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Life & Times Transcript
7/10/07 Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times -- Is his private life the public's business? How and why did the mayor's love life become news? Beth Barrett>> He is probably the best-known Latino politician in the country. He's charming, he's glamorous, he's high-profile. He puts himself out in front of the camera. Val Zavala>> And then, he started one of the first HMOs. Now he says the system is sicker than we know. It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times. >> When you don't spend money on somebody, it's a savings to the company. Announcer>> Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education. And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg. Val Zavala>> It's captured the headlines and the radio talk shows, the relationship between Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Telemundo reporter Mirthala Salinas. But is the mayor's private life a legitimate news story? How did the Daily News get the story and why did they break it when they did? Politically, is this an affair voters will remember? Toni Guinyard has our story. Toni Guinyard>> What now for Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa? It's the question being asked after the married mayor's public admission of a relationship with Telemundo journalist and one-time political reporter, Mirthala Salinas. At issue, was she covering stories about the mayor while being personally involved with the mayor? It opens the door to speculation about her career and his political future. Bob Stern>> As long as there were no taxpayer funds being used for personal use, I think the mayor is fine. Toni Guinyard>> Bob Stern is President of the nonprofit, nonpartisan Center for Governmental Studies. Bob Stern>> It's going to have a political impact short-term. It obviously always hurts to have your name on the front page of the papers regarding something like this. In the long-term, I'm not sure it's going to have much of an impact at all. Toni Guinyard>> For now, it's what the public is talking about, the personal lives of two public figures, details of which were rumored on blogs and in whispered conversations. Just gossip until Los Angeles Daily News editor, Ron Kaye, decided to run with it. Staff writer, Beth Barrett, broke the story. What was the defining moment for you? Why did you go with the story? Beth Barrett>> Well, the defining moment was that we had the story. We had facts that would have been very hard for the mayor's office to explain away. When we presented the facts to the mayor's office, we told them exactly what we had and we asked if, in fact, what the nature of the relationship was with Mirthala Salinas. They made a decision to acknowledge it at that point. Toni Guinyard>> Barrett was assigned the story on June 12 and exactly three weeks later, her first report was published. It put the spotlight on politics, ethics and journalism. Beth Barrett>> Yeah, the journalistic ethics are a big question right now. They're particularly a big question because the mayor on Tuesday, when he was asked by reporters, said that it was his belief that she had told her station a year ago about the relationship and had been asked to be taken off the political coverage, particularly of him. Bob Stern>> The question really is the ethics of the media and whether she should have been involved in covering any aspect of his public life. Beth Barrett>> And that really begs the question, I think, from the station as to what happened, particularly due to the fact that she read the statement of the mayor's separation from Corina on June 8. The station has been very quiet on this. We have pressed them very, very hard to answer that question. Toni Guinyard>> With more than two decades of experience at the Daily News, Barrett's approach to the story and how she weeded through the rumors and gossip to confirm the facts provides a peek into her story of how she got the story other reporters are now chasing. Beth Barrett>> We started on the story. It was precipitated by the mayor's announcement of the separation from his wife, Corina, and also by her filing for divorce just three or four days later. At that time, the blogs really kicked up the rumor mill. It had risen at that point to high enough interest in the city as a whole and we decided to go after it. A lot of what makes it interesting is Antonio. He's a fascinating character. He is probably the best-known Latino politician in the country. He's charming, he's glamorous, he's high-profile. He puts himself out in front of the camera. Toni Guinyard>> With assistant city editor, Judy Erickson, managing the story from the newsroom, Barrett and staff writer, Nancy Dillon, went to Mirthala Salinas's home. Beth Barrett>> I think really the first good tip was going to the condominium and just walking up to a neighbor and, you know, thinking this was more or less a rumor mill, and saying, "Oh, have you seen the mayor around?" Nancy Dillon asked the question. This neighbor said, "Well, yes." There was something about the ring of that answer. It was so natural and just like, "Oh, yes, he's been here" and this particular individual, oddly enough, worked for a television outlet, so presumably they had the story too, I guess. But there was just something about like, "Well, of course, the mayor's been here" that just sounded so strong. Right then, I really felt the story was going to happen. Toni Guinyard>> The neighbor told Barrett that he thought the mayor's visits were related to the death of someone's mother. Salinas's mother who lived in Arizona passed away in January. Beth Barrett>> Somewhat in desperation, I looked in the Arizona Republic's archives and did find the obituary. Then I called the funeral home director who said that, in fact, the mayor had been there. At one point towards the end where we felt we were getting closer, we wanted to talk to the family if possible, Corina's family. Of course, everyone knew that