Panel Hears Horrors of Health Care Crisis : Insurance: Witnesses at public hearing tell of long waits at county-run facilities in minority communities.

A new Los Angeles County commission on insurance heard one horror story after another during a public hearing Saturday on the state of health care in Los Angeles’ minority communities.

Several witnesses told the hearing at the Hubert Humphrey Comprehensive Health Center in South Los Angeles that some patients have had to wait 12 hours for emergency care at county-run facilities, only to be told to come back the next day.

Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, a former congresswoman who is running for the Board of Supervisors, said she knew of a heart attack victim who waited three days before treatment, although Burke declined to name the hospital where she said this occurred.

Barbara Draden, director of client services for the Minority AIDS Project, told the panel it is so complicated and takes so long for the poor to be certified for help under the state’s Medi-Cal program that “in too many cases before our people get approved, they have died.”

“Ninety-five percent end up being treated at county facilities, and these are overwhelmed,” Draden said. “It is an 8-to-12-hour wait with an appointment, and we have had them lying on a cot without attention for two days running. They get very frustrated, and they don’t want to go back.”

The latest estimates are that 6 million Californians are uninsured for health care, including 2.7 million persons in Los Angeles County, according to commission Chairman Bill Press.

Commission member George Nishinaka, a health care executive, said that administrative expenses in health insurance systems are taking up to 40% of the funds available, diverting money that is urgently needed to provide care.

After Willie P. May, director of the Humphrey Center, testified that the center gets enough government money to stay open only five days a week, from 8 a.m. to midnight, Press, a onetime candidate for state insurance commissioner, asked May what he needed most.

“Money,” the center director responded. “It would cost $5 million for us to give full, seven-day, 24-hour service.” He said the Humphrey Center and others like it must take care of minor health problems so that hospital emergency rooms are not overwhelmed.

May added that he has problems enticing health care workers to serve his facility at 5850 S. Main. “There’s a certain stigma to working in this area,” he said. “People hesitate to come here to work because they read about the drive-by shootings in the media.”

Not discouraged from coming to the area Saturday was a Canyon Country housewife, Marilyn Irwin, who said she had driven into Los Angeles to tell commissioners how health insurance premiums for herself and her two children had been kicked up from $448 a quarter in 1988 to $2,976 a quarter in 1990 by her carrier, Celtic Life, after she was found to have cancer.

Friends advised her to divest herself of two clothing stores and other assets she owned and go on state aid, Irwin said. Instead, she found another way to obtain insurance, going to work five nights a week washing dishes at a restaurant. As a member of a union, she now receives medical insurance free, she said.

Val Rodriguez, a coordinator of health services at the El Monte Comprehensive Health Center, said he estimates that 40% of the people in his Eastside area have no health coverage and many seek services from his center.

The center is open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. each weekday. “It’s a good center, it’s served 55,000 people, but we’re not doing the job that needs to be done,” he said.

Burke and state Sen. Diane E. Watson (D-Los Angeles), who is also running for county supervisor, said they favored some form of state health insurance. But Watson, chairwoman of the Senate’s Health and Human Services Committee, said it is “a bit absurd” to expect it soon.

Burke told commissioners of two hybrid plans in the East where county government provides seed money, users pay a small fee, and medical practitioners volunteer services at much-reduced rates.

The county commission on insurance has scheduled a series of hearings throughout the county to explore ways of improving health insurance systems.