CHICAGO (AP) — Aftershocks of the $1.6 billion budget cut continued Wednesday as Illinois Medicaid officials faced worried parents of medically fragile children at simultaneous meetings in Springfield and Chicago.

In Chicago, nurses monitored the beeping, droning medical equipment of several children brought to the meeting. Their parents, voices pinched by distress, took the microphone to question program cuts they fear will force them, for financial reasons, to move their children into institutions, where the state would pay for their care.

Gov. Pat Quinn signed the Medicaid cuts into law last month to save a program he described as on the brink of collapse. Among more than 60 other program cuts, a $15 million reduction to a part of the Medicaid program for medically fragile and technology-dependent children means an estimated 50 higher-income families may lose coverage entirely, and new copays will be required of about 1,000 others.