You Gotta Keep 'em Separated

There were two big stories on Tuesday, but one common theme.

The day started with JCAR voting to suspend the Adminstration's efforts to establish an emergency rule that would allow 147,000 parents and other caretakers to buy discounted health insurance through a massive expansion of the state's FamilyCare program.

As a member of JCAR, I can tell you that despite efforts by some to paint it otherwise, our 9-2 vote was in no way a referendum on the issue of making access to health care available to more Illinoisans. Far from it.

Rather, the issue before us was whether HFS had the authority, via emergency rule (which has an immediate effective date) to make a significant policy shift on behalf of the State of Illinois. Members of both parties, and both chambers, decided that it did not.

The other major development was a Circuit Court Judge tossing out caps on medical malpractice damage awards. In her 10-page opinion, Judge Larsen ruled that the law violates the Illinois Constitution’s “separation of powers” clause — essentially finding that lawmakers interfered with the right of juries to determine fair damages.

And that is where we find the common thread.

Today marked the latest in a series of attempts by the Administration to do by rule what it has been unable to do via the legislative process. By exceeding its authority, the actions of the Administration jeopardize the very integrity of that process. As I have previously stated, JCAR was not created to be a shadow legislature, and it should not be used by the Administration to make de facto legislative policy determinations for the people of Illinois that it is unable to do via the proper and constitutional channels.

Similarly, today's court ruling, while narrow, focused on this same critical concept. During the debate on this issue, I maintained that the bill "isn't right, isn't fair and isn't legal". I have no desire to again debate the cause of malpractice insurance premium increases, and I will acknowledge that reasonable minds may come to different conclusions on the issue.

But I will say that the premise that it is not within the purview of the Legislature to artificially curtail the rights and responsibilities of the jury process received a ringing endorsement today. It wasn't legal.

And because the issue has been narrowly, and properly, decided on tight legal grounds, I would anticipate that the Supreme Court, notwithstanding last year's elections, will do the right thing and uphold today's ruling.

If that does in fact happen, I would hope that the proponents of the cap legislation would realize that a cap bill being passed and then ruled unconstitutional is becoming a near-ritual, and that continuing to pass such bills is not only non-productive, but amounts to little more than offering false hope to those desirous of such legislation.

The moral of today's stories is that like it or not, if they are sincere in trying to accomplish the goals that they claim to be seeking, both the Administration and the proponents of damage caps are going to have to find legal and constitutional means to reach those goals.

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