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Save County Services! Demonstration and Rally Jan. 29th

Defend Public Healthcare. This week is key.
Tuesday: Vigil at Oak Forest Hospital and Budget Hearing in Markham
Wednesday: Vigil at Provident Hospital 5 pm
Thursday: Budget Hearing in Skokie
Monday: Rally Downtown outside of County Building
Tuesday: Budget Hearing in Maywood
save.the.date.jan.29.pdf
save.the.date.jan.29.pdf (980 k)
Save the Date
January 29th
Rally at Cook County Budget Hearings

Where: Daley Plaza
Cook County/City Hall
118 N. Clark St.

When: Monday January 29th
(gather in AM; Time to be announced)

Attend and Testify at the Public Budget Hearings for the Proposed Budget Cuts.

To Testify Contact President Todd H. Stroger's office to sign up to testify at upcoming Cook County Budget Hearings:
312-603-6400 or 312-603-6396

Dates/Locations:
Tuesday, January 23, 6:30pm- Markham Court Bldg,16501 S Kedzie
Thursday, January 25, 6:30pm- Skokie Court Bldg, 5600 Old Orchard Road
Monday, January 29, 10:00am- Cook County Bldg, 118 N. Clark
Tuesday, January 30, 6:30pm- Maywood Court Bldg, 1500 S Maybrook

Cook County's 2007 Draft Budget proposes dramatic cuts in vital health, safety and other County services. The recommended cuts stand to undermine our community's access to these vital services and lead to disastrous outcomes in the Bureau of Health Services, Public Safety, our Court system and other vital County services. We must not let this happen.

Let your voice be heard:
No elimination of core services
No layoffs of frontline service providers

For more information, please call 312-491-4900









Local News
Posted: Friday, 19 January 2007 6:21AM

Nurses Protest Proposed County Hospital Cuts

CHICAGO (CBS 2) -- Nurses protested outside John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital Of Cook County Thursday night, saying they are concerned about what proposed budget cuts would to do patient care there.

About 1.5 million uninsured or under-insured people get their healthcare at the county level.

One county commissioner actually took part in the protest. Another commissioner, the chairman of the Stroger Hospital committee, says the county's doctors may be part of the problem.

Stroger Hospital nurses who work to save lives and care for the sick every day say they have reached the breaking point.

The nurses are fighting to save what could be hundreds of jobs, the result of Cook County President Todd Stroger's edict that departments cut their budgets 17 percent across the board.

It's Stroger's way of eliminating a huge shortfall without raising taxes in the county's more than $3 billion budget.

Nurses say health cuts of that magnitude could literally be deadly.

"Right now we're already down,OK, if you start cutting you're going to have a lot of problems with patient care,� said Defrances Higgs, a registered nurse at Stroger Hospital.

Cook County Commissioner Forest Claypool joined the protestors.

Its actually unconscionable that front line health care workers are being laid off when all these high-paid six-figure bureaucrats pushing paper around who happen to have political connections are not losing their job, Claypool said Thursday night.

Commissioner Roberto Maldonado, the chair of the Stroger Hospital committee, also wants to save healthcare jobs. But he says one way to do it is by making county doctors work all of the hours they are paid to work.

Maldanado says his preliminary research shows many of them may be cheating the system.

"There is a suggestion.that there might be an..alarming large percentage of doctors that might be working 14 and a half hours a week in clinical work and we don't know what they're doing with the rest of their time,� Maldonado said.

County health care workers aren't the only ones crying foul over the ordered cuts. And for those who think there are fireworks now, just wait until the budget hearings get underway next week.

Calls to Stroger's office were not returned Thursday night.
 
 

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