If you follow the news and know what is happening with the budgets of Chicago and the State of Illinois recent news from the Chicago Daily Herald is somewhat surprising.  For the first time in years, Illinois lawmakers have made money available for funeral homes who handle the poor and indigent.

According to the article, one of the line items in the recently passed state budge approves money for the Illinois Funeral and Burial Program to award for services to indigents.

According to the article some funeral homes estimate that they have been self-funding about $50,000 in these types of funerals in recent years.

Funeral Director Daily take:  With all that is happening in Illinois it is interesting that this line item was included in the budget at all.  Quite frankly, it looks almost like a public relations move to satisfy someone.

While, you should never look a gift horse in the mouth, funeral homes in Illinois will still be offering vastly discounted funerals on these services.  The article points out that $9.3 million was appropriated for this program and the last time it was used the fund contributed to 8,649 services in that year.  If you do the math, that is $1075 per service.  It will be interesting to see if Illinois funeral homes are happy with this outcome.

It is our opinion that this is the tip of the iceberg for funeral service government assistance dilemmas.  With more and more tax dollars tied up in entitlement programs that cannot be cut, there is less room for all other government programs to be increased, or in many cases, be kept at all.  Make sure that you have some plans in place just in case your municipality, county, or state looks to tighten up items like the amount of money that can be put away in pre-need funerals and still be eligible for Medicaid nursing home payments.  We are aware of some states with that on the agenda in order to tighten up state budgets.[wpforms id=”436″ title=”true” description=”true”]