on the cover / By Hank Sims

Dr. Ring’s Single-Payer Puppet Show

Fighting for universal health care, one performance at a time

(April 16, 2009)  It’s a pretty Sunday morning inside a prototypical Humboldt County home — big windows, open floor plan, cluttered interior, deck, view of the woods — and slowly but surely people are filing in, each of them various degrees of late to the 11 a.m. run-through. There’s a few nurses, a social worker and at least one layperson. Many carry baked goods.

Dr. Wendy Ring greets a few of them briefly as they arrive, but she and her husband, Michael Shapiro, are too busy for extended pleasantries. They run this way and that, gathering materials and readying the homemade puppetry proscenium that now takes up a large section of their living room. Shapiro, a supporting member of the production, takes a moment to show off his design of the stage, which allows for easy portability — a must, given the number of shows the group hopes to stage in the coming months.

GALLERY >

Ring, though, barely stops moving. Even while she talks, she is doing something else — handing out scripts, reviewing staging directions, moving the troops around her home like the world’s politest four-star general. One gets the impression definite impression that this her normal state; that she is rarely, if ever, at rest. Short, slight, 51 years of age, with wavy hair cropped back short and dressed in Humboldt casual jeans and sneakers, she is in her day job the medical director of the Mobile Medical Office, a traveling clinic that cares for extremely poor people from Arcata to Rio Dell. She founded the program nearly 20 years ago, and has been recognized by the California and national medical associations, as well as the state legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, for her groundbreaking and tireless work.

A few months ago, a group of Humboldt County citizens started meeting regularly, planning strategy. Most members of the group were physicians or other medical professionals. The nation had just undergone a dramatic change of regime. It wasn’t just that a new president had been elected; the policies and philosophies of the Republic party had been sweepingly rejected. The financial system had tanked, plunging the nation into deep recession. The new president’s campaign slogan consisted of one word — “change” — and whatever the slogan might have meant to individual voters, the electorate as a whole yearned for it. And the president-elect and the public agreed on one point: Few things needed changing as much as America’s catastrophic health care system.

The group meeting in Humboldt County assigned themselves a task: How could they, in their small corner of the country, join the upcoming battle over health care reform on the side of what they considered the most sensible alternative — a universal, government-run system of health insurance of the type that exists in every other developed nation on Earth? How could they, individual doctors and nurses and everyday citizens, counter the massive advertising and lobbying budgets of the health insurance companies, which would have the most to lose under a government-run, or “single-payer,” system of health insurance? Originally, the idea was that they would sponsor a teach-in of some sort — a day of speakers, lectures and discussions of policy alternatives.

“That’s what I was sort of assigned to organize,” Ring says now, fussing with one of her puppets while she speaks. “And I said, ‘Nah, I’m going to make a show.’”

One actor is still absent without leave at half past noon, but Ring makes the executive decision to start the rehearsal. Half a dozen people crowd behind the stage, scripts and puppets in hand. Action is called. And since the CD a musically inclined volunteer has promised to make is not yet ready, a chorus of warbly voices starts in, a cappella, on the opening number.

“The hiiiills are aliiiive … with the sooouund of … moolah.”

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