Illinois funeral problems keep getting worse. First the debacle with the trust funds that lost somewhere between 50 to 100 million dollars of assets. This continues with state funeral directors suing their own board and possibly Merrill Lynch for mishandling the funds. Now some of these funeral directors are challenging the State’s comptrollers office for information on how they may have not properly handled their oversight. And now they have the state funding for indigent persons not having the funding the directors believe they need.

All in all the funeral directors in Illinois are having a bad year. I do take issue with their inability to make money on the modest $1,100 they receive for these services. The indigent people who need to use the state funding are not entitled to have the services they may want. After all they are not paying for the services, the State is. Apparently funeral directors want to embalm these indigents, put them in a container (casket), and bury them in a cemetery. All of these are costly but unnecessary. All they need do is pick up the body and take it directly to a crematory. There need not be a cleaning and embalming. There need not be a casket. Then the ashes should be scattered.

If direct cremation were used, instead of the current process, the funeral director would make several hundred dollars from each poor person they handled. They are bemoaning the lack of funding from the State while they should be finding alternative, profitable means of dealing with the problem. Until they change their thinking, paying consumers will ultimately pay for the losses incurred by the lack of funding for indigents. This is on top of the other financial problems currently hovering over the entire Illinois funeral establishment.