Why Illinois Should Enhance its Investment in Higher Education
Release: March 28, 2023
After adjusting for inflation, state funding for Illinois colleges and universities has fallen by nearly 50% since 2000, while tuition has more than doubled, making it increasingly difficult for students from low- and middle-income families generally, and Black and Latinx students specifically, to afford getting a higher education degree. Despite growing evidence that a college degree is more important than ever for success in the labor market and in spite of recent funding increases, the report finds that, after inflation, Illinois’ General Fund support for Higher Education has declined significantly over the last two decades, and is 46 percent less now in real terms than in 2000. To help make up for that loss of General Fund support, the average annual student tuition and fee cost of attending a public four-year university in Illinois increased by 115 percent—after inflation—between 2000 and 2021. This Report both documents the positive impact gaining a college education has on everything from wages, economic development, and community health and wellbeing, to social mobility, and calls upon the Illinois General Assembly to invest adequate resources in higher education.
Educating Illinois: A Look at the Evidence-Based Funding Formula
Release: March 8, 2023
After six years of implementation, five of which included new year-over-year funding, Illinois’ school funding formula – the Evidence Based Funding for Student Success Act, or EBF – has worked towards its promise of closing Illinois’ drastic funding and achievement gaps between schools in property-rich and property-poor districts, as well as between schools in predominantly white communities and schools that serve predominantly students of color. The EBF accomplishes this by distributing new K-12 funding to those districts that are furthest away from having the resources to fund their respective “Adequacy Targets” – which is the amount the research indicates is required to provide the level of education the students they serve need to succeed academically.
The EBF replaced an old formula that was based on a one-size-fits-all “Foundation Level” of per-pupil funding that was both inadequate in amount and inequitable in distribution. Indeed, the state’s historic investment in K-12 has been so inadequate that local property tax revenue became the primary method of funding education. But after six years of the EBF, the formula has proven that it is working as intended to counter historic inequities by investing more at the state level each year, closing Adequacy Funding Gaps for students in every region of the state and of every race and ethnicity.
Analysis of Pharmacy Benefit Managers' Impact on Medicaid Drug Pricing
Release: December 21, 2022
An Analysis of Pharmacy Benefit Managers' Impact on Medicaid Drug Pricing provides some insights into the question of how decision makers can best incorporate Pharmacy Benefit Managers ("PBMs") into the management of Medicaid and CHIP. The report summarizes how PBMs work in practice at the state level to contain retail prescription drug costs in Medicaid programs, and to the extent relevant, how the “Managed Care Organizations (“MCOs”) contract with various state governments to administer Medicaid and CHIP benefits and services. Additionally, the report provides a brief explanation of how the retail prices for prescription drugs are determined at the state level for Medicaid programs in the Managed Care/PBM setting —and how that differs from the traditional Fee-for-Services or FFS setting.
The report also provides a national snapshot of the PBM's impact on drug pricing nationally, and then delves into the impact of PBMs on prescription drug costs in Medicaid and CHIP programs for five states: Illinois, West Virginia, Louisiana, Missouri, and Florida. West Virginia and Missouri are examples of states that use a pharmacy benefit “carve out,” which means some or all Medicaid prescription drug benefits are not included in the state’s respective managed care contracts. Illinois, Florida, and Louisiana were selected as states that rely on a pharmacy benefit “carve in,” which means Medicaid prescription drug benefits are for the most part included in the applicable managed care contracts.
Fully Funding the Evidence-Based Formula: Volume VI
Release: October 1, 2022
Volume VI of the Fully Funding the EBF series continues CTBA’s modeling of fully funding the EBF to 90% of Adequacy, which aligns more closely with the Illinois State Board of Education’s methodology. Volume VI uses the Enacted Fiscal Year 2023 General Fund Budget appropriations for the Evidence-Based Funding formula found in Volume V, but applies the ISBE EBF calculated shortfall for FY 2023 (released in August 2022), rather than a projected shortfall as provided in Volume V. The new release maintains the four scenarios found in the Fully Funding the EBF series Volume V.
Analysis of Illinois' FY 2023 Enacted General Fund Budget
Release: July 1, 2022
Due to Illinois’ long-term, structural fiscal challenges, citizens of Illinois have grown accustomed to General Fund budgets that are focused on cutting, or limiting the cuts to, core services. Which is truly unfortunate, given that 95 percent of all General Fund expenditures on services go to the four core areas of Education, Healthcare, Human Services, and Public Safety. However this past April, the Illinois General assembly passed a General Fund budget for FY 2023 (the “FY 2023 Enacted GF Budget”) that was notably different from the vast majority of budgets passed into law over the last twenty-some odd years. That is because, rather than focus on cuts, the FY 2023 Enacted GF Budget calls for increasing year-to-year spending in every one of those four core service areas. This counters a trend of imposing real, inflation-adjusted cuts to all or most core services that goes all the way back to FY 2000. Moreover, the FY 2023 Enacted GF Budget—when considered in combination with the supplemental appropriations that were passed covering certain aspects of the FY 2022 Enacted General Fund Budget (the “FY 2022 Enacted GF Budget”)—includes a commitment to being fiscally responsible that is far more substantive than rhetorical. This also stands in stark contrast to most General Fund budgets enacted over the last two decades, which on the whole paid lip-service to being responsible—without implementing initiatives that strengthened Illinois’ fiscal system in any meaningful way.
Read the full report to learn more about the initiatives taken to offset economic challenges and decades of service cuts for Illinois.