Wisconsin Public Television

Transcript "In Wisconsin"

Original Air Date: October 5, 2006.

Patty Loew:

Hello and welcome to "In Wisconsin." I'm Patty Loew. This week, we meet a Buffalo County family that may have to sell its dairy farm to pay the medical bills for its two special needs children.

Woman:

It's hard to afford health insurance. You just can't afford it.

Loew:

Find out how this machine is making life sweeter for cranberry farmers. And spend a day with a Milwaukee woman who's made it her mission to transform her neighborhood and the people in it.

Woman:

It's not just to help people for today, but hopefully it is to change lives.

Loew:

Besides taking you to that Milwaukee neighborhood, we'll bring you to another place where people once lived, around 9,000 B.C "In Wisconsin."

Loew:

The rising cost of healthcare. It's crushing some Wisconsin families. And they want the governor, whoever it is, to make this issue priority one. Frederica Freyberg visits with a Buffalo County farm family for our latest "What's the Plan" report, our series on issues in the race for Governor. Freyberg reports that medical costs are forcing this family to make tough choices.

Freyberg:

On a farm tucked among the hills and valleys of Buffalo County, 36-year-old Melanie Pronschinkse says she no longer even notices the beauty around her because she is so stressed out.

Melanie Pronschinkse:

We're all getting very sick and tired of this. It's going to get to a point where you sell the farm.

Freyberg:

Selling the farm is not a choice this family wants to make. Melanie's husband, 42-year-old Bill Pronschinkse represents the third generation of this family to run this dairy farm in the hills of Buffalo County. But the costs keep climbing, while the income is unpredictable.

Melanie Pronschinkse:

The way farming is, your milk prices are up and down, up and down. It's not a steady thing. They change weekly, your milk prices do.

Freyberg:

When milk prices went up last year, this family actually suffered a big blow because the state health insurance program for low-income families with children known as BadgerCare dumped the Pronschinkse family this past August after they made too much money to qualify.

Melanie Pronschinkse:

And it's time I think that people start waking up and realizing that farming, we bust our butts here and we pay our own insurance and it's awful. It's awful what we have to pay, and then for our own state to kick us off because we had one, quote, good year of farming.

Freyberg:

This year, fill being prices are half what they were last year, but the Pronschinkses still had to find other health coverage because BadgerCare was based on the prior year's income. And that's a big deal in this family. Because their 6-year-old daughter Mikala is diabetic. Her doctor visits are expensive and time-consuming. Neither parent can work all time off the farm for health insurance because of Mikala's needs. And the Pronschinkse's 14-year-old son Jeremy has his own special needs. They include ADHD, which requires a special team doctors and medicines. Right now, the family is in a high risk insurance plan for Mikala, but because diabetes is considered a preexisting condition, coverage doesn't kick in for six months.

Melanie Pronschinkse:

It makes me feel awful. Words can't say the stress, the emotional draining this insurance has put us through. I mean, it's terrible. I mean, I have a son with a form of a disability. My daughter's diabetic and your own state doesn't care. They basically don't care. And I just think it's awful that, you know, we can't help our own people out.

Freyberg:

How do help our own people out on healthcare? We asked the candidates running for governor. What's the plan? Mark Green favors health savings accounts.

Mark Green:

I don't believe that big government is the answer. And I don't believe that big insurance is the answer. What we have to do is provide more options for families, give them more healthcare choices. One of the things I don't understand that Governor Doyle did, he's the only governor in the nation, republican or democrat, to veto tax deductability for health savings account. Health savings accounts are not a silver bullet, but they are a great answer for lots of families.

Freyberg:

Mark Green also promotes requiring healthcare providers to publish their real prices and provide cost estimates to help patients shop for care. He would create a statewide public-private wellness initiative to lower healthcare costs. And he wants to lower the amount of money patients or families can get in pain and suffering damages in medical malpractice cases. Green party candidate for governor Nelson Eisman backs universal healthcare.

Nelson Eisman:

Universal healthcare pays for itself. Right now, two-thirds of our spending on healthcare in Wisconsin is publicly funded. The overhead on the private insurance transacting all this healthcare back and forth amongst each other, the 100 private insurers that are involved, that's more than a 30% overhead.

Freyberg:

Eisman wants to expand the BadgerCare program to include everyone. He would have the University of Wisconsin design what he calls a public health utility. He also would like to see more use of walk-in clinics instead of emergency rooms. Democratic incumbent candidate Jim Doyle proposes something called BadgeCcare Plus, which includes a provision that would help farmers by not counting equipment as part of their income.

