19 Comments - oechmd - Monday, Dec 11, 06 @ 9:04 am: this state will wind up being tourism/conventions (Chicago), service, and government. In addition it will continue to lose congressional seats as net outmigration occurs. Those remaining will live off the taxpayers. - Angie - Monday, Dec 11, 06 @ 9:47 am: We don’t have high-paying ones being created, because the government is completely corrupt. That’s part of the problem, too. Would YOU come in from elsewhere and want to start something up here, where you have to “pay-to-play” to get any deals done, businesswise? But hey, Rod is backing a minimum wage increase! He’s created higher-paying, low-paying jobs. Whoo-hoo! (pop open the champagne) That was total snark, by the way, if it wasn’t obvious. - VanillaMan - Monday, Dec 11, 06 @ 11:11 am: This is not a surprise. Illinois made the future during the Industrial Age. For the past twenty years, it has been living off the fat from that era. Instead of storming into the next big thing, Illinois has been building walls around itself, trying to keep the 20th Century in and competition out. We all know that doesn’t work. We are twenty years too late to the party. We either need to leapfrog into the next NEXT big thing, or become an also ran like Michigan. Governmentally, it looks really bad. We have Democrats in office determined to feed every voter from the dwindling economy. Blagojevich will propose even more social programs that lack funding. He will continue to drive business out of the state. We have a governor who will not allow reality to prevent him from wrecking the state. Universal health care anyone? Even though it has NEVER worked anywhere in the whole world? There is no reason to move here until we grow up and start living in the new world of global markets. We have a state fiscal disaster, an unethical governor, and a one-party state government. Illinois is closed for business, and is busy divvying up the spoiled left overs to the politically connected. - Just Wonderin' - Monday, Dec 11, 06 @ 12:50 pm: This trend in lower paying jobs parallels the recent attempts by Sen. Hutchison to bring 90,000 MORE foreign NURSES next year, and Sen. Cornyn (R-TX)to nearly double the visas and greencards for skilled workers, especially programmers and engineers. - Objective Dem - Monday, Dec 11, 06 @ 1:17 pm: Vanillaman, Do you have any evidence to support your statement that universal health care has “NEVER worked anywhere in the world”? Here’s a link from Journal of the American Medical Association that shows the Brits are significantly healthier than Americans. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/02/AR2006050200631.html Of course the AMA is headquartered in Chicago and nothing good every came from Chicago, right? I think the comment about nursing jobs hit on a big part of the issue. Jobs are being created and will continue to be created, but you need an education and a willingness to move to get them. Either that or you better create the job yourself. - huh? - Monday, Dec 11, 06 @ 5:54 pm: Objective Dem - If universal health care is so good, why are Canadians coming to the US for care? Universal healthcare only leads to rationing of services. How many people have to wait excessive periods of time for basic treatment? The US has the best health care system in the world. If it’s broke, the US doc’s can fix it. - Objective Dem - Monday, Dec 11, 06 @ 6:27 pm: Huh?, Here is an article that succintly discusses the fact that our health care system is not as good as many other countries in spite of the fact that we spend significantly more. http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/050829fa_fact Here’s a quick rundown: “Americans spend $5,267 per capita on health care every year, almost two and half times the industrialized world’s median of $2,193. What does that extra spending buy us? Americans have fewer doctors per capita than most Western countries. We go to the doctor less than people in other Western countries. We get admitted to the hospital less frequently than people in other Western countries. We are less satisfied with our health care than our counterparts in other countries. American life expectancy is lower than the Western average. Childhood-immunization rates in the United States are lower than average. Infant-mortality rates are in the nineteenth percentile of industrialized nations.” etc. etc. Not only that our system results in many people not being covered. Trying getting or affording insurance if you are high risk and self-employed/unemployed. Without proper treatment these people are less productive. In cases of communicable and