News
A pro bono case that Goldberg Kohn attorneys won last week is discussed in the Crain's Chicago Business article, "How Lawyers for Poor Kids Beat the State - Again," published July 27, 2015.
The article reports that attorneys at Goldberg Kohn, the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law and AIDS Legal Council of Chicago scored a major win when a federal judge ruled that Illinois must continue to pay doctors and hospitals that treat Cook County children on Medicaid, a government health care program for the poor.
The Order relied on a October 2005 consent decree entered by Judge Lefkow, after a trial in which she ruled that the state had failed to provide access to health care services that poor children were guaranteed under the federal Medicaid Act. Goldberg Kohn and the Sargent Shriver Center also served as lead trial counsel in that case, Memisovski v. Wright.
In previous budget showdowns since that consent decree was entered, including the long showdown between Gov. Blagojevich and the Assembly late in the decade, the (Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services) has kept the program open and paid the bills when they became due. This year, when the sides failed to agree on a budget, the Department announced that it would comply with federal consent orders. However, on July 10, 2015, the Department sent a notice saying that it was keeping the program open, but would not pay the bills incurred after July 1, 2015, until after there's a budget.
"We immediately began to hear from Medicaid providers," says Shriver Center President John Bouman, "including hospitals that depend on regular payments from Medicaid in order to meet payroll and keep their doors open . . . that their continued existence was jeopardized. That, to us, translated into a reduction to children's access to health care. That was when we decided we needed to go into court.
"We put together a motion. We had an affidavit from one of the vulnerable hospitals, Roseland Hospital, as an example of what was going to happen. We set it up as an emergency motion, and two days later we were in court."