Jim Doyle:

We're working to expand BadgerCare to cover more families, to go from 175%, 185% of the poverty limit to 200% to take in more families. I've also proposed and we're working hard to get this done, approval from the federal government is required, to allow BadgerCare to be opened up so that families can buy into it for whatever income for their children. My goal is to get every child in this state insured.

Freyberg:

Doyle says his number one priority is creating buying pools for catastrophic care, which he says would lower healthcare costs for businesses and protect citizens against losing everything. He wants to make health insurance premiums tax deductible and continue moving seniors out of nursing homes and into the community to save money.

Healthcare policy expert Linda Reivitz listened to the candidates ideas and weighed in, beginning with Mark Green's plan touting health savings accounts.

Linda Reivitz:

Congressman Green has chosen what people refer to as the market-based approach. The idea behind health savings account is that people have skin in the game. We're going to encourage you with a tax deductible savings account to do something, and in exchange you're going to do something. You're going to get a health insurance policy, which doesn't pay first dollar coverage or anywhere near first dollar coverage. But there are a lot of people for whom it probably won't work. If you have a chronic condition, take a lot of medications, they may not work. If you're over 50-years-old, I've read things in the wall street journal saying probably not a good idea for you.

Freyberg:

Next Reivitz considers Nelson Eisman's ideas.

Reivitz:

What I was struck by in his proposal was he said universal healthcare, universal health insurance pays for itself. If universal coverage paid for itself, I suspect we would have done it a long time ago. So it would have been easy. And it's not easy.

Freyberg:

As for Governor Doyle's multipronged plans that include expanding BadgerCare, making premiums tax deductible and creating buying pools for catastrophic care?

Reivitz:

He is really in the most traditional mode of I'm going to do a little of this and a little of that and see, try to solve particular sets of problems and hope that folks who have those particular problems will be appreciative of the fact that I'm trying to make an effort to solve their particular healthcare problem. And many of them will work.

Freyberg:

According to a recent state survey, 14% of Wisconsin farm families are uninsured. Even more are under-insured. One farm family in Buffalo County has insurance of last resort. But wants something better. The Pronschinskes say they're not looking for a handout, just a little stronger hand up.

Melanie Pronschinske:

We really could use the help. It's time our government stands up and does something.

Loew:

You can get more information about the gubernatorial candidates bing in to WisconsinVote.org

Once there, you'll also find other election-related news coverage, info on voter registration and more about other state political races.

Loew:

Our next report also touches on the issue of healthcare. Milwaukee resident Cordelia Taylor looked around her neighborhood and saw a shortage of long-term care options for low-income senior citizens. Taylor was frustrated by the lack of response to that need, so she decided to do something about it herself.

On Milwaukee's north side on a quiet street across from this boarded up home sits a row of beautifully maintained houses. Little on the outside would tell you that this is a residential care facility for low-income seniors or it's the life work, the mission of Cordelia Taylor.

This is Family House, so named because it started with the taylors' original family house.

Cordelia Taylor:

In the early 1970's we moved to the early suburbs because our last child had gone off to college and we didn't need a house of this size, so we rented it to another family and we moved to the suburbs.

Loew:

There Taylor worked as a nursing home administrator, but she became discouraged by how the institutional needs of the facility dictated how residents had to live their lives.

Taylor:

They were told what time to get up and told what time to go to bed, told what time to sit down to eat anticipate how long and all of this, and I'm a believer when people have worked very hard all of their lives, when they get to the end of their life, they should have freedom of choice.

Loew:

But when she proposed changes, her boss wouldn't listen.

Taylor:

She said, "Your job is not to write policy. Your job is to take care of people." And I went home in tears and told my husband and he said, "Well why don't you open your own and shut your mouth."

Loew:

Taylor's husband also suggested turning their old house in Milwaukee into the care facility. Then Taylor learned, to get a license, they would have to live within 15 minutes of the home.

Taylor:

So I went back home in tears and told my husband again, and he said, well, we came from down there. Let's go back. And we moved into a boarded-up house right down the block.

Loew:

That was in 1987. They quickly learned they were not coming back to the same old neighborhood.

Taylor:

I had a rude awakening. There was shooting at night. There were people gambling on the sidewalk. There was a corner bar at the end of the street where there were parties and drugs, and it was just not a very good situation. I had gotten myself into it, and I couldn't back out, and I didn't want to tell my husband that I had made a mistake. So the way I would deal with it is I would tell him all day everything is just fine, just fine, and when everybody goes to bed at night, I'd go in the bathroom and cry and ask God to help us get out of this mess. He just kind of fixed it so I could live in this mess.