that would be where the defining probable story would be. Minerva Hernandez translated the interview with me sitting next to Corina's mother who was very forthcoming. You know, she wanted to defend her daughter and I think it was legitimately so. So she told us, as we reported, a story of some of the drama around the mayor not wearing his ring and how Corina had responded to that. So when we had those two pieces of information, Ron Kaye made the call and said let's go to the mayor's office. We have some hard pieces of information now to put forward to them. It wasn't like we were being accusatory. We weren't going in saying, oh, we know you're having an affair. We just want an explanation of these facts. Toni Guinyard>> Why was that explanation so important, though? Beth Barrett>> Well, because we wanted the truth. Toni Guinyard>> While our conversation with Barrett focused on the mechanics of tracking down details of the report -- Beth Barrett>> It got a tremendous number of hits of people listing the site really worldwide and certainly across the country. Toni Guinyard>> Our conversation with Bob Stern centered on the possible political fallout, a blow that Stern believes the mayor can avoid. Bob Stern>> He has a real political future ahead of him. He might be appointed to the next Democratic presidential administration if the Democrats win in 2008, so he may be going to Washington in 2009. His next election is not until 2009 if he runs for re-election for mayor, so he has two more years really to engage in damage control. As long as he focuses on the job, as long as he performs on the job, people are going to forget about this. Toni Guinyard>> What do you mean by saying he needs to perform his job? In what way? Bob Stern>> To have to come through on the school board situation where the schools improve. He's going to have to come through on other issues of interest for Los Angeles. As long as he comes across as a capable mayor, somebody who's administering the city in a good way, as long as the issues break his way, he has a very promising future ahead of him. Toni Guinyard>> But don't you think in future campaigns, this will be brought up no matter what office he runs for? Bob Stern>> Everything is a long ways away. Serving in the Democratic administration, two years away; running for mayor, two years away; running for governor, three years away. But there's going to be a lot of other issues we will be discussing, not this issue, in the next several years. Toni Guinyard>> Perhaps. Barrett is still working on the story and pursuing one element she has not been able to get yet, an interview with Mirthala Salinas. When does the story end? Beth Barrett>> No story ever ends. That's one thing I learned from Ron from day one. When I got here twenty years ago, I always said, "Oh, I'll just do a story and then that'll be it." What I learned from Ron was that the story never ends. No story ever ends ever. Toni Guinyard>> And that's where I think I'll end. Beth Barrett>> Okay (laughter). Toni Guinyard>> I'm Toni Guinyard for Life and Times. Val Zavala>> So what do you think? You can post your opinion and hear more of Beth Barrett's interview. Just go to kcet.org/lifeandtimes/blog. Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, plus transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org, scroll down the page and click on "Life and Times". Val Zavala>> In the movie "Sicko", Michael Moore makes his point of view perfectly clear. He believes the only answer to our health care problems is to establish a national health service like Britain's or Canada's. [Film Clip] Val Zavala>> Well, I met one doctor who says that Michael Moore's movie didn't go far enough. He believes that a system like Medicare will eventually cover everyone and health care insurance companies will go out of business. He's not just any doctor. He's Dr. Robert Gumbiner. For more than thirty years, he developed and managed one of the largest managed care companies in the United States, an HMO. He has spent years studying health care systems worldwide and he's written a book, "Curing Our Sick Health Care System". He believes eventually the government will have to be the single payer for health care. So you're a proponent of the single payer system, but how do we get that instituted in the United States? There's such a bias against it politically and otherwise. Dr. Robert Gumbiner>> Well, first of all, the biggest single payer system in the world covers around forty-seven million people and it's in the United States. It's called Medicare, and everybody likes Medicare. Medicare wastes a lot of money, there's a certain amount of duplication, waste and fraud, but everybody likes Medicare. It's the third rail. You try to get any politician to get rid of Medicare and he's going to start running the other way. It is a single payer system, period, end of report, and here's the way we do it very simply and incrementally. First of all, you lower the age to fifty-five. I ran a program called Free Health Plan out of the foundation I was the chairman of and we had five small clinics, each run by a nurse practitioner, and five of them supervised by one doctor. We thought we were going to see a lot of Well Baby and pregnant women dot to dot. No, the problem was, all the people we saw that needed care were chronically ill between the age of fifty-five and sixty-five. They weren't Medicare yet, but they couldn't work because they were sick with one thing or another. Val Zavala>> Dr. Gumbiner proposes including not only those fifty-five and up, but pregnant women and especially children. Children consume very little health care and their needs are relatively simple and inexpensive compared to the elderly. Dr. Robert Gumbiner>> Besides, I think it's sort of discriminatory that you should not be covered by Medicare, but I am. What's the difference? You pay the same taxes as I pay. I just got to be sixty-five, so I'm covered. Well, that doesn't seem right to me. Val Zavala>> Well, what about people