Northwestern Memorial HealthCare is making a hard push into the northern suburbs, planting its flag firmly in a market dominated by a pair of established competitors before President Barack Obama's health care overhaul is implemented.

Northwestern Memorial Physicians Group, the hospital system's wholly owned primary-care doctors' group, plans to open nine new clinics by spring 2013 from Chicago's North Side to near the Wisconsin border.

Four of the clinics already are open, including sites in Grayslake, Highland Park, Lake Forest and a combination primary care and urgent care center in Lakeview that started accepting patients late last month. Another in Evanston is projected to open in October.

Administrators expect to add as many as 100 new physicians over the next two years, roughly doubling the number of doctors in the Physicians Group today.

The expansion, estimated to cost about $20 million, comes on the heels of the system's 2010 acquisition of Lake Forest Hospital, its first acute-care outpost beyond its core offerings in the city. It also places Northwestern in direct competition with a pair of deep-pocketed rivals: NorthShore University HealthSystem and Advocate Health Care.

Although Northwestern officials insist the move is not an attempt to wrest market share away from its competitors, Ed Giniat, who leads the consulting firm KPMG's health care sector, said the hospital "is starting to throw the gantlet down on a fairly fractured market."

The Northwestern expansion also comes in advance of the 2014 implementation of the health care overhaul, which already has spurred changes in how and where health care is delivered.

The new model places greater importance on primary care physicians, who will take on additional responsibilities in managing patient groups. That has led to a spending spree by hospital systems, which are competing to align with doctors' groups that will be counted on to act as a feeder network of patients.

In Northwestern's case, it is seeking to widen the pipeline of patients to its flagship Streeterville hospital.

"People keep rediscovering the fact that (primary care doctors) are probably the best, most efficient and economical entree into the system," said Dr. Daniel Derman, president of Northwestern Memorial Physicians Group.

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Northwestern Memorial expands into northern suburbs

Yesterday at 8:30 PM GOP convention speakers seek to humanize Romney, and Democrats stand up for health care reform.

By SANDHYA SOMASHEKHAR The Washington Post

This year, the political conventions got personal. Extremely so.

click image to enlarge

Stacey Lihn addresses the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte last week as her husband, Caleb, listens with daughters Zoe, left, and Emerson. Lihn credited the Affordable Care Act with saving one daughters life.

The Associated Press

From heart-rending tales of premature babies to tactfully described female disorders, the organizers of the Republican and Democratic conventions featured deeply personal stories of health struggles that in previous years might have been more at home on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" than at the podium of a national political event.

There's no mystery as to why. For months, the presidential race has been fought at 30,000 feet, with the candidates spouting off on esoteric ideas about the role of government and who has better ideas about health care and the economy. Voters have had little opportunity to connect with those ideas -- or the men espousing them -- on a personal level.

That changed when Republicans gathered in Tampa to formally choose Mitt Romney as their nominee and to introduce him to a voting public that has been slow to warm to him personally. The trend continued last week, as Democrats assembled in Charlotte tried to solidify their advantage with female voters and cast as positively as possible President Obama's signature health-care law.

"It humanizes and personalizes the politics, that it's not just about policy it's also about people," said Frank Luntz, a Republican media consultant. "Whenever policy is put in people terms, that's when it succeeds."

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Both parties highlight personal health struggles

Opinion

Alf Landon, 1936 Republican candidate for president, attacked Social Security as a philosophical and economic disaster.Courtesy photo

September 09, 2012 2:00 AM

The debate over national health care dubbed "ObamaCare" has been going on for many years. After the bill was placed into law, the Supreme Court was asked to make a decision whether or not the law was constitutional. If one looks back in history to 1935, when the Social Security Act was being debated during a presidential election, one can clearly see the similarities.

Alf Landon, the 1936 Republican candidate for president, spoke of problems we are hearing today. Landon made what he called "the bungling and waste" of Social Security the key to his presidential campaign, and his opposition to Social Security, along with the arguments President Franklin Roosevelt voiced in defending Social Security against Landon, offers a history lesson that deserves our attention.

Alf Landon's speech attacked Social Security, which was due to begin collecting contributions on Jan. 1, 1937, as a philosophical and economic disaster. He stated: "This law is unjust, unworkable, stupidly drafted and wastefully financed."

This does sound like the Republican arguments of the 2012 election.

Landon argued that Social Security was "paternal government," at its worst. "It assumes that Americans are irresponsible. It assumes that old-age pensions are necessary because Americans lack the foresight to provide for their old age." The contribution Social Security required from the employer, Landon argued, was sure to be "imposed" on the consumer, while the contribution Social Security required from the worker was too much for him to bear.

History is an interesting thing to read and understand. If one would change Alf Landon's name to Mitt Romney, or most of the Republican leadership, the text would have the same concepts.

Landon went on to state that, "As if that were not enough, the "vast army of clerks" required to administer Social Security, would create a bloated bureaucracy that would be a "cruel hoax" on American workers. There was, he predicted, "every probability that the cash they pay in will be used for current deficits and new extravagances," and in the end impoverishes the system. "If the present compulsory insurance plan remains in force, our old people are only too apt to find the cupboard bare."

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Those who ignore history vote for GOP

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Simple Treatments, Ignored