Health care reform has sparked so much partisan debate in recent months that it’s become almost impossible to separate the facts from the fallacies.
Give the Downers Grove Area Chamber of Commerce & Industry props for organizing “What’s the Right Prescription?,” a non-partisan discussion of the hot topic.
How hot? In recent weeks, “scores” attended a discussion hosted by the Naperville Chamber of Commerce, while an August 31 town hall meeting in Skokie attracted 1,200 people. The war also is being waged on the airwaves, with an estimated $60 million spent on health care ads this summer alone.
In an effort to educate its membership and other interested community residents, the Downers Grove chamber will host a luncheon discussion featuring a diverse and well-informed panel of experts from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. , Wednesday, Sept. 9, at the Double Tree Guest Suites and Conference Center, 2111 Butterfield Road.
The panel will feature Howard Peters of the Illinois Hospital Association, Courtney Hedderman of AARP and Douglas Norman, M.D., a physician from Canada who now practices in the U.S. Chuck Lauer, corporate vice president at Crain Communications and editorial and publishing director of Modern Healthcare, will facilitate the discussion.
“Health care is one of the biggest concerns for business owners and operators,” said Laura Crawford, DG Chamber president and CEO.
“Currently, the business community voluntarily provides benefits for nearly 180 million Americans,” she said. “They do it because it makes good sense, even though premiums have doubled in the last decade.
“With this in mind and as a business organization, the Downers Grove Area Chamber of Commerce & Industry cannot support a mandate for employers to provide ‘qualified health benefits’ for all their employees and their dependents and if they don’t, pay a tax of up to 8 percent of their payroll,” Crawford said.
“Nor can we support the further mandate to pay 72.5 percent of premiums for employees and 65 percent of their dependents’ premiums. We need to keep people in their jobs, not give employers a reason to reduce their workforce. We need to challenge Congress to provide a constructive and responsible solution that we can all support.”
Tickets to the luncheon are $25 for members and $40 for non-members. For more information or to RSVP, call (630)968-4050 or visit www.downersgrove.org.
I understand the original post of the health care meeting that took place Sept. 9 is over and I didn’t attend myself. I may be a day late and a dollar short but the health care debate still rages on as I type. President ‘Obama organizers are calling their forces a “silent majority,” embracing Republican terminology of long ago (AP Article).’ I know I sometimes I, Earl McGuire, purposely pose items on DGREPORT.COM to see how other common people view things and am my weird sort of way of keeping in touch with Downers. And just might start a discussion or even a heated debate over the blogosphere. I believe the health care reforms that are being debated are not about one person, one profession, one President, one political party; but the nation as a whole and direction it is headed in. Is it right for one of the most advance countries in the world not to provide health care for all its citizens or is that the free market enterprise at its best?
Not that my opinion matters, but I don’t think a educational professional who scored 31 on ACT who chose to go into education versus his or her field where he/she could have made a heck of a lot more money in salary or stock 0ptions and get pass up in promotion because of his / her sex is @$%^(! Bull @#$! or man or women who works swing shift for 39 years as a hourly employee and never missed a Catholic mass should have to have members of his/her family pooled their money on his/her meds and thank God for his/her VA benefits in ambling his/her reduce his/her med costs. You dam right I think and know our great nation of ours can and will do a hell of a lot better for all Americans! And yet at the same time develop the best meds, techniques, and health care for All US residents. It is not about race, sex, workers/non workers but about the American thing to do!!!! The right thing to do, we are the best Country in the world let’s led by example. We can do it! Yes, We Can!
