{"id":62598,"date":"2026-01-27T14:52:02","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T19:52:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=62598"},"modified":"2026-01-27T14:52:02","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T19:52:02","slug":"do-these-children-actually-exist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=62598","title":{"rendered":"Do These Children Actually Exist?"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Sunday, Just the News<\/a> posted an article about a 725 percent increase in Medicaid bills in Illinois for children under 18 without Social Security Numbers.<\/p>\n

The article reports:<\/p>\n

A candidate for the Illinois Statehouse worries there could be a dark side to the 725% increase in Medicaid payments for children without Social Security numbers.<\/strong><\/p>\n

After more than a year of digging, Statehouse candidate Bailey Templeton\u2019s most public records collection shows 1,085 Illinois children under 18 without SSNs had Medicaid bills of $66 million in 2025. That\u2019s up 725% from $8 million for 450 children in 2021.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s roughly $40 million spent on inpatient treatment, that’s a lot of time for children to be in hospitals,\u201d Templeton told The Center Square Friday.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The data only generates more questions for Templeton.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIt raises questions about what would be called medical trafficking, where things are conducted on to children when they’re too young to be able to consent to these things,\u201d she said.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Templeton said she has further FOIA requests pending.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services didn\u2019t immediately respond to questions on why there was a 725% spike in such payments.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The article concludes:<\/p>\n

Other Freedom of Information Act requests Templeton has filed include determining how many children on the radar of the Department of Children and Family Services are missing. A follow up FOIA by The Center Square found 193 youth in care missing<\/a> in 2025.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Another FOIA response Templeton collected showed there are 20,000 children<\/a> getting taxpayer funded Medicaid without having SSNs. She said her latest FOIA showing the costs doesn\u2019t square with previous information she\u2019s gathered.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I found out that only 1,085 of them are in Illinois DCF\u2019s care, it raises questions about the other 19,000 children in whose care that they are in, and who is overseeing the hospital treatments,\u201d Templeton said.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think it’s time to suspend temporarily all state money coming from the federal government until accurate audits can be provided as to exactly how the federal money is being spent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Sunday, Just the News posted an article about a 725 percent increase in Medicaid bills in Illinois for children under 18 without Social Security Numbers. The article reports: A candidate for the Illinois Statehouse worries there could be a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[19076,19075,147,12498,19074,10977],"class_list":["post-62598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-department-of-children-and-family-services","tag-freedom-of-information-act-requests","tag-illinois","tag-just-the-news","tag-medicaid-payments-for-children","tag-social-security-numbers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62598"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62599,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62598\/revisions\/62599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}