IL-15
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With our support Dr. David Gill can be elected Congressman for Illinois’ 15th District. The case for Dr. Gill is compelling. His energy, integrity and common sense make Dr. Gill a better representative for the people of the 15th District, than does current incumbent Timothy Johnson, an old-style George Ryan republican of no accomplishment whose support of the Bush Administration has led to the wasteful and counterproductive sacrifice of thousands of American lives in Iraq, the imminent bankruptcy of Medicare, profligerate federal spending, degradation of our environment and the continued deterioration of our healthcare system.
Dr. Gill is a veteran Emergency Room doctor and director of an Emergency Room operation. He has been active in the community and serves on the local board of Planned Parenthood. Dr. Gill knows medicine. He knows that our nation’s health delivery system – dependent on a piecemeal system of government funding, corporate largess, charity, tax breaks, and exhorbitant billing to individuals combined with the world’s most expensive prescription drug prices – is not working. It no longer delivers the best care to all, but rather the best care to the few who can afford it by virtue of their employment status, their wealth or their participation in a few limited government programs. Many who need medical care are forced into bankruptcy, a fate made much more arduous with the Bankruptcy Law passed by the current Congress. And increasingly the nature of medical care is determined by employers, insurance companies and the government, not by doctors and their patients. The United States Congress will have to address this issue soon and we need Dr. Gill in the House to help craft the solution.
Congressmen Timothy Johnson believes our health care system is the best in world and needs no real fixes. It make sense – since Johnson receives more than 60 percent of his campaign funds from PACs and industries which benefit from the inefficiencies of our current health care trainwreck – including large doses from the American Trial Lawyers Association. Then again, Timothy Johnson was among the majority in this Congress that felt competent to diagnose Terry Schiavo’s condition from thousands of miles away.
In fact, Mr. Johnson has a long career as a go-it-along pay-for-play Illinois politician – a position that has garnered him labor as well as corporate support – in a traditionally Republican downstate district. However, Mr. Johnson’s anemic fundraising – less than $200,000 raised for this election – and a moribund web site still celebrating the Bush-Cheney 2004 campagin, suggets a level of complacency that makes this District ripe for the taking.
Dr. Gill is an experienced campaigner. In his initial run for public office, campaigning for this seat in 2004, Dr. Gill earned 39 percent of the vote despite being outfunded and outspent 5 to 1 by Mr. Johnson. This time around, through August, Dr. Gill has raised $155,000 compared to the reported $194,000 raised by the incumbent. Those are close numbers.
In 2006 the challenge is to get Dr. David Gills’ name and message out to a district spanning 10,000 square miles, more than 100,000 farms, and including the great university towns of Champaign-Urbana, Bloomington-Normal and Charleston. Just a little help to Dr. Gill will go a long way – media costs are not prohibitive and the democratic message of fiscal responsibility, effective but limited government and a genuine and effective war on terror will resonate in the 15th District.
