Labor Drive Makes Push for National Health Plan : Insurance: Working men, women testify about difficulties they have encountered because they lack coverage.

Don Slater, a warehouseman who works the graveyard shift at a chocolate company, told Wednesday about how his health insurance ran out when an on-the-job injury put him out of work for 18 months. He talked about having to sell off his cars to feed his family and pay his mortgage. Now--finally back at work--Slater, 36, is selling his home to pay his debts.

Slater’s testimony, delivered haltingly to AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland and the heads of three of the nation’s largest unions, was part of a monthlong, eight-city road show of poignancy and politics that organized labor is staging to build public support for national health insurance.

The campaign is not yet focused on a particular solution, although Canada’s system of tax-financed universal care is the model most often mentioned by labor leaders.

Nearly 40 million Americans lack any form of health coverage and an additional 60 million have inadequate coverage, according to a report issued last week by a commission appointed during the Reagan Administration. In three-quarters of the families who lack insurance, a family member is working but does not receive coverage through his employer.

Participants in the San Francisco hearing, held in a small City Hall auditorium, heard a single mother with an implanted cardiac pacemaker describe the difficulty of having to choose her jobs on the basis of the type of health care offered. They heard a Vietnam veteran describe leg injuries he could not treat because his employer offered no insurance. They heard Don Perata, the chairman of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors, speak of diminishing county resources in the face of mounting numbers of patients who lack private insurance.

“I think we need to be Cassandra” in lobbying Congress, Perata said, alluding to the daughter of the king of Troy, whose name is associated with prophecies of doom. “The people in Washington seem to be the only ones who don’t realize we’re about to embark upon an explosion” of disease caused by inadequate treatment, he said. “People are turning on each other” as they fight for limited health resources.

A Los Angeles Times poll conducted in March found that a majority of Americans would prefer a health insurance system like that in Canada where all medical care is paid through taxes even though doctors practice independently. Surveys of employers find strong opposition to this idea. Instead, companies prefer an increasingly popular “managed care” system, in which employees are restricted to using only a selected group of doctors and hospitals picked by the employer.

Labor leaders have sought national health insurance for 50 years, and have complained about the rising number of employers cutting or eliminating health benefits. But what has brought the campaign a sense of urgency was a union study released late last year indicating that the central issue in 80% of the strikes in the United States is management demands for cuts in employee health benefits.

With national union membership stagnant in comparison to the growing U.S. work force, leaders of the 14-million-member AFL-CIO hope to tap into an issue that transcends union lines. Last week they began a $3 million series of prime-time network television ads urging Congress and President Bush to adopt a form of universal health insurance.

Wednesday’s hearing was the third of eight that will be held from Brunswick, N.J., to Austin, Tex., by the end of October. Wednesday was also the “national action day” planned for months by three-dozen labor and community groups, which distributed 5 million “Health Care for All” stickers and coordinated demonstrations in a number of cities.

In Milwaukee, members of 9-to-5, a working-women’s organization, demonstrated in memory of Linda Williams, a divorced mother with two children. Organizers said Williams worked 45 hours a week at three part-time jobs--none offering insurance--and was turned away by hospitals when she needed triple-bypass heart surgery. Publicity helped her finance an operation but subsequently, while working a new full-time job and another part-time one, Williams died of a heart attack.

Politically, the notion of universal insurance is made difficult by the opposition of the Bush Administration. Health and Human Services Secretary Louis W. Sullivan recently said he opposes a national health care program similar to Canada’s government-financed system.

In California, legislation that would have gradually required employer-paid coverage for most workers died last summer when Gov. George Deukmejian announced he would veto it. At a health care rally sponsored here by labor organizations Wednesday, Democrat Dianne Feinstein said she would sign such a bill if elected governor.

In response to Wednesday’s demonstrations, the health insurance industry--often described by partisans of national insurance as the primary roadblock to reform--issued a statement in Washington saying that it, too, favors changes. However, the statement by the Health Insurance Assn. of America stressed the importance of a “private/public” effort.

C. John Tupper, president of the American Medical Assn., for decades an opponent of national health insurance, testified during Wednesday’s hearing that his organization wants many of the reforms sought by labor to ensure medical treatment for all citizens. However, “given the government’s track record in failing to provide adequate financing for both Medicaid and Medicare . . . we have to wonder if government should be trusted with an even larger role on the health-care stage,” he said.