Health-care system broken, doctors tell candidate, senator
Dr. Jose Magana feels powerless.
The nation's health-care system is controlled by insurance companies and pharmaceutical giants, not the doctors caring for patients, the internal medicine specialist told Democratic congressional candidate Bill Foster and U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin Thursday. He wondered aloud how it could be reformed in the best interests of patients.
"Society in general needs to step up," Magana said during a roundtable discussion among doctors and the two candidates at Dreyer Medical Clinic in Aurora.
Foster, who earned Durbin's endorsement, supports a public-private hybrid health-care system and said federal lawmakers should examine the results from single-payer universal health-care systems like the one Massachusetts implemented in 2006.
"In general I'm supportive of the universal health-care plans that were presented by all three of the top Democratic (presidential) candidates," Foster said. "As a scientist I sort of take a data-driven approach to this. We're in the process of trying out systems in Massachusetts, perhaps in California, and other places where we'll get some idea of how well these universal health-care systems work in the United States."
His Republican opponent, Jim Oberweis, opposes one-payer systems like those of Great Britain and Canada and supports allowing free-market principles to drive health-care reform, said his campaign spokesman, Bill Pascoe.
Small business owners and the self-employed should be able to negotiate pooled health-care coverage across state lines, he said.
Oberweis and Foster are competing in the March 8 special election to fulfill the unexpired term of former U.S. Rep. Dennis Hastert.