Pioneer Press: Durbin Advocates Change In Health Care At Maywood Forum

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Durbin Advocates Change In Health Care At Maywood Forum

Pioneer Press

September 1, 2009

By Deborah Bayliss

Sitting next to U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin on Monday, Brent Houston told how his mother died of ovarian cancer.

The condition, Houston said, went undetected due to a gap in her health insurance coverage.

"My mom died at age 55 with a broken spirit," he said, describing his mother's despair over the $100,000 in hospital bills she struggled to pay down.

"I do not think this is the America our forefathers had in mind," Houston said. "We need the peace of mind my mom wasn't afforded. I'm just one person who witnessed my mother die with fear in her eyes from all that she had lost."

Houston, 34, of Chicago, was invited by the grass-roots organization Campaign for Better Health Care to share his story with Durbin during Monday's forum at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood.

Durbin said stories about individuals needing health-care coverage are many and that it is a challenge for employers as well as employees.

"Inadequate policies are a major expense of our nation," said Durbin, who organized the forum in anticipation of the upcoming Congressional debate over health-care reform.

"We cannot brag that we have the best health-care system in the world," Durbin said. "People come here from all over the world for care, but yet we have a system that does not meet our basic needs."

Durbin acknowledged the emotionally charged town hall meetings that have brought out proponents and opponents on the issue.

"It's a cultural as much as a political challenge," Durbin said.

Durbin said reform measures should maintain what is good about the current system, deal with medical "predispositions," and put a bigger focus on prevention and wellness.

"I'm not sure we can (pass this legislation). We have 59 Democratic senators with the loss of Sen. Ted Kennedy," Durbin explained. "We need 60 for big controversial issues but we're trying to work with three Republican senators to get this done. If we don't do it, our current system is unsustainable."

Gelse Tkalec of Riverside wrote a letter to Durbin's Washington D.C. office last week explaining why the nation needs health-care reform. She said her family faces losing everything they've achieved financially as they deal with their 6-year-old son's mounting medical bills.

"We find ourselves undermining our own health. My son was diagnosed July 2008 with giant neuropathy," Tkalec said. "My son requires occupational and physical therapy and the cost is $3,000 per discipline and our insurance won't cover more than the contract allows. Last year we paid $17,000 out-of-pocket."

Loyola emergency room physician Dr. Mark Cichon expressed concern about maintaining Fee-for-Service coverage under new reforms. Physicians also pushed for electronic medical records.

Durbin asked Cichon about the cost of emergency room care visits.

"Nationally, emergency room care is cost-efficient," Cichon said. "The problem comes when we don't have the next step such as pharmaceuticals."

Dr. Aaron Michelfelder, a Loyola family physician, said he sees the effects of health-care system everyday, "in terms of people choosing between care, rent and the car note."

"We have so many uninsured people with little to no options."

Michelfelder called for incentives to attract more medical students into the primary care field. He explained that primary care pays less and medical students therefore go into the higher paying areas of medicine so they can pay offer their medical school debt.

"It's a serious issue," Michelfelder said. "We need debt repayment help as well as scholarships.

"We see a real need for change in health care. We see a lot of people at our clinic who have jobs and no insurance."

Durbin said the issue of "public option coverage" has been controversial because private plans fear they won't be able to compete with the cheaper federally supported plan.

"Republicans think it's a way to eliminate other plans and just have the federal plan -- that (misinformaton is) part of the public outrage," Durbin explained.

The senator said they backed away from the end-of-life measure of reform.

"We were scared away because of the controversy," Durbin said. "It was meant to be counseling with a physician on the end of life but somehow became a 'death squad.' It went to an extreme that became embarrassing. Politicians were scared away by some areas and this was one of them.

"That 47 million people are uninsured is unacceptable. Everybody with health insurance are subsidizing those who are uninsured," Durbin said.

Asked what he would take away from the forum, Durbin said, "I think this was what we needed, a good, positive constructive conversation. Health care is currently too expensive."

There were reports of protesters somewhere on the medical center grounds, but there were no disruption of the panel discussion.

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