infectious diseases, the pose a risk to other people. Also look at how Ford, GM and other firms are being bankrupted by the high cost of medical insurance. I’m sure that there are some people who come to the US from Canada or elsewhere for medical treatments due to the failings of their own system. But my understanding is these cases are relatively rare. (Sorry I can’t cite a source, but have you honestly heard of any US hospital being overrun by non-americans?) We need to move away from ideology (the market is always right)and blind patriotism (the US is the best) if we want to see some progress. - Angie - Monday, Dec 11, 06 @ 7:05 pm: Re: New Yorker piece bit that reads “Half of the uninsured owe money to hospitals, and a third are being pursued by collection agencies.” That’s why Senator Rico Suave, I’m so good-lookin’-my-lack-of-experience-won’t-matter ought to be backing AG Madigan’s push for a minimum charity care standard. It’ll take time to hash out/debate/put into play any type of universal healthcare anyways, so why don’t the pols do something productive to help out NOW? And the collection agencies are sleazy, by the way. They don’t give a darn about the hospitals and their religious missions, because they can easily scare the working poor/uninsured self-pays into getting financing to pay off bloated bills that are sometimes many times above and beyond actual cost. They do it all the time, and so now people are paying interest on already high charges that they can barely afford. While everyone is debating healthcare coverage and HSA’s/HDHP’s (these are options that should be available in a free market economy, but they aren’t the big cure-all for the entire system, just an option for some), something needs to be done ASAP about the hospitals turning accounts over to the collection agencies too soon and letting them put these poor people through the wringer before a few of them maybe figure out how to apply for some type of financial assistance. AG Madigan has DONE SOMETHING recently, as there was a Patient Fair Billing Act (or something awfully close to that title) that she got through, but she still has to negotiate with these hospitals on a percentage of charity care they should provide in return for their tax breaks. So far, one hospital lost property tax exemption due to only providing something like less than 1% in charity care. Less than 1%, but yet they are appealing the ruling and going to court to fight it. How cheap can you be to fight over it when you provided less than 1%? The system is screwed up from top to bottom, from the big insurers that sit on the claims and make money off the float time to the hospitals that get their sleazy collectors to squeeze money out of frightened self-pays who then end up paying it off with interest (lotsa luck saving for the kid’s college fund, right?) to the pols who do nothing but jaw-jaw (except for AG Madigan, that is, as she is breath of fresh air around here). - Angie again - Monday, Dec 11, 06 @ 7:10 pm: Here’s the link about Madigan’s work. Someone who does more than jaw-jaw and actually DOES SOMETHING… http://www.illinoisattorneygeneral.gov/pressroom/2006_03/20060303.html - Objective Dem - Monday, Dec 11, 06 @ 7:23 pm: Here’s another fact about our amazing health care system: half the people filing for bankruptcy said it was caused by illness and medical bills. (Harvard study cited in http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9447-2005Feb8.html) A large percentage of them had insurance but if you get seriously sick or injured, you will often lose your job and the insurance benefits that go with it. - Buck Flagojevich - Monday, Dec 11, 06 @ 7:48 pm: Then why does the BLS show that Illinois gained only 40,000 jobs from Jan 2005 - Jan 2006? - Angie - Tuesday, Dec 12, 06 @ 8:26 am: Yes, everyone be sure to read the latest link on the WaPo health insurance/medical bankruptcy story from that most recent link. Used to work medical claims (getting the insurers to pay the claims), and learned a lot of stuff I never knew before about all sides of the collections industry (they harass and hound the self-pays mercilessly, some of them, to the point that everyone got into hot water over the issue and ended up being investigated by multiple attorneys general all over the USA). Had always just viewed big insurance companies as legalized crime (the black hole of premiums where what goes in barely comes out when it is time to pay a claim), but check out what the rich non-profit hospital execs are up to! http://www.nypost.com/seven/09142006/news/nationalnews/sick_hosp_wate_nationalnews_geoff_earle______post_correspondent.htm