Audit: State paid $12 million in health costs — for dead people

Cook County has long been ridiculed for allowing dead people cast votes, but the state may have just garnered a new distinction.

It paid $12 million in health care for people who were already dead — including in one case, for a person who had died in 1989.

A new financial audit released by Auditor General Bill Holland’s office on Thursday found that the Illinois Department of Health and Family Services had 8,232 people still on Medicaid rolls qualifying for benefits, even though they were dead.

The state paid monthly premiums totaling almost $7 million for 561 people who had already been dead for an average of nearly two years before they were enrolled in a state managed care program. Read the entire Chicago SunTimes story.