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Chris Kennedy on Health Care

 

 


Expand Obamacare; move to single payer

Chris believes Illinois should expand Obamacare at all costs while working to drive down healthcare costs for everyone. In Illinois, the effect of Obamacare was powerful and persuasive. The uninsured rate was cut nearly in half with help from the Medicaid expansion, which provided healthcare to some 650,000 more people. To guarantee everyone health care, Chris believes the United States should be proactively moving toward a single-payer system.
Source: 2018 Illinois Gubernatorial website KennedyForIllinois.com , Sep 1, 2017

Treat the mentally ill instead of jailing them

We live in a country where there are 10 million people with schizophrenia and bipolar and major depression, often which cause substantial impairment, and something like 40% of them receive no treatment in a given year. We moved the seriously affected out of psychiatric hospitals where, in the 50s, we had 330 beds or more per 100,000 people, and today, we only have 11 or 12 beds per 100,000 people in our country to serve these people. Our largest overnight facility for people with mental illness is now our jail system and our prisons, where a huge percentage of inmates have untreated mental illness. We've arranged for our largest insurer of this population, Medicaid, to reimburse psychiatrists in a way that is so unrewarding that now many of these medical professionals won't accept Medicaid or care for these patients as a result of this government policy. We as a country are not acting rationally.
Source: 2018 Gubernatorial campaign website, KennedyForIllinois.com , Jan 31, 2017

Don't punish the hospitals; don't divide them from doctors

The last gubernatorial election was divisive for the healthcare field. The lobbyists who traditionally represented doctors seemed to favor Bruce Rauner, and lobbyists who traditionally represented hospitals seemed to support Pat Quinn. The governor's office created budget documents that will, in effect, disproportionally punish hospitals, including small safety-net hospitals. I can tell you that, if the small safety net hospitals like Mt. Sinai, fail, their patient load will overwhelm the capacity to absorb them at the University of Illinois hospital, and this will threaten the very existence of our state hospital and the power of our medical school and perhaps threaten the economic viability of the entire University itself. Northwestern, Loyola and U of C and many other regional hospitals will face the same fate. We cannot let revenge politics destroy social service networks and some of the greatest healthcare economic engines the state has.
Source: 2018 Gubernatorial campaign website, KennedyForIllinois.com , Jan 31, 2017

Other governors on Health Care: Chris Kennedy on other issues:
IL Gubernatorial:
Ameya Pawar
Bruce Rauner
Daniel Biss
J.B. Pritzker
Jeanne Ives
Pat Quinn
IL Senatorial:
Andrea Zopp
Doug Truax
Jim Oberweis
Mark Kirk
Napoleon Harris
Sharon Hansen
Tammy Duckworth

