Last week, officials at the state's Department of Healthcare and Family Services unveiled new details about a plan to enroll approximately 38,000 elderly and disabled Medicaid beneficiaries from Northeastern Illinois in a private managed care organization (MCO). While around 150,000 residents take advantage of the state's voluntary HMO-style system, this is the first time in which the state has made enrollment for any of its patients mandatory.

This pilot program should give policymakers a good sense of how effective this strategy is at providing adequate care and controlling costs. But Republicans -- who are so hell bent on privatizing the effective state-run managed care system that they've inflated its cost-cutting potential to sell the idea -- shouldn't jump the gun. "We would hate to see the state gamble on capitated care for all, or even most, Medicaid patients," the Sun-Times editorial board writes, "at the expense of programs that already work."