Relaunch issue focuses on Illinois’ growing managed care organizations
SPRINGFIELD — Illinois Comptroller Susana A. Mendoza on Wednesday relaunched Fiscal Focus, a publication aimed at providing key fiscal facts and in-depth articles about timely state issues, such as the shift to managed care organizations (MCOs) over the past 10 years.
The publication of Fiscal Focus started under former Comptroller Loleta Didrickson’s administration in 1995 and continued under comptrollers Dan Hynes and Judy Baar Topinka. The last issue was published five years ago in May 2014.
Delving into policy topics in a magazine format provides the opportunity to offer accurate and relevant information on topics considered by policymakers and to highlight fiscal data from reports produced by the office, all in a user-friendly format.
The revamped Fiscal Focus will be available in a digital format on the Comptroller’s website. Offering the former print publication digitally will allow for broader availability and will save taxpayer dollars by eliminating printing and mailing costs associated with the publication.
“I am excited to announce the relaunch of Fiscal Focus,” Comptroller Mendoza said. “I’ve said that I aim to make the Comptroller’s Office the best source for numbers and predictive modeling, setting the tone for discussions about state finance and budget and learning from the mistakes of the past to chart the most responsible course forward. The relaunch of Fiscal Focus is a part of that goal.”
The May 2019 issue of Fiscal Focus provides comparisons of our state’s minimum wage with the minimum wages in other states, highlights a new transparency tool from the Comptroller’s Office and offers an in-depth look at Illinois’ shift to MCOs to administer the state’s Medicaid program. In just the past decade, the program has grown from $250 million a year to $14 billion a year, which has major implications on how Illinois delivers health care services to millions of people in the state’s Medicaid program.
You can find the May 2019 issue of Fiscal Focus on the Comptroller’s Office website here.
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