Gubernatorial Debates 2018:
AK: Walker(i) vs.Chenault(R) vs.Huggins(R)
AL: Kay Ivey(R) vs.Countryman(D) vs.Tommy Battle (R) vs.George(R) vs.Carrington(R)
AR: Hutchinson(R) vs.Henderson(D) vs.West(L)
AZ: Ducey(R) vs.David Garcia (D) vs.Farley(D)
CA: Newsom(D) vs.Chiang(D) vs.Villaraigosa(D) vs.Delaine Eastin (D) vs.David Hadley (R) vs.John Cox (R) vs.Zoltan Istvan (I) vs.Allen(R) vs.La Riva(P)
CO: Johnston(D) vs.Mitchell(R) vs.Cary Kennedy (D) vs.Doug Robinson (R) vs.Barlock(R) vs.Lynne(R) vs.Polis(D) vs.Coffman(R) vs.George Brauchler(R,A.G.)
CT: Malloy(D) vs.Lamont(D) vs.Srinivasan(R) vs.David Walker (R) vs.Lumaj(R) vs.Visconti(R) vs.Lauretti(R) vs.Drew(D)
FL: Gillum(D) vs.Graham(D) vs.Mike Huckabee (R) vs.Putnam(R)
GA: Kemp(R) vs.Casey Cagle(R) vs.Hunter Hill(R) vs.Stacey Abrams(D)
HI: Ige(D) vs.Hanabusa(D)
IA: Kim_Reynolds(R) vs.Leopold(D) vs.Boulton(D) vs.McGuire(D) vs.Glasson(D)
ID: Little(R) vs.Fulcher(R) vs.Labrador(R) vs.Ahlquist(R) vs.Minton(D) vs.Jordan(D)
IL: Rauner(R) vs.Kennedy(D) vs.Pawar(D) vs.Daniel Biss (D) vs.Pritzker(D) vs.Ives(R)
KS: Brewer(D) vs.Wink Hartman (R) vs.Colyer(C) vs.Kobach(R)
MA: Baker(R) vs.Gonzalez(D) vs.Setti Warren (D) vs.Bob Massie (R)
MD: Hogan(R) vs.Alec Ross (D) vs.Cummings(D) vs.Madaleno(D)
ME: Mayhew(R) vs.Mills(D) vs.Boyle(D) vs.Thibodeau(R)
MI: Whitmer(R) vs.El-Sayed(D) vs.Tim Walz (D) vs.Schuette(R) vs.Calley(R)
MN: vs.Smith(D) vs.Coleman(D) vs.Murphy(D) vs.Otto(D) vs.Tina Liebling (DFL) vs.Tim Walz (DFL) vs.Matt Dean (R) vs.Johnson(R)
NE: Ricketts(R) vs.Krist(D)
NH: Sununu(R) vs.Schwartz(R) vs.Steve Marchand (D)
NM: Lujan-Grisham(D) vs.Pearce(R) vs.Cervantes(D) vs.Apodaca (D)
NV: Fisher (R) vs.Sisolak(D) vs.Laxalt(R) vs.Schwartz(R)
NY: Cuomo(D) vs.Nixon(D) vs.Sharpe(L) vs.DeFrancisco(R)
OH: DeWine(R) vs.Kucinich(D) vs.Sutton(D,Lt.Gov) vs.Taylor(R) vs.Jim Renacci (R) vs.Connie Pillich (D) vs.Schiavoni(D) vs.Husted(R) vs.Whaley(D) vs.Cordray(D)
OK: Gary Richardson (R) vs.Johnson(D)
OR: Brown(D) vs.Scott Inman(D) vs.Buehler(R)
PA: Wolf(D) vs.Wagner(R) vs.Barletta(R)
RI: Raimondo(D) vs.Fung(R) vs.Morgan(R)
SC: McMaster(R) vs.McGill(R) vs.Pope(R) vs.Templeton(R) vs.Smith(D)
SD: Noem(R) vs.Jackley(R) vs.Sutton(D)
TN: Green(R) vs.Dean(D) vs.Black(R)
TX: Abbott(R) vs.Glass(L) vs.White(D) vs.Valdez(D)
VT: Scott(R) vs.Stern(D)
WI: Walker(R) vs.Harlow(D) vs.Vinehout(D) vs.Evers(D)
WY: Throne(D) vs.Dahlin(R) vs.Gordon(R)
Newly-elected governors (first seated in Jan. 2017):
DE-D: Carney
IN-R: Holcomb
MO-R: Greitens
NH-R: Sununu
NC-D: Cooper
ND-R: Burgum
VT-R: Scott
WV-D: Justice

Retiring 2017-18:
AL-R: Robert Bentley(R)
(term-limited 2018)
CA-D: Jerry Brown
(term-limited 2018)
CO-D: John Hickenlooper
(term-limited 2018)
FL-R: Rick Scott
(term-limited 2018)
GA-R: Nathan Deal
(term-limited 2018)
IA-R: Terry Branstad
(appointed ambassador, 2017)
ID-R: Butch Otter
(retiring 2018)
KS-R: Sam Brownback
(term-limited 2018)
ME-R: Paul LePage
(term-limited 2018)
MI-R: Rick Snyder
(term-limited 2018)
MN-D: Mark Dayton
(retiring 2018)
NM-R: Susana Martinez
(term-limited 2018)
OH-R: John Kasich
(term-limited 2018)
OK-R: Mary Fallin
(term-limited 2018)
SC-R: Nikki Haley
(appointed ambassador, 2017)
SD-R: Dennis Daugaard
(term-limited 2018)
TN-R: Bill Haslam
(term-limited 2018)
WY-R: Matt Mead
(term-limited 2018)
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Page last updated: Jun 15, 2018