It just makes me sick.

Yesterday I was at a forum focusing on health care hosted at the College of DuPage, here in lovely LombardGlenEllynWheaton. Which is the name for the towns you can't tell you're leaving before you hit the next one.

It was another fantastic event put on by local progressives to tackle an important issue. On hand were:

Bob Mueller: Industry type guy who mainly talked about how insane the billing systems are for the services you receive when you're sick. He kept laughing during the presentation when he'd get to some absurdity or another, and I kept thinking "This isn't funny."

Emilie Junge: Representative with the Hospital Accountability Project (courtesy of SEIU), she basically focused on SEIU's industry-wide presence representing health care workers on both coasts, and how they're focused on increasing their presence (read: organizing new members) here in the midwest. She talked about her experience on general assistance (read: welfare) and how it drew her into organizing. She seemed like a very decent lady.

Kara Murphy: Access DuPage representative. She gave a dizzying rundown of the numbers of the uninsured here in DuPage County. The long and short of it is that we're not as bad off as some places, but because of our high population (nearly a million--and climbing!) even having 10% of your population uninsured or underinsured is a pretty big impact. I would not want her job.

Dr. Linda Murray: She was hilarious. She works on the west side as the Chief Medical Officer of Ambulatory Services for Cook County Hospital and talked about the basic justice issues surrounding the health care debate. My favorite line: "Let's cut through the bullshit."

Ah, indeed. Let's.

Stephen Challinor: An accountant from Carol Stream, whose chief qualifications for this panel seemeed to be that he's Australian, and witnessed the changeover from private to public health care delivery down under (as they say).

His bottom line: You Americans are insane for putting up with this. Maybe it's because you enjoy the torment of picking out different health plans, but we Aussies, in our laid back way, prefer not to worry about that much. So for us, just having the government pick up the tab makes a lot more sense.

So let's put another shrimp on the barbie and crack a Foster's! Okay, I am making that up. He did not say that last part.

He did say that Australia is much more sparsely populated than the US, and we could actually benefit more from a system like theirs, given our health care infrastructure and population distributions.

Last but not least was Dr. Quentin young, who is famous in Illinois for being a proponent of single payer health care systems. Funny, lively, and he has a wealth of knowledge about our system and why, in a word, it sucks. He's also national coordinator for Physicians for a National Health Program, an honorable group.

My very first 'assignment' for the Urbana Indymedia Center was covering an event that Dr. Young and Pat Quinn (before he was Lt. Governor) were attending where they were talking about a push for a constitutional amendment in Illinois (the Bernadin Amendment) which would guarantee heatlh care for Illinois' citizens.

I remember it well. Then too, I had no idea what the fuck I was doing trying to cover that event. How things change. Now, I have no idea what I'm doing blogging, or being a precinct committeman!

Also, Wurfwhile covers the Saturday gig I posted about below.