Loew:

Soon after the Taylors fixed up their old home to house eight residents, they expanded and put on an addition. But that wasn't enough to fulfill Family House's mission. So soon they bought the house next door, and so on down the block, until almost every house on the block was a family house. Now 58 seniors call Family House home, like 96-year-old Jesse Coleman. She appreciates the home's flexible schedule, particularly on days she comes back from being on dialysis.

Jesse Coleman:

When I come in, I don't eat much, and go to bed. Nobody says you can't go. No, it's too early. Nobody said that. I like that.

Taylor:

All right. And that will get your strength back?

Coleman:

Sure will.

Taylor:

So I will cook you some greens and corn bread then, if that will get your strength back, that's an easy thing to do.

Loew:

What's remarkable about Family House's growth is their policy to admit people regardless of ability to pay.

Man:

B-14...

Loew:

While most residents eventually receive funding from Milwaukee County, Family House will admit them even before they're enrolled in the government system.

Gloria Billings:

My mother was in her 80's, and she had been diagnosed with dementia.

Loew:

Gloria Billings moved her mother into Family House while on the waiting list for county support.

Billings:

The county told us it would be from two to three years before she, Mrs. Taylor, would get paid. So Miss Taylor let volunteer two days a week. They had to pay for a living here. And from the first day I came here as a volunteer, I wanted to stay here.

Woman:

I was looking to see overtime. You know me.

Billings:

No. No overtime.

Loew:

And she has stayed now on staff as the family house scheduler, one of dozens of local people Taylor has hired. Volunteers, donated goods and services are the life blood of Family House. Taylor has also received funds from supporters of faith-based organizations, like the Bradley and Pettit Foundations as well as from a few celebrities.

Taylor:

This is one of our gifts from Oprah Winfrey. She had been very instrumental in helping this mission survive as well.

Your daughter from Mississippi called about six o'clock this morning.

Loew:

That mission has expanded beyond the senior care facility. Youth is also served through an after-
school program and in the Family House garden.

Taylor:

The vegetable garden was put in by the children in the community and the seniors that live here. As much as we enjoy the fresh vegetables we get from the gardens, the purpose of it is to bring people together.

Loew:

The garden occupies a space where a drug house once stood.

Taylor:

So this house one night burned. When the police came, they told me it was because people were hiding out there doing crack and that's why it burned. So they tore it down and I was able to buy the lot for little or nothing and we planted flowers there.

Loew:

Planting seeds of change has become Cordelia Taylor's specialty. In addition to food grown in the garden, Family House receives donations from Second Harvest, which they make available to the neighboring community with certain conditions.

Taylor:

We won't just give a box of food and send someone out of the door. We find out how many people are in the house and then we teach them about proportional cooking. We find out where do you shop. If there's a better place to shop, we talk about when the sales are on on that particular day. It's not just to help people today, but hopefully it is to change lives.

Loew:

Another way family house nourishes people and tries to change lives is called Food for Thought. It's a twice monthly free dinner with a speaker, who addresses health care or financial issues.

Taylor:

Is that okay? All right. You're welcome. Is the food pretty good?

Man:

Yeah.

Taylor:

Good. But do you know what? You're eating with your hat on. Is that better?

Man:

Yeah.

Taylor:

Yeah. There you go.

Loew:

Opening Family House to the neighborhood has taught Taylor about the community's many needs.

Taylor:

One evening in the after school program, a little girl had an elevated temperature, and I told her, I said, I'm going to take you home and your mom can call the doctor. And she said, we don't have a doctor. And I polled the children in that room, and only one child had a private doctor. And I asked them, where do you go to the doctor? Emergency rooms.

Loew:

Seeing the need for primary care, Taylor opened a neighborhood clinic. Kevin Izard is the neighborhood physician.

Kevin Izard:

I grew up in that neighborhood, and I understood the mission, and part of the mission is it's grass roots. This is one person touching one person touching one person.

Taylor:

There's my friend. Hi my friend. How are you doing?

Loew:

It would be hard to count the people touched by Cordelia Taylor, but she would tell you she's just doing her job.

Taylor:

We all are here to make it go. I always tell the maintenance man that, if he don't clean the building, then I don't have a job, because nobody's going to come into a dirty building. So that means his job is just as important as my job as the founder.

We all have gifts, and God expects us to use those gifts. God is not coming down here to do anything. He put us here to do it, and he expects us to help each other, and that's what we should be about doing.

