Progress Illinois

In her Southtown Star column today, Kristen McQueary picks up on 11th District GOP congressional candidate Marty Ozinga's recent comments -- originally flagged by Progress Illinois -- that there "are very few people nowadays that have no health service at all." And let's just say she hits it out of the park:

Not only are hospitals and physicians demanding government intervention because of the demands on their emergency rooms, Americans are going broke over health-care costs.

Insurance companies are looking for ways to deny treatments. Physicians are refusing to accept patients with certain health-care plans because they're fed up with nonsense in the insurance industry. Hospitals are closing in lower-income communities - St. Francis in Blue Island almost was one example - and opening high-end facilities where the clientele is more appealing - Silver Cross' move to New Lenox, for example.

This is not the way Jesus, whom Ozinga often references, delivered health care.

McQueary goes on to list some of the most egregious failures of our health care system:

I hate to break it to him [Ozinga], but our fellow man is dying on the floors of emergency rooms and getting dumped at homeless shelters by overwhelmed hospital staff.

Example: Esmin Green, who died July 2 in the emergency room of a New York City hospital after waiting 24 hours for a bed to open up.

Example: Gabino Olvera, a 42-year-old paraplegic dumped by overwhelmed hospital staff outside a homeless shelter in Los Angeles, where he sat in a dirty hospital gown with his catheter still attached until someone from the shelter noticed him.

Example: Cyril Strezo, of Frankfort, who turned to this very newspaper when his insurance company denied chemotherapy treatment. He died in March.

I realize these are incendiary incidents.

But something has gone terribly wrong in America when these situations occur and don't spur swift, dramatic change among lawmakers in Washington. Tax incentives and bulk purchasing of prescription drugs are good ideas, but they aren't going to fix the very complex problems of profit-driven health care.

And you can't forget this local example: in 2006, Waukegan resident Beatrice Vance arrived at a Lake County ER with heart-attack symptoms and was left in the waiting room for two hours, where she died in her chair.

What's particularly useful about McQueary's piece is that she doesn't just highlight Ozinga's careless quote -- she also skewers the Republican's broader approach to health care.

But during the rest of the interview, Ozinga outlined his position, which mirrors that of Republicans nationally. He opposes a government-run health care system but believes Congress should expand accessibility with small-business incentives. Congress could create or expand tax deductions for individuals whose employers don't provide coverage.

He also supports caps on medical malpractice claims and importing cheaper prescription drugs.

Trouble is, Republicans have been squawking about these same ideas for a decade, and guess what? Nothing has changed. Meanwhile, candidates like Ozinga - who calls himself a God-fearing conservative - trust the market to eventually correct the problem.

I think we're way beyond that.

Read the whole thing here.