BLOOMINGTON - The controversial family physician Dr. David Gill is now assistant director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, appointed this week by Governor Pat Quinn after Gill lost a 2012 bid for Congress from the 13th CD to Republican Rodney Davis.
Gill, of Bloomington, received his bachelor’s and medical degrees from the University of Illinois and has served as a family practice doctor and emergency room physician for more than 20 years. Most recently he was an emergency room doctor at Advocate BroMenn Medical Center in Normal.
During the 2012 congressional campaign, Gill's views on health care raised eyebrows when Bloomington Pantagraph's political reporter Kurt Erickson revealed that Dr. Gill had been fired from OSF St. Joseph's Medical Center in Bloomington because of his support for assisted suicide.
When asked about the controversy, Erickson reported Dr. Gill said, “I don’t think people should have to put up with the amount of suffering the state says they have to. A lot of physicians feel disgruntled, ashamed and disgusted in their inability to assist patients."
He added that physician-assisted suicides already occur. For example, Gill said some doctors will keep increasing a patient’s dosage of pain-relieving morphine, fully aware that respirations will eventually stop. ...“It goes on everyday,” he said at the time.
Dr. Gill also said in a campaign radio interview that Obamacare did not go far enough, that he fully supported the single payer health care system and that Medicare would change dramatically in the years to come.
