•February 22, 2023•
The Illinois Department of Revenue (IDOR) is reminding senior citizens about the availability of the Senior Citizens Real Estate Tax Deferral Program which allows qualified seniors to defer all or part of their property taxes and special assessment payments on their principal residences. Seniors needing assistance paying their property taxes have until March 1, 2023 to apply for the program.
The program, which works like a loan, allows qualified seniors to defer a maximum of $7,500 per tax year (including both first and second installment payments), increased from $5,000 last year. Deferred amounts are borrowed from the state, who pays the tax bill to the County Collector’s Office. The program was also expanded this year to increase the household income threshold qualification from $55,000 to $65,000. Read More

•February 22, 2023•
By Cheri Burcham
Family Life Educator

When someone asks you to think about health, wellness or fitness, you usually think about physical health, exercise or nutrition. As people age, they often concentrate on improving and maintaining their physical health, when they should also be working on their cognitive or brain health. Since March 13-19 is Brain Awareness Week, I would like to share a few things you can do to maintain a healthy brain. Getting enough good, quality sleep is important along with eating a heart healthy diet and exercising regularly. I have heard the phrase “what’s good for the heart is good for the brain” more than once while working with this topic. Lowering your stress levels and keeping solid social connections and support also contribute to achieving good brain health. Researchers agree that challenging your brain daily is also beneficial and necessary to maintain brain health and delay cognitive decline as we get older. Read More

•February 22, 2023•
By Jim Baumann
NP Guest Writer

It’s not every day I get an avalanche of mail from readers of this column.
But then it’s not every day I get my dander up and essentially call something stupid.
Last Sunday I wrote about a silly attempt to draw attention to a website that purports to help improve your writing.
The PR person who took that job is probably rueing the day it landed on his desk.
Writing Tips Institute says it polled 3,000 Americans on whether they would support a law protecting their states’ individual dialects.
My point: Illinois doesn’t have one dialect. Nor does it have two or three. And besides, how does one enforce a law that so clearly, as reader Dennis Nowicki pointed out, is an affront to the First Amendment of the Constitution?
“Right on,” he wrote, clearly putting himself in my age group. “There is no need for more laws that are near impossible to enforce and that further negatively impact free speech.” Read More

Pandemic-era program will expire on March 31, sparking redeterminations

•February 15, 2023•
By Peter Hancock
Capitol News Illinois
phancock @ capitolnewsillinois.com

As many as 700,000 Illinoisans may lose Medicaid coverage in the months following March 31, but the Department of Healthcare and Family Services says it is working to reduce that number and help those affected find health insurance elsewhere.
Medicaid is a health insurance program for poor and disabled people that is jointly funded by the federal government and the states.
A spending bill that Congress passed in December put an end to a pandemic-era rule that sent billions of additional federal dollars to states that kept Medicaid patients continuously enrolled in the program through the end of the public health emergency.
Under the program that will expire on March 31, those enrolled in Medicaid did not have to go through the normal process of reapplying every 12 months to determine whether they were eligible, even if there were changes in their income or household that would normally make them ineligible. Read More