Saturday, March 31, 2007
Centegra VP Aaron Shepley Comes Out in Favor of New Mercy Hospital in Crystal Lake - Part 1
In other breaking news, the Easter Bunny is real.Three weeks before the Crystal Lake mayoral elections, Wisoncosn's Mercy Health System has announced it will try a second time to gain approval to build a hospital in Crystal Lake.
That’s the information from Kevin Cravin’s and Reagan Foster’s Northwest Herald’s story on Saturday.
It will be the same location—south of the Holiday Inn at the intersection of Three Oaks Road and Route 31.
But it will be larger.
128 beds versus 70 before.
One of the objections of the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board staff was that the Mercy proposal wasn’t big enough to meet standards in the rules.
That was before the fix was put in by Health Facilities Planning Board member and big (actually, biggest) Jim Ryan contributor Stuart Levine.
What interested me the most in the story was Mayor Aaron Shepley’s reaction.
Shepley is one of Centegra’s Vice Presidents. His enterprise has major economic interests in Crystal Lake, besides whatever skills Shepley brings to his job.
Centegra operates Health Bridge, a fitness center, and medical offices in Crystal Lake.
And, it definitely does not want competition from a new Crystal Lake hospital with its two facilities within easy driving distance of town.Here’s what the NW Herald reports Shepley had to say:
If they follow the rules and meet the state regulations and they don’t taint the process with the same corruption that the last process was tainted with, I will support it 100 percent.At least he didn’t say “1000%,” as Democratic Presidential candidate Eugene McGovern said of how much he supported his vice presidential candidate Thomas Eagleton. Two weeks after Eagleton was nominated McGovern dumped him from the 1972 ticket in favor of Sergent Shriver.
Not coincidentally, Lori Phelps—Shepley’s opponent for mayor—made getting a hospital in Crystal Lake one of her big issues when she announced her opposition to the man she worked hard to elect eight years ago.
Read Part 2, which appears tomorrow.
Labels: Aaron Shepley, Centegra, Crystal Lake, Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board, Mercy Hospital, Nick Hurtgen, Stuart Levine
Comments:
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I'm a fan of free enterprise making such decisions, not our local or state governments assigning arbitrary distances between hospitals with beds and posing as economic sooth-sayers. Free enterprise, when it's left alone, has a funny way of adjusting itself to fit market demands for the best in health care. Government tinkering and sooth-saying is NOT WELCOMED here. Nope, let private enterprise bear the investment costs, take the risks, enjoy the rewards and provide the benefits to its free-willed clientele. Give US the CHOICE to make our OWN minds up to prove any medical service's worth. A quarter billion dollar investment in McHenry County by a progressive, growing health provider certainly gives ME hope that THEY see opportunity here! Ronald Reagan's wonderful quote reminds us, "The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help." Leave the "helpful" politicians out of this - whose judgment brought us such demonstrated bonehead solutions as the lottery system and rolling tolls. Regarding the Mayor: While Shepley has much going for him, and can take credit for a job well done in Crystal Lake, this is an issue he'd be best to step away from, or simply, be honest. His thinly veiled "100% support of a new hospital if only those darn State rules weren't in place" quip does not become him. I may be wrong, but I read it as an old lawyer's trick. Does he think folks don't see through it? Maybe he IS telling it like it is. GREAT! Then I suggest we ask Mayor Shepley and Lori Phelps to both make a trip next week to Springfield to lobby in favor of step one: changing the State rules to do away with the "CON" process (so appropriately abbreviated, isn't it?). It's obviously a dinosaur, and rife with opportunities to corrupt the process, right? Let's see who would agree to make that trip, or whether we're just calling a bluff. Cal, thanks for your unique dedication to keeping folks up-to-date in McHenry County, while making my writing seem more concise, if nothing else -John Coonen, Crystal Lake :)
John-
Unlike the Northwest Herald, you can use paragraphs here.
They would make your comment easier to read.
Unlike the Northwest Herald, you can use paragraphs here.
They would make your comment easier to read.
Cal,
Thanks for allowing paragraphs. Mr. O'Meara, my high school Rhetoric teacher, will approve (yet he may grade my blogging abilities, which would be quite the trip down memory lane).
I'll have to work on that. Now, do you allow for chapters?
:) -John
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Thanks for allowing paragraphs. Mr. O'Meara, my high school Rhetoric teacher, will approve (yet he may grade my blogging abilities, which would be quite the trip down memory lane).
I'll have to work on that. Now, do you allow for chapters?
:) -John
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