Ozinga's healthcare misstep
* By all accounts Martin Ozinga has been running a pretty impressive campaign:
Republican Martin Ozinga III said Tuesday he has raised about $800,000 since jumping into the 11th Congressional District race in April.
That early fundraising is helping him close the money gap with more established Democratic foe state Sen. Debbie Halvorson (D- Crete), who has been running since October. She has raised $1.27 million, including $400,000 from April through June, campaign spokesman Brian Doory said.
And this tiff has some potential to harm his opponent...
Illinois’s 11th (Open seat, R): The rocky road for state Sen. Debbie Halvorson (D) continues, as in recent week she has come under fire from some fellow Democrats — including Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. — for a bill she introduced that would give Will County officials operating control over a proposed airport south of Chicago. Democrats insist the fight is actually good news for Halvorson, since it shows voters in the sprawling 11th District that she is standing up for them and not caving to Chicago’s political power brokers. Maybe, but a public, internecine feud is almost never good for business. Republicans acknowledge that concrete magnate Martin Ozinga got a very late start but insist he is a surprisingly strong candidate. (Previous ranking: 6)
* So far Ozinga's campaign has been pretty smooth and devoid of any major stutters though. That's why I was so surprised to see this from a transcript of an interview with him on CAN-TV:
FRANK AVILA (host): Now what can be done about all the uninsured people and the under-insured people?
OZINGA: There are very few people nowadays that have no health service at all. Almost anybody -- I don't care who you are -- you go to the hospital and you get taken care of.
* Equating the the ability to visit emergency rooms as adequate healthcare is a slippery road to walk down. The frustration and anger isn't over the inability to go to the emergency room, it's over the inability to be covered, or sufficiently covered for it, by an insurance provider.
I would expect Sen. Halvorson to jump all over this as the election comes to close. Statements like these serve as easy campaign fodder to make a wealthy concrete magnate look out of touch.
4 comments:
Hmm, but aren't people using Emergency Rooms for routine service nowadays, because of lack of affordable health services?
The obvious issue, to everyone except the press, is that healtchcare costs too much, not the lack of insurance. If healthcare costs were contained by competition, like the costs of pretty much everything else, we would have not much of an issue with healthcare whatsoever.
Sounds to me like Ozinga is correct and truthful, and is getting slammed for it, sort of like Phil Gramm on the economy.
...well, I hope Ozinga is honest enough to parrot Gramm's insightful thoughts on the economy.
It's a winner, and if you have any power to influence the Ozinga camp, I hope you'll do the right thing and insist they go in that direction.
Any insurance policy itself is useless (unless you use it as a bandage to stop the bleeding.) Look at Canada... they give everyone free "insurance", then control costs by limiting the number of hospitals and doctors, resulting in long waiting lists and needless deaths. Only the "rich" Canadians get decent health care by coming to the US with their now valuable canadian$$.
The reason insurance is expensive is that much of the insurance $$ pays for others without insurance. If people are able to get free medical care without insurance, the cust burden will be on those WITH insurance making it expensive. Lawsuit reform is also necessary. You can't have the govt set the price for stitches at $25, then let the patient sue for $6 Million if there's an infection.
Wow. Wonderful comments on the board here.
Utilizing Emergency Rooms for routine service should not be considered acceptable practice. I agree that competition helps control costs on a lot of things, but I think we should not ignore that the government lend a hand to managing prices in the market (for good, and I'll concede sometimes bad).
I would opt for the Canadian system, myself. I find the waiting list/needless death suggestion an overused talking point, with not as much evidence to support it.
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