Dr. David Gill Knows More About What A Death Panel Is Than Clueless Motormouth Sarah Palin

Many national progressives were so consumed by Ilya Sheyman's primary against a corporate shill in the suburbs north of Chicago that they plumb forgot the primary battle against a similar corporate hack way to the south on the same March day in the new-- and bluer-- IL-13. Ilya lost to Brad Schneider, but Dr. David Gill won his race that night. If progressives didn't notice-- and if Steve Israel is relentlessly refusing to put Dr. Gill-- and among Illinois primary winners that night, only Dr. Gill-- on the Red-to-Blue list, Republican incumbent Tim Johnson did notice. And he noticed the polling as well and the powerful grassroots army Dr. Gill had put together to beat the Democratic Machine that was now gearing up to beat the Republican Machine. So, one week after his own hard-fought and expensive primary victory, decade-long Congressman Tim Johnson announced his retirement.

So now the Republicans are stuck with a right-wing political operative picked by party bosses, Rodney Davis, who was an aide to John Shimkus, the clueless hypocrite from another district, the Bible-spouting phony who enabled Mark Foley to continue molesting the congressional boy pages. Luckily for IL-13 voters, the reactionary Davis and the progressive Dr. Gill couldn't be more sharply in contrast across the board-- and especially when it comes to healthcare policy.

Dr. Gill, like all the progressive doctors we've talked to running for Congress-- Lee Rogers (CA), Syed Taj (MI), Matt Heinz (AZ), Raul Ruiz (CA), and Manan Trivedi (PA)-- says that "insurance companies have too much power and make too much money denying and delaying care." With Palin running around the country again yowling at like-minded imbeciles about death panels, it's important that actual doctors remind people that the insurance companies and the conservative politicians-- of both parties-- who support them are the death panels. "Too many small businesses and hard-working people have little or no health care coverage because costs are out of control," Dr Gill has been telling Illinois voters.

As an ER doctor, I see it every day. Middle-class people coming in with serious conditions that might have been prevented if they had the care they needed earlier or could have afforded medical treatment out of their own pockets.  

As a husband, I experienced it in a whole different way when my first wife Polly died from colon cancer. It was a harrowing 13 months made worse by having to fight our insurance company to pay for expenses her doctors said were necessary to help save her life. 

So, what's the bottom line?

My Republican opponent trusts health insurance companies. I don't.

My Republican opponent will take money from insurance companies and other big corporations. I won't.

My Republican opponent will do what insurance companies and corporate lobbyists want. I'll work for middle-class families... I want to put patients first, not insurance company profits.

Putting patients first is a common theme from all the doctors running for Congress. Last week, when releasing his program for how to improve the Affordable Care Act, Dr. Lee Rogers (D-CA) wholeheartedly agreed with Dr. Gill: "Insurance companies can determine what treatments are medically necessary for you. This is an obvious conflict of interest. Doctors should determine medical necessity for patients, not insurance companies."

And Dr. Gill's race is starting to look so good that, despite Steve Israel, the independent expenditure committee, which he's not allowed to talk to, has reserved $637,000 in airtime for the battle for the 13th CD. Much of that money was originally intended for hopeless conservative Bill Foster in the 11th CD, but Foster is running such a pathetic campaign that despite all the support from Israel and the DCCC, the harder heads at the independent expenditure committee have written him off as a loser.

You can find Dr. Gill-- as well as Dr. Rogers-- on the Blue America ActBlue page. Neither is getting any support from the DCCC so far and both need support from the grassroots to be able to get their own messages out... regardless of what the DCCC eventually decides to do or not do.