A continuation of the analysis of the current situation in Illinois by WirePoints:

Fact 11

11. Medicaid crowd out. Medicaid costs continued to balloon as the number of Illinoisans enrolled in the program jumped by 60 percent – or more than 1 million people – between 2005 and 2014. As a result, total Medicaid costs grew nearly 2.5 times between 2000 and 2015, from $5.1 billion to $12.3 billion.

Medicaid was originally meant to be a health care safety net for the poor and disadvantaged, but by 2014 it covered 25 percent of the population. That’s crowded out services for the state’s most needy.