October 13, 2017
To the Honorable
Members of The Illinois Senate,
100th General
Assembly:
Today I veto Senate
Bill 1446 from the 100th General Assembly, which amends the Illinois
Procurement Code to force the Department of Healthcare and Family Services to
repeat its request for proposals (“RFP”) for purchase of care contracts with
managed care organizations. Enactment of this legislation would needlessly cost
taxpayers millions of dollars.
The Department
conducted the RFP for statewide managed care contracts over a five-month period
in a competitive, transparent process. The RFP was consistent with State
procurement law and historical practice. Forcing re-procurement of the RFP
under this legislation would prevent nearly one billion dollars in savings and
block stronger accountability and performance management in the Illinois
Medicaid Program.
The transformation of
health and human services to help our most vulnerable citizens has been one of
the primary goals of this Administration. In the beginning of this year, the
Department began a process to help make the goals of the transformation a reality
by improving health outcomes for Medicaid clients while slowing the growth of
health care costs and putting the State of Illinois on a more sustainable
financial trajectory. The result – after months of rigorous work and evaluation
by experienced staff from several different State agencies – is a solution that
serves all the people of Illinois.
The Department took
steps to ensure the integrity of the procurement throughout the entire
process. The process of evaluating managed care providers mirrored
traditional procurements, including key components such as soundness of
evaluations, transparent communications, and the use of objective measures. In
addition, plans were chosen through competitive statewide bidding for the first
time, using strict rules to ensure impartiality.
The Department has
acted in accordance with the law to deliver improved health care to our most
vulnerable citizens and provide value for our taxpayers. We should be
commending the Department for its work in service of all Illinoisans. Instead,
this bill would needlessly force the Department to repeat a task that has
already been successfully completed, to the detriment of our vulnerable
citizens and the State’s taxpayers.
Therefore, pursuant to
Section 9(b) of Article IV of the Illinois Constitution of 1970, I hereby
return Senate Bill 1446, entitled “AN ACT concerning State government,” with
the foregoing objections, vetoed in its entirety.
Sincerely,
Bruce Rauner
GOVERNOR