Clinton Plays N.Y. in His Role as ‘Health Care Answer Man’ : Medicine: President appears at a diner in Queens to hear a litany of woes. He gets warm reception on streets.

President Clinton became the “Health Care Answer Man” as he touched down in New York on Sunday in his continuing quest to respond to every last question about his plan to reform the ailing system.

Appearing at a diner in the Fresh Meadows section of Queens, the President heard a litany of medical woes from a dozen citizens who said that they had been shortchanged by the health care system.

Clinton played the compassionate answer man in a series of mini-dramas featuring one aggrieved citizen after another who had been forced onto welfare to qualify for Medicaid, been denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition or sent into debt to pay for a lifesaving operation.

For each, Clinton had an explanation of how his plan would have prevented or solved the problem.

As he had in announcing the plan last Wednesday, Clinton offered a compelling diagnosis of what ails the current system and a persuasive vision of how his prescription would cure it.

His responses seemed to satisfy the diner audience, but, as he did in Wednesday’s speech to Congress, Clinton avoided specific discussion of the mechanics of his complex scheme, or its costs.

The President was warmly received by the 100 or so citizens crammed into the restaurant, and by thousands of well-wishers who lined the streets nearby.

The questioners at the Modern Diner, on 190th Street a few blocks off Utopia Parkway, were selected from among the hundreds of thousands of citizens who wrote letters to Clinton or First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton during the development of the plan.

The most heart-tugging tale came from Marcia Callender of Riverdale, N.Y., whose son, Matthew, was diagnosed with rare Hurlers Syndrome, a developmental disease requiring continuing medical treatment, when he was 18 months old. She said her husband was laid off shortly thereafter, costing the family their health care benefits when they were facing hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills.

She said that when she returned to work, her new health plan refused to cover Matthew’s treatment because it arose from a pre-existing condition.

The couple gave up their apartment, and her husband was forced to take a low-paying job to qualify for medical and Social Security disability benefits, she said.

Matthew died in December, Callender said. She pleaded with the President to provide “a health plan that is sensitive to all Americans.”

“As a child deserves a childhood,” she said, “so does a parent deserve the joy of being a parent without the stress of ‘How will I pay for my child’s medication?’ ”

Sitting knee-to-knee with her at the cramped counter of the diner, Clinton put his hand on Callender’s shoulder and gently rubbed her neck, saying that her treatment at the hands of the health care system was “cruel” and “unconscionable.”

“It’s just wrong,” he said, noting that a job change often means the loss of health benefits. “No family should have their grief compounded and their economic misery reinforced by this kind of problem.”

The next questioner, Mary Jayne Van Wyck of Long Island City, N.Y., said that she received a liver transplant but cannot afford the $800-a-month in medication costs. Her costs are paid by fellow transplant recipients and, for the next year, by a grant from a pharmaceutical company.

She said that she has been forced to quit her job to qualify for Medicare benefits and has no coverage for her 5-year-old daughter.

Clinton said Van Wyck represents tens of thousands of other Americans forced to give up jobs to receive public benefits.

“Why shouldn’t this lady be able to work?” he asked. “Society is going to pay for her health care anyway, right?”

Minutes after Clinton left the diner, Van Wyck suffered a seizure and was evacuated by ambulance. She was treated at a local hospital and released.

In remarks at the outset of the discussion, Clinton acknowledged that many citizens and members of Congress are skeptical that government can provide cradle-to-grave health care coverage for all Americans without substantially raising taxes or creating a costly, huge new bureaucracy.

“But I just ask you to remember a couple of basic facts: We are already spending 40% more than anybody else. We are spending at least 10 cents on the dollar in unnecessary, non-health-related paperwork that no other country in the world is spending. Nobody,” Clinton said.

“I just don’t believe that we have to go on for another year or five years or 10 years being the only nation in the world that can’t figure out how to give health care to everybody,” he said.

Sunday evening, Clinton attended a political event for New York Mayor David N. Dinkins.