WVPE commentary to air Monday

The following will air Monday November 5, 2007 at 8:35 AM and 12:30 PM on 88.1 WVPE (FM). This will be the fourth P,SB commentary for the year, thus far. If desired, copies of the sound file are available.

Recently, Steve Skvara, who gained instant fame at the AFL-CIO Democratic Presidential Candidates Forum in Chicago, IL was in South Bend. His question at Soldiers Field to former Senator John Edwards (on health care) ended with: “What’s wrong with America, and what are you going to do to change it?”

I had the privilege of a conversation with Steve who lives just down the road from us near Valparaiso, IN. He is a retiree from the now defunct LTV Steel Corporation (the company whose engineered bankruptcy cost him his family health care coverage and one third of his pension). He’s currently an Executive Board Member of Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR) and agitates for health care reform. In his view, what’s needed is a national single payer system, but he’d happily settle for any effective universal coverage plan.

I was curious about how it came to be that in that vast crowd in Soldiers Field he was able to ask a question of the candidates. He explained to me that in an earlier event, he had posed a similar question which had come to the attention of the organizers of the Chicago forum. That put him into a pool (I think he said of 37 people) who were potential questioners. So there was a group of people who went to the event given cards with abbreviated versions of their question on their side and a number on the opposite side. Only shortly before the forum started, did the potential questioners find out if they would be called. And the “questionee” was basically by lot.

So what did Mr. Skvara have to say here in South Bend? Pretty much what many of us try to get people to understand: That nearly 50 million Americans have no health care insurance coverage, that most personal bankruptcies are driven by medical bills. That although we spend nearly twice as much per person as any other developed nation on health care our outcomes (life expectancy, infant mortality, etc.) lag behind most of these nations. His own cardiac specialist said we need a single payer system, because his billing service costs that doctor a quarter million dollars a year. There’s no medical care benefit to that expense. The other thing he had to say is something people who put up with listening to me likely have grown tired of hearing. The problem will not be corrected without us. Period.

Mr. Skvara’s experience is very instructional. He suffered a permanent disability due to an auto accident his family experienced. At the time, he had fabulous heath coverage – thanks to the efforts of organized labor. His family had coverage through the same program and though as a retiree he was required to pay for it – the cost was quite affordable. Then came the liquidation of LTV Steel and it was all gone.

When Mr. Skvara stood up in Chicago he qualified for Medicare due to his disability, but his wife had no coverage. I still find it very hard to keep it together watching the video (as I have many times) as he, struggling with his emotions, says he sits across the breakfast table from the woman who took care of their family for thirty-six years and he can’t afford to pay for health care for her – and seems ashamed of it.

It is we who should be ashamed. I know I am.

Happily, she now has some care. A medical group in Illinois is providing check-ups and tests for her thanks to someone who heard of their plight. But it’s because of someone who did a nice thing, instead of us doing the right thing. And it’s not coverage.

Here are a couple of my own thoughts on the topic. Opponents of universal health care coverage like to trot out the specter of “socialized medicine”. Their idea is that private insurance is the model. But insurance - by definition, is socialism. Gather the biggest pool possible in order to spread the risk. We each pay in our appropriate fraction of the total anticipated cost and receive a benefit only if we need it. Universal coverage is merely the logical extension of the insurance model.

Another thing I think about is that a long time ago we agreed that it was our responsibility as a society to provide a certain level of education to every citizen. Though some have tried to backslide on this one, I still think it is a good idea. People use the phrase “right to life” quite frequently. I’d suggest the right to life (or certainly, the right to a life of quality) often requires competent medical care – without the distraction of “how am I going to pay for this?’. How is this any less important?

Democracy is not a spectator sport.

Don Wheeler
writer/editor
Progressives, South Bend