…and the winner of the longest run-on sentence award goes to…
DOW Jones breaks 10,000 today, first time in over a year. Does that mean Wall St. agrees with the direction the U.S. Senate is leading towards in terms of health care reform? [I hope my grammar and spelling is correct for town that," according to the 2000 United States Census, Downers Grove has one of the nation's most educated citizenry, with 36.4% of individuals over the age of 25 holding bachelor's or advanced degrees; the national average is 24.4% (Wikipedia)."]
for a town
Nothing to do with health care Earl. Sorry to burst your bubble. Economies work in cycles. It also helps immensely that business shed millions of jobs and as a result now show profits or much less loss due to less payroll expense. This in turn makes the balance sheets look better so people would invest in them again. Wall street loves to invest in a down market. The market will dip again soon before we really start to come out of this. What should have been done even before Obama was to decrease all tax rates even further. Allow people to keep more of their hard earned money. Now since Bush and Obama spent us into oblivion we will have inflation like we have never seen before. Mortgage rates are already ticking upward so prices we pay will follow soon. I just hope it holds off until after the holiday season so the retailers can make some money. Health care will bankrupt this country and will force the world to stop trading in US currency which in turn will force retailers to inflate prices 20 – 40% overnight! I hope your ready for that Earl!!
Every time I real a synopis of a health care bill, one thing struck me. Part of the funding will come from reduced payouts to physicians and hospitals from Medicare.
Both of my parents are on Medicare, and their primary care doctors and specialists are fed up with Medicare. The amount of paperwork and hoops that they have to go through to get reimbursed us ridiculous.
Some of their doctors have said that if Medicare reirmbursements are cut any more, they will do one of the following:
a. refuse to take new Medicare patients,
b. drop their Medicare patients,
c. retire, or find a position at a medical school.
Needless to say, it’s a bad situation for seniors, if a health care bill causes senior to lose access to the doctor(s) of their choice.
Is this fear mongering at its best? Let’s scare them all! Mr. Walz you do know Senator Joseph Raymond McCarthy has passed and the red scare is over? Heck let’s raise the terror level to bright pink!!!
In my mind the red scare is back with a vengeance. Ever heard of a little country called Iran? Don’t kid yourself if you think those people care if we are wiped off the planet. Not to mention our foreign policy is so poor that we now have Russia pulling our strings like puppets and France is giving Obama policy advice! I guess you have your head buried in the sand out there in Iowa…Don’t worry though Earl Iowa is not a strategic target like your former neck of the woods is. You keep saying you don’t recognize Downers Grove anymore. You really wont recognize Downers Grove if a nuke goes off in Chicago. This is the really “real” world gang. These are very serious choices to be made over the next few years. The wrong choices could alter the world as we know it!
If someone had any intelligence about a nuclear weapon going off in the Chicago area it would affect the whole state and region of the Midwest not just Downers Grove. I would encourage any open minded individual to read Free Lunch by Pulitzer Prize- Winning Reporter David Cay Johnston. This book will expose the defenders of less government and big business for what they really are hypocrites; getting rich off your tax dollars. In regards to the US equities market going up and down it does have a history of reacting on short term news. In the mid 1950’s there was a rumor that President Ike had a stroke or heart attack the NY stock market went down approximately 25-30 points which was a lot back in those days. In the mid 80’s there was a rumor of the Great Ronald Reagan having a stroke and the market went down 50-80 points late morning mid day trading but by the end of the day the rumor was put to rest. The market finished back up. In the early 1990’s the health care stocks went down because investors were scared of President Clinton polices towards health care. My point being I believe Wall Street currently is not scared of Obama policies towards Health Care Reform in the US, and realizes it’s time for changes in our health care policies.
As for Downers Grove changing that’s life, there’s good and bad to change. I think what’s happen in Downers Grove the last twenty years is success overall. I would be lying to you if a part of me did not want to move back. When I state I don’t recognize Downers anymore, I speak from the experience of growing up there in the 1980’s and early 1990’s. I am thankful I did and you cannot take those happy memories away from me. As for reading Free Lunch, one will realize that global economy is tied to China, Iran and the USA. It would be stupid for Iran who trades with China and China who robs from us to send a nuclear missile at the US, now that would be bad economics (If I may say so, not bad for guy that was asleep in Mr. Mitchell Economics 101 at North).
As for me continuing to visit, shop and eat in Downers Grove I will keep on doing that.
Free lunch, another book written by a liberal trying to convince the poor people that the rich people are bad. Rich people make the world go around. When is the last time you worked for a poor person Earl? The rich have and always will rule the world. Its survival of the fittest. That‘s life.