Preliminary Injunction – Medicaid Act

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7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: O.B. et al v. Felicia F. Norwood

Case No.: 16-2049

Officials: WOOD, Chief Judge, and POSNER and EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judges

Focus: Preliminary Injunction – Medicaid Act

Preliminary injunction compelling defendants to provide medical assistance was sound.

“The state’s reference to “many steps already taken” is un‐ substantiated in its briefs, and its reference to “erroneous assumptions” is a misunderstanding of the law, as we’ll show. But we want first to note that the state has not told us what “steps” it has taken to provide in‐home nursing care for children with the afflictions involved in this case. Has it made active efforts to recruit nurses for such children? There is no indication that it has, and certainly no evidence. It hasn’t told us how many nurses (if any) it has ever recruited to provide home nursing care for afflicted children, or even how many nurses there are in Illinois (163,000, according to The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, State Health Facts, “Total Number of Professionally Active Nurses,” April 2016, http://kff.org/other/state‐indicator/total‐registered‐nurses/? currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Loca tion%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D). Nor are we told how many nurses in other states might be recruited at reasonable cost to provide care for the children of the plaintiffs and other class members, should it be difficult to recruit Illinois nurses.”

Affirmed

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