A young man, 26, has diabetes but no health coverage. He works, but his jobs don’t offer health insurance, and he doesn’t earn enough to pay for it himself.

So he shares medication with his grandmother, also a diabetic, until his kidneys begin to fail. Now that he is seriously ill, Medical Assistance kicks in. He goes for dialysis several days a week and waits for someone to donate a new kidney.
Was this man denied a human right? Or is diabetes medication, and other medical care that keeps people healthy and alive, a privilege for those with enough money?

These are questions Sandy Brekke, director of the St. Clare Health Mission, wants people to ask.

When we know whether this country expects health care to be a privilege or a human right, she says, then we can move forward with reform.

For Brekke, the answer is clear. Taped to the office door of the building off Market Street is a copy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

On Tuesday, she handed the copy to me, and I read Article 25, which is circled with an orange highlighter:

1. Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

2. Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

“Yeah, it seems like,” I started to say, but fell silent.

We sat quiet for a moment.

The United States was one of 48 countries that voted to ratify the declaration in 1948. Former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt had a hand in drafting it.

But beyond the fact that our country ratified a document that clearly compels us to get that young diabetic — who

visited St. Clare last winter — his insulin, do we not have a more personal moral obligation to protect him from needless suffering?

Brekke, who volunteered as a nurse at St. Clare for 11 years before becoming director three years ago, is familiar with the arguments.

Doesn’t health care as a human right mean health care has to be free? No, she says, a universal system of health care isn’t free but is supported by everybody, and makes health care affordable and accessible to all.

Doesn’t health care as a human right discourage personal responsibility for one’s health? It’s the opposite, she says. As with the right to vote, the right to health care depends on responsibility. Universal health care gives people access to the tools they need to help them be responsible for their health.

Won’t health care for all mean we have to ration health care and people will be waiting in lines? We already ration health care, she says. “We have people here who don’t have a list to get on. … It’s just not you because you might have health insurance.”

Brekke speaks frankly, saying we don’t really have health care in this country but “sick care.”

She asks provocative questions: Is it beneficial for us to take care of ourselves when we live in a market-driven system?

And she repeatedly points out she doesn’t have the answer.

“I don’t know what is best for our country, and I don’t know that there’s even a model out there that would work for this country, but there are really smart people in this country who I know can figure it out,” she said. “It’s time that we as a country really look at the issue and figure out where we are and where we want to be and then see where our legislators are.”

The majority of people who come to St. Clare, open Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, are the working poor. Brekke described the patients as tough.

And the volunteers, she said, go home struggling to understand why people in this country haven’t seen a doctor in five years.

“People die because they can’t afford health care. We’ve seen it here,” she said. “We’re denying this group of people what we have an abundance of because they can’t afford it.”

Someday, Brekke hopes St. Clare is no longer needed. Until then, people will continue to line up outside, waiting to see a doctor.

Joe Orso works part time for the La Crosse Tribune and the Franciscan Spirituality Center. Opinions in this column are his own.

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