Loew:

We asked the gubernatorial candidates what they'd do on the issue of healthcare for seniors. Democratic incumbent candidate Jim Doyle said he'd expand FamilyCare statewide. FamilyCare allows seniors and people with disabilities to receive care in their communities rather than a nursing home. Doyle also supports the SeniorCare program which provides senior citizens with affordable prescription drugs.

Green party candidate Nelson Eisman said he'd expand BadgerCare to include what Medicare doesn't cover for seniors and make healthcare a public utility, so high prescription costs wouldn't be an issue.

Republican party candidate Mark Green said he'd support Wisconsin's SeniorCare program and help savings accounts that would allow people to set aside money to pay for medical care, with the funds being carried over from year to year.

One last note about Cordelia Taylor. She's receiving the AARP Impact Award this December, along with former presidents Clinton and Bush. She also tells us that her organization is purchasing the city block where Family House is located. They plan to put up a community center for area children and a medical clinic. Taylor hopes to have this completed within the next year.

Loew:

Wisconsin cranberry farmers are currently in fall harvest mode. This year, the state is expected to produce 3.5 million barrels of the tart red fruit. In fact, we're expected to lead the nation in cranberry production for the 12th consecutive year. Reporter Andy Soth caught up with one cranberry farmer out of Wisconsin rapids whose recent innovation is contributing to the success of this year's harvest.

Andy Soth:

If you've never seen cranberries harvested before, you may not know that that's what Dan Brockman is doing. But even veteran cranberry growers would wonder how exactly he's harvesting the berries.

Dan Brockman:

I always figured that there's a better way to do just about any job, just you have to figure it out, you know.

Soth:

What Brockman has figured out may revolutionize the cranberry industry.

Brockman:

I think that within three to five years the vast majority of the crops will be harvested with this machine.

Soth:

Brockman's machine is called the Ruby Slipper, named for the way it slips the ruby red fruit off the vine.

Brockman:

Cranberry vine with the berries on is hit by this bar and the berries get stripped off and the vine just slides through underneath.

Soth:

The fruit that's picked off the vine floats in a flooded bog. It's rounded up, cleaned, and sent for processing into juice or into cranberry sauce, or the berries can be dried and sweetened. Long ago, cranberries were picked by hand, then growers developed hand rakes to strip the fruit from the vine. After World War II, growers like Carl Getzinger and Bob Case developed the first mechanical pickers that still bear their names. It's been the cranberry tradition that growers develop their own equipment.

Brockman:

In the whole scheme of agriculture, cranberries are a pretty small business. It's probably maybe less than a thousand, maybe 1,000 cranberry growers in the whole United States. So a company, like John Deere, probably isn't going to manufacture specific dedicated cranberry equipment.

Soth:

But Brockman's business partner, a small family business in Wisconsin Rapids called BDT does specialize in cranberry equipment.

Dave Dix:

We're centrally located in Wisconsin, so we get a lot of the growers that are just in this regional area that are coming to us for different applications, and throughout the years of working with these people, we've developed different products for them.

Soth:

Dix says the Ruby Slipper can do the job about five times faster than this machine called the Water Wheel, or a beater. The beater has been standard equipment for about the last quarter century.

Brockman:

The nice thing with this machine, too, is its simplicity. There's a lot less moving parts, a lot less things that could potentially break, and it's also a lot easier on the cranberry plants themselves and on the fruit.

Soth:

Brockman says the individual spring-mounted feet on the Slipper mean it can better handle uneven terrain getting berries the beater misses and produce a higher yield. Unlike the old beater, the Ruby Slipper is an implement that attaches to a conventional farm tractor.

Brockman:

I didn't want a dedicated piece of equipment that sat in the shed 11 or 11 and a half months out of the year, only to be used during harvest.

Soth:

While the Ruby Slipper is a new technology, it is part of a long tradition of cranberry growers inventing their own tools. But unlike Getzinger and Case, Brockman won't name it for himself.

Brockman:

I don't name things after me. I want a name people will remember. Everyone remembers Ruby Slipper.

Loew:

Dan Brockman tells us that so far this year he's sold about 20 of his Ruby Slipper harvesting machines to farmers as far away as New Jersey and British Columbia.

That's our program for this week. We leave you with a trip to Natural Bridge State Park in Sauk County. Artifacts have been found near the 35-foot-high sandstone bridge, leading to estimates that the area was inhabited as long as 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Enjoy our visual postcard. And for "in Wisconsin," I'm Patty Loew. See you next time.

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