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Public Affairs coverage from our award-winning staff |
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Cook County Health Board Under Fire
Produced by City Room on Tuesday, October 27, 2009
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AP/Spencer Green |
The skirmish over control of the Cook County health system is heating up. County board president Todd Stroger yesterday rallied union members in front of Stroger Hospital. They're taking aim at the independent board installed last year to take politics out of the hospitals and clinics. Stroger accuses board members of running the public health system like a for-profit business.
STROGER: It is not the time to say let's cut our services. Let's get rid of our workers. We don't need clerks or nurses. We don't need the doctors. How can we say that? This is when we need them the most.
The Health and Hospitals Board has sent pink slips to 335 employees. Board spokesman Lucio Guerrero says most of those workers are in non-clinical jobs like food service and clerical work. Guerrero says the cuts are part of the very efficiencies the board was created to achieve.
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Rob, Wheeling // Tuesday, October 27, 2009 @ 4:22 PM
Stroger who runs the most wasteful and corrupt county in the US should be ashamed to show his face. The occupation of Cook County health should be to mitigate abominable failure in providing H1N1 vaccines in Cook County, not the power pays of a failing "leader". Time that we in the suburbs make our voice known that we will not finance this farce called Cook County governance.
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Lynne, Chicago // Wednesday, October 28, 2009 @ 9:43 PM
In response to Rob's remarks, I guess I would like to state that each sentence of your remarks is factually inaccurate. The delivery of the H1N1 vaccine is dictated by federal priorities having nothing to do with county govt, and in fact it has been the city that has led the effort to deliver the vaccine. But more to the point, your attempt to create the perception that somehow the "suburbs" are paying for county govt is false. Chicago is the revenue giant for county gov't.
But this is a distraction from the real issue surrounding our public health system. Cook County Health provides health services to students, police officers, AIDS patients, victims of traumatic accidents, and cancer patients, among others. Cook County Health is not a "welfare" project that the suburbs pays for. It is a service that one day, even you Rob, may need. Or maybe your family member. And in that event, perhaps you could be just a touch more gracious in the manner in which you characterize a live saving service.
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