Rivals agree there's no quick fix on health care

The growing complexity of the average person's access to health care is something the Democratic rivals for the 56th House District seat are both wrestling with.

Incumbent Paul Froehlich and challenger John Moynihan, both of Schaumburg, recognize health care as an important issue to most voters. But they hold different opinions about how and when the state legislature should get involved.

"This is something that's come up at a lot of coffees I've attended," Moynihan said. "Ideally, we'd be a nation where everyone would have access to health care."

Moynihan equates the state's responsibilities to health care with that of education -- everyone should have access to both.

"How much more is it going to cost to provide health care is the issue," he said.

An attorney specializing in financial cases, Moynihan was galvanized to run for office by the state's budget crises of recent years. As most health care programs are likely to be costly, he believes getting the budget on an even keel is a necessary first step to an ambitious health care solution.

But that wouldn't prevent a committee from being set up to explore and prepare options that could be implemented once their funding is secured, he said.

Such options would likely require years of research, anyway, so now is the time to get started before there's any possibility of their being implemented, Moynihan said.

"I'd be surprised and frightened if we came up with a solution in three months," he added.

Moynihan said he'd have to research current health care issues more thoroughly to form a concrete position on each.

But he does feel Gov. Rod Blagojevich deserves praise for at least trying to address the disparity between prescription drug costs in the state and in Canada.

Froehlich also had some guarded praise for Blagojevich. Froehlich liked the ambitiousness of the governor's plan to expand health care but agreed with his fellow legislators that its reliance on a gross receipts tax to fund it was unacceptable.

Froehlich said one can't put an issue as important as health care completely on hold until everything is perfect. But he agreed expensive new ideas can't be implemented with the state's current financial condition.

"We're seeing a rising number of uninsured people because of a decreasing number of jobs that provide health care," Froehlich said. "If we do nothing, we're still going to see health costs rise. Government has to step in to fill the void, one way or another."

Both the state and federal governments share costs for Medicaid. It covers poor people but not those who aren't destitute but don't have health coverage, he said.

"People shouldn't have to worry about losing their homes if they're in the hospital for a few weeks and don't have coverage," Froehlich said.

One of the things the government can do is provide incentives for early checkups and prevention to take some of the major costs of corrective procedures out of the system, he said.

Helping people control ailments like high blood pressure and diabetes in advance is more cost-effective than paying for the amputation of limbs, Froehlich said.

Some ways of affecting health care costs can be subtle, too. Froehlich believes restrictions on public smoking are helping to reduce smoking overall and the related health problems.

And he's currently working with educational campaigns to reduce alcohol consumption during pregnancy, an offshoot of his public safety work against drunken driving.

"This health thing, we've got to be involved," Froehlich said of the state legislature. "Of course, none of these things are going to be solved overnight by passing a law."

The 56th District is mostly Schaumburg but includes areas of Elk Grove Village, Hoffman Estates, Palatine, Rolling Meadows, Roselle, Hanover Park, and Bloomingdale.