Hastert airs views, talks health care at forum

Almost all in the meeting room at Blackberry Township’s hall agreed Wednesday that the U.S. must reform its health care system.

Many in attendance, however, also agreed with Republican congressional candidate Ethan Hastert, who used the forum to restate his opposition to the various Democratic-backed iterations of reform legislation now winding through Congress.

“I do not believe the federal government should be competing against private industry – in anything,” Hastert said. “And that’s why I am against the public option.”

About 60 people attended the lunchtime town hall-style session hosted by Hastert’s campaign. Hastert, the son of former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives J. Dennis Hastert, is seeking the Republican nomination to challenge incumbent U.S. Rep. Bill Foster, D-Batavia, for the House seat from Illinois’ 14th Congressional District.

The district includes portions of Kane, DeKalb and Kendall counties and stretches south and west to near the Iowa state line.

The event offered those in attendance the chance to speak to Hastert and with each other concerning the efforts now under way to enact legislation to reform the country’s health care and health insurance systems.

After the forum in Blackberry Township, Hastert held a similar session in Dixon later Wednesday afternoon.

Most in attendance were sympathetic to Hastert’s position, arguing that creation of a so-called “public option” –  or a taxpayer-funded system to provide health coverage to any Americans who want it – would undercut the private health insurance industry and provide the mechanism to lead to a federal single-payer system of universal coverage, similar to the state-run medical systems now in place in Canada and European nations.

“The sense that the government can do it better is just wrong,” said Amy Jackson of Oswego.

While most agreed that the government should create a program to insure those who have been rejected for coverage by private insurers, many spoke against what they perceived to be an attempt by federal lawmakers to create a system that allows otherwise insurable individuals to obtain free health coverage at the expense of taxpayers. Some particularly aimed this belief at people aged 18 to 25 years old who they said choose to spend their money on things other than health insurance.

A smaller number in attendance argued in favor of creating a public option, saying it would bring competition to an industry now dominated largely by one or two large health insurance companies.

A man who identified himself to the crowd as “Steve” noted that Americans already pay for health care for many of the uninsured through higher premiums charged by insurance carriers to cover ever-increasing costs charged by hospitals and health care providers who write off increasing amounts of bad debt and charity care for the uninsured.

Some also argued that 18- to 25-year-olds and many other Americans do not earn enough to pay for private health insurance.

Hastert said he favored market-based approaches to reform the U.S. health care system, including such measures as tort reform, investigating fraud and abuse of Medicare and Medicaid, increasing the availability of individual health savings accounts and allowing insurance companies to sell policies across state lines, thus increasing competition.

He said such measures would work to bring down costs. After the forum, however, he said he could not say for certain how much money the measures would save.

“But I would like to see a bill be presented with these components included, and see how it is scored by the Congressional Budget Office,” Hastert said. “These are things we can do and we should do.”
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