Health Care Advocates Challenge Johnson to Meet with Them

A health care advocacy group is organizing its efforts toward legislation as Congress takes up the issue, and it wants Congressman Tim Johnson to join in their discussion.

The Champaign-based Campaign for Better Health Care assembled several small business owners who say they have trouble affording health care for their workers and themselves because of cost or pre-existing conditions. Café Kopi owner Paul West once offered his full time workers health insurance. "We had to give it up because it's too expensive, and we lost two good employees because of it," West said. "I myself got a temporary policy. i'm trying to find something myself. It's just been...it's hard."

Campaign organizers have set up two town hall meetings in Champaign on the issue, the first one this Saturday. They're criticizing 15th district congressman Tim Johnson for scheduling town hall meetings of his own on early Monday evenings in Villa Grove, Rantoul and Danville - they say they're too inconvenient for most workers.

Johnson's spokesman Phil Bloomer says the Monday evening meeting times were picked to accommodate the congressman's Washington DC schedule. He says Johnson's office understands where health care advocates like the Campaign for Better Health Care are coming from and have been in contact with them multiple times.