who say, "Yeah, but our taxes are going to skyrocket to cover all this?" Dr. Robert Gumbiner>> Well, that's the main gist of the book I wrote and that is that it's instead of and not in addition to. People forget. They could get full coverage right now if we had the system organized correctly by the amount that the employer pays, the employee pays and government support. That's enough money right there if the system were organized correctly to pay for everybody to get full coverage, including prescriptions. Val Zavala>> That would be enough? Dr. Robert Gumbiner>> Plenty. I'll tell you what's really interesting. In the next twenty years or so, we're going to be there anyhow. Why is that? America is aging. More and more people are going to become -- they calculate that there's something like sixty or seventy million baby boomers out there that are just starting to turn sixty-five. They will add to the forty-five or forty-seven million people who are now on Medicare. Most of the care is going to spent on Medicare people. Insurance companies will go out of business because now they don't have enough people to spread the risk. Val Zavala>> They would go out of business, he says, because, as more and more people are covered by Medicare, fewer would be available as customers for insurance companies. That's not a bad thing, he says, because the insurance business and health care is a bad match. Dr. Robert Gumbiner>> Health insurance itself is a misnomer because it's not insurance. It's prepayment for something you know is going to happen. First you're going to get born, so that costs money. Secondly, you're eventually going to die and that costs money. And in between, you get sick. That costs money. Now insurance is for one thing that may happen once, like life insurance. As far as I know, that only happens once, or something that may never happen like fire insurance on your house. How many people's houses have burned down? Very few. Val Zavala>> So you're saying that insurance companies are basically betting that you won't get sick, and the one thing that we all know is that we will eventually all get sick. Dr. Robert Gumbiner>> Right. So it's not really insurance. It's a prepayment for something you know is going to happen. Val Zavala>> Another thing he says will have to go is paying a doctor for each treatment you get. It's an a la carte system instead of just a monthly fee for anything you may need. Dr. Robert Gumbiner>> First of all, fee for service has to go. Fee for service is antithetical to any kind of decent care and/or, you know, any kind of a controlled economic situation because, think about it, the more the health provider does for the patient, the more they make, so why would they do less? Why would a dentist be for something that prevented cavities from ever happening? You see, the way we have it now is a very strange system because the person who gets the service does not know how to evaluate the service. They don't know how to evaluate whether they're getting good care or bad care. All they can tell you is the doctor seems like a nice guy, he or she. Val Zavala>> If he or she says you need this, you go along with it. Dr. Robert Gumbiner>> Right, because they don't think they pay for it. They think a third party pays for it, their insurance company, who has no control over what's ordered. The person who decides what you're going to get, they don't pay for it. That's the doctor. So here you have a person who can't evaluate it, a person who decides what you're going to get doesn't pay for, the organization that pays for it has no control over it, so that is a recipe for disaster. Val Zavala>> And finally, he says the system would have to be run by the federal government and not the states. It would be a mess administratively and then each state would have their own little world. Dr. Robert Gumbiner>> You got it. So the wife works in Connecticut and she's got one set of rules. The husband works in Maryland and he's got another set of rules. Their son works in Washington, D.C. and he's got another set of rules. We pay more than any country in the world for health care and we get less. It's just wasted in duplication, drugs that are marginally useless, if not useless, procedures that we don't need, one thing or another. Val Zavala>> Dr. Gumbiner, thank you very much for your thoughts and your book. Dr. Robert Gumbiner>> "Curing Our Sick Health Care System". Val Zavala>> Good advice. Dr. Robert Gumbiner>> Easy read, big font (laughter). Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address: Life and Times 4401 Sunset Blvd. Los Angeles, California 90027 You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org. Val Zavala>> Did you ever notice that tall building near downtown just south of the 10 Freeway called Patriotic Hall? Ever wonder what's inside that place? Well, believe it or not, eighty years of history, documents and memorabilia, and a possible renovation means that it might be time to get it sorted out. Vicki Curry did some excavating with the help of former Marine, Jay Morales. Jay Morales>> Here it is right here. "Los Angeles Times, February 22, 1926. Supervisors Give Great Memorial to War Heroes". Vicki Curry>> Soldiers from the Civil War to the Iraq War have walked through its doors. For more than eighty years, Bob Hope Patriotic Hall has been a home away from home for Los Angeles's veterans, a center where they can find services and camaraderie. Jay Morales>> Today this is the last remaining active duty building built by World War I veterans on land deeded by Civil War veterans. In the whole entire United States, there was no building this old, this well-preserved and with this much history attached to it. Vicki Curry>> Jay Morales is working hard to keep that history alive. He's a Vietnam vet with Post 8 of the American Legion, which has had an office on the eighth floor since the building opened. Jay Morales>> If you were just walking in at that time, every floor had a story to tell. Every floor had a history to it