking about doctors, payments, how we were paying rent, food.”
Julio, 48, has been in Chicago for nearly 30 years without legal status. His job in dry cleaners did not provide him with health insurance or a sick day. But he and his wife had just applied for immigrants for the state’s health benefits, which provided health insurance to migrants like those between the ages of 42 and 64.
The coverage of the HBIA program has been allowed to undergo surgery and get chemotherapy for the past two years.
He is one of about 333,000 people without legal status in Illinois – including about 222,000 in Kick County – which can lose his health care coverage this summer under a program that Government JB Pratzkar proposes to reduce the state budget.
Julio, 48, of Chicago, outside the portage-cricketer Chicago Public Library in the neighborhood of Portage Park.
Tyler Passaciak Larvare/Sun Time
As a light of the progressive rule of Eli Nawai’s most weakest residents through Democrats across the state, the governor has put on the cutting block due to the cost of the balloon due to a large -scale budget lack of migrant adults program.
Now, lawyers are pushing for a program that has worked as a lifeline for thousands of low income people, without other options.
“These are the people who are working hard, working outside, who are working in cleanliness or in construction industries, who were told that they are essential workers during Coid. And these are the people we are saying, ‘You can no longer be careful of health.”
“The reason for this is that their employers are not paying them enough and/or are not providing health care benefits through their jobs. These are the people who have really sacrificed their bodies for our economy and it is a matter of disappointment to know that they are trying to raise their backs.”
The cost of the increase
Lawmakers introduced a very small version of the program for seniors without any legal status in 2020, early in the early Kovide 19 pandemic diseases, providing medical coverage but without any federal assistance.
This coverage was eventually extended to a large pond of 42 and more people, though the increase in costs and popularity was forced to suspend the new entry in 2023.
According to the Illinois Department of Health Care and Family Services, the immigrants involved in the program have to obtain non -documentary status or have a temporary protected status, living in the state and domestic income for one person is less than $ 18,754 for a person.
The HBIA program was initially open to immigrants who had been a green card holder for less than five years, but later they were removed from the program in favor of other powers such as Medicide and Cheap Care Act.
The program came under a growing scrutiny last month when Illinois Auditor General Frank Maoono released a report searching the state. In the last five years, very few program costs are $ 1.6 billion.
The audit also found that the state understood the demand for health care immigrant programs and made mistakes in registering. For example, an estimated 6,098 people entered the program as “non -documentary” but contained social security numbers.
Pratzkar’s office estimates that the program for adults under the age of 42-64 will save $ 330 million as the state aims to eliminate the billions of budget reduction.
“These are people of age to work … and in many cases, and we have seen it – Pratzkar said after presenting his budget address in the Springfield last month.
Pratzkar’s proposal – who will talk to the legislature to pass the budget by the end of May – will maintain a state coverage for people aged 65 years or older, which is estimated at $ 132 million estimated.
“There are many priorities that I want to do immediately if we have the resources for it,” Pratzkar said. “We can’t do this this year, and that’s why we have to make some changes.”
Illinois Republicans, who have opposed any expenses from the beginning, say the program should be enough to end it immediately.
“No need to wait until next fiscal year, stop it immediately and protect the Illinois taxpayers,” said Tony McCbi, Republican leader Tony McCbi, R-Sanawana, a Republican leader of the House.
Affecting health centers
Villa praised the governor, “defend” various populations in our state from the attacks we are seeing from our federal government ” – but in addition to exposing thousands of people, cutting the program” will be able to cut the carpet under our network of our health caregivers in the state. “
She said she was working with a large coalition of groups, which aims to bring back the coverage of immigrant adults into the budget. This includes the Illinois Primary Healthcare Association, a federally unpopular trade association of federal health centers that operates 400 clinics across the state.
According to the Association’s Chief Public Affairs Officer Cyrus Went, fewer people in coverage mean that more and more people wait longer to care for care, and like Julio – they resort to an emergency room when they do. As a result, this means that more costs and thin resources are thin.
“We are still here and we are still doing our best to take care of this population, and whatever is needed at our clinic,” said Venett. “But everyone needs to keep a clear eye on our services ability and the implications of our communities to meet the needs of our communities.”
Even worse, it will leave thousands of people with difficult decisions, said Andy Almunord, director of the Healthy Illinois Campaign.
“Many people will have to pay for their medicines, paying for their medicines or paying for a doctor’s office and paying rent and paying for rent,” said Alonord. “They will not be able to get health care unless they are at a place where they have to go to an emergency room.”
‘It would be fatal’
For 53 -year -old Melros Park Raymondo Raiz, he fears that his medical condition may worsen if he loses his health insurance through HBIA. He was diagnosed with Parson’s illness four years ago when a doctor saw his hands would not stop shaking.
“It will be fatal to me because with only an hour, I remember my medicines, my hands start to shake, and I get a lot of stress.” “I can’t do anything. It will affect me a lot.”
He takes a daily combination of his Parkinson’s diagnosis, hypertension and depression, which is under HBIA. Even despite the medicines, he sometimes has to worry about wearing his clothes or getting out of bed himself.
“The doctor tells me that the medicine he is giving me is the best to slow down Parkinson, but a moment can be where it develops,” Royes said in Spanish. “I hope God doesn’t happen but that’s it.”
Before his diagnosis, he worked for many years in a bakery and later worked as strange jobs such as painting and home repair. But it has increased the difficulty in obtaining any job due to its health concerns. Raiz has been living in the Chicago area for more than 30 years, but has failed to legalize his immigration status.
For immigrants such as Raiz, such as Raiz, can be very limited to long health care outside an emergency room, Ultman said. Without legal status, people are not eligible to get coverage in the health care market and they have to rely on an emergency room tour or federally healthy health center.
“To the HBIA, the options for such care are not limited to anyone,” said the Altman.
Chicago’s Julio did not have health insurance before, and he could not remember being so ill that he needed to find a doctor. He usually treated herbs with herbs, and he considered himself a healthy person – running around the park with two of his younger sons and going to a motorcycle rides.
Then in 2022, he unexpectedly started losing weight and his appetite was reduced. After being diagnosed with stomach cancer, he had reduced it by 90 pounds by then at the time of surgery.
Julio had to stop working because his job would not give him time to recover from chemotherapy, which he still passes – though it is less time. He is waiting for the results that he hopes to show that cancer is no longer exist.
Julio said in Spanish, “I am a person who believes and so I think it is in God’s hands.”
His two younger sons, aged 8 and 12, do not know the severity of their health problems. He often jokes with him that his stomach looks like McDonald’s Apple Pie when he reflected his stains. If he ends the program this summer, he does not know what he will do.
“If the cancer reopens after years, I will not pay for the medicine or any other service that I will need to take the exams,” said Julio in Spanish. “It would be a terminal. And really my son, if he was older and married, it would be a different story because he could work older, but he is still young and he needs his father.”
