The guy approaching Dr. Peter Beilenson wore short pants, and he had ulcers on one of his legs that made everybody want to turn away. He was a construction worker who’d been injured on the job. He had no health insurance. The ulcers were getting worse, and he had nowhere to go for quick, affordable help.
The moment clings to Beilenson. He is the Howard County Health Officer now, but the construction worker approached him several years ago, back when Beilenson was Baltimore’s health commissioner, back before his unsuccessful run for Congress, back when the notion of universal health care was still being talked to death instead of launched into practice.
“That moment with the construction worker,” Beilenson says, “crystallized everything for me.”
In America, we have been talking health care to death. The Democrats have waved it like a banner this week, and the Republicans might mention it next week, and the talking echoes across years while millions of Americans go without the ability to pay for basic care.
The language deadens too many emotions. The word “insurance” is mentioned, and eyelids flutter. The phrases “reported income” and “health care programs,” are uttered, and brains go numb. The politicians fail to connect the rhetoric to human beings. So the debate groans on.
When Beilenson ran for Congress, he made it a point to stress his background – his medical degree, and his years as Baltimore health commissioner. There was a way to make this work, he said. He said it all across the third congressional district, and he said it across two dozen debates, and he noticed one of his opponents, Andy Barth, talking the same language.
Barth, the former newsman for WMAR-TV, gave up his reporting job to run for the seat ultimately won by Rep. John Sarbanes. Barth agreed with Beilenson: in the richest nation on earth, we should find a way to treat all our citizens.
“I think we had 23 campaign appearances together,” Beilenson says. He nods toward Barth, sitting across from him at a coffee house table. “And we found we were saying the same things. To the point where we could, you know…”
“…finish each other’s sentences,” says Barth.
“And often did,” says Beilenson.
“And came to trust each other,” says Barth.
Which is helpful, since he has now become Beilenson’s press spokesman as they prepare to launch universal health care in Howard County. The official announcement will come Sept. 24, and the first cases can sign up Jan. 1. It will make Howard County the first subdivision in America with this kind of comprehensive health care coverage. (San Francisco has a similar plan, though its funding is reportedly in flux.)
Beilenson’s spent the last 18 months working on this. In its first year, it will mean access for 2,000 uninsured Howard Countians to primary care, preventive health screenings, immunizations, diagnostic services, low-cost prescriptions, mental health services, substance abuse treatment, inpatient hospital care “debt forgiveness,” and outpatient specialty care for the county’s biggest health problems.
Ultimately, it is expected to cover all 15,000 county residents between 19 and 64 who are now uninsured. It will funded by participants’ small monthly fees, $500,000 from the county government, and about $700,000 from foundations and private donors.
The cost to Howard County tax payers to support the whole thing? Roughly $2 a year per person, says Beilenson.
He got the go-ahead from Howard County Executive Ken Ulman who, says Beilenson, “told me he wanted a model health community. You can’t do this unless you have the political will, and he had it.”
Beilenson then took the plan to Maryland’s two U.S. senators, Barbara Mikulski and Ben Cardin, who, says Beilenson, “said they were very interested – not for all 2,000 counties across the country – but as a model. There wouldn’t be a single U.S. plan. It’d be the federal government helping to fund individual jurisdictions based on the plans they develop.”
In the gloomy days after Beilenson and Barth suffered their congressional campaign losses, the two men began meeting regularly for lunch. Partly, they say, to salve their wounds. But partly, to figure out a way to make universal health care a reality – at least in Howard County.
“The system we have now in America,” says Beilenson, “is unconscionable. Millions of uninsured people, and 80 percent of them are working people. We think health care’s a right. That’s the philosophy behind this plan.”
So two men who lost their political race have turned it into a larger triumph. And maybe even a role model for the rest of America.