By the way, one of those 10 systems under investigation by Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is Advocate Healthcare, with ties to the United Church of Christ. Yes, that is Senator Rock Star Obama’s church, if I have my facts correct. And… http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/16053929.htm Work hard while you are still healthy, America. So-called “non-profit” healthcare CEO’s depend on you to subsidize their tax exempt hospitals so they can take their girlfriends to conferences in Las Vegas, Switzerland, and God only knows where else. - Angie (post-script) - Tuesday, Dec 12, 06 @ 8:42 am: Oh my God. I just read this carefully from the Contra Costa Times article in my last post… “When Christmas rolled around that year, hospital CEO Irwin Hansen made sure to spread a little holiday cheer among eight administrative employees and five board members — buying them a total of $2,600 worth of crystal doves and other glass gifts. Taxpayers also pitched in $1,950 for a holiday party so those leaders and their guests could drink Napa merlot and dine on coconut prawns and savory baked brie. Even as the bankrupt hospital reported losses of more than $1 million per month and nearly closed, its leaders stayed at five-star hotels, spent thousands on catered events and ate at fancy restaurants on the public’s dime, according to a Times investigation of financial records obtained under the state’s Public Records Act.” Speaking of jobs, which is what this whole thread started out about as a topic, can Rod Blagojevich get us all some cushy gigs as so-called non-profit hospital CEO’s? Nice work if you can get it! See? Some of these people are like parasites who live off the host (taxpayers) until they run everything into the ground. But they’ll still manage to milk it for all they can, brie and wine and all, until the doors finally close. Sounds a lot like what’s happening to our state, eh? - FOIA - Tuesday, Dec 12, 06 @ 10:02 am: Angie, I hope you and your punk boss Novak are going to pay for all of this bs that you are taking up space with.He’s been washed up for a long time. Find a new gig with a winner. - Angie - Tuesday, Dec 12, 06 @ 11:26 am: I don’t work for Novak. Just pays to be on the good side of the people who can play a mean game of PR hardball should I ever have to deal with hospital bills in the future and face unfair and sleazy collectors (with insurance or without). Have worked in the healthcare finance industry, and they don’t give a damn about the little people. I saw jerks close accounts just because they didn’t like the tone with which someone spoke to them over the phone. Then, that account goes to collections, right? Hey, I’d speak in a negative tone, too, if I didn’t know why my account got outsourced to Illinois when my hospital visit was halfway across the United States. The system is a royal mess. No, something WILL be done on this issue, and AG Madigan is leading the charge, thankfully, which is more than we can say for lots of other people. - To FOIA - Tuesday, Dec 12, 06 @ 1:06 pm: BS? http://mesh.medill.northwestern.edu/mnschicago/archives/2003/10/lawsuits_agains.html Only BS is coming from the people who purport to care about healthcare and then do nothing as the hospital system with ties to their church is a leading “predatory” collector. Speaking of jobs, there’s one for Illinois politicians who are more reality than rhetoric. DO something already! - FOIA - Tuesday, Dec 12, 06 @ 1:26 pm: Now angie-novak is insulting the catholic church. What would the lip say? Shame on you joe. - Rich Miller - Tuesday, Dec 12, 06 @ 1:29 pm: OK, everybody calm down or I’m shutting off this thread. - Angie - Tuesday, Dec 12, 06 @ 9:48 pm: I shall calmly respond that the Catholic Church should be working at the job (I’m trying to tie this to the thread topic somehow, since it has drifted a bit) of ending the abuses by the so-called non-profit hospitals that sic their collectors on the uninsured/underinsured/working poor self-pays/those whose policies don’t cover everything they are being billed for. Heaven forbid anyone should bring up the facts. And again, I don’t work for the guy. Just a reader (see the wherethemoneygoes.com blog, as I’ve just gotten credit for passing on the Pardes story). Healthcare, education, jobs… ….time to end the lovey dovey rhetoric coming from the politicians and do something about it all. Healthcare can’t wait until the debate over national healthcare is hashed out. WORK ON IT NOW, folks. I’m sorry for running off topic, Rich, but it was an important issue. Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.