By Greg Bishop/Illinois Radio Network
SPRINGFIELD – Breast cancer awareness took center stage during Gov. Bruce Rauner’s third appearance on Facebook Live, and he addressed how the state’s poor fiscal situation is impacting women’s health programs.
The appearance Wednesday included a licensed nurse practitioner and we held at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine in Springfield. While the nurse fielded a variety of questions about breast cancer, Rauner said the state’s nearly year-and-a-half long budget impasse is affecting women’s health programs.
Rauner said Illinois has not been properly funding crucial services for many years.
“We need reforms to our system to grow more jobs and to be more competitive as a state so we can afford to be more compassionate, and that’s the reforms we’re pushing for,” Rauner said. “I hope those of you watching and listening and your friends and neighbors will help us get reforms as part of a truly balanced budget, so we can properly fund our health services, our human services and our education system.”
Rauner’s proposed reforms have been blocked by Democratic majorities in the General Assembly for the past year-and-a-half. Democrats have said the reforms would diminish the middle-class standard of living. Republicans said the status quo is hurting the middle class as the state bleeds manufacturing jobs.
Despite the impasse, Rauner said funding for women’s health screenings still exists. The stopgap budget passed this summer also provided several million dollars in additional funding for screenings through the end of the year. Rauner also noted options at the federal level.
“The good news is now under the Affordable Care Act, the women who were receiving screenings under that program here in Illinois, which still exists, they are all required to be covered for free by insurers in Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act,” Rauner said. “Those services, for free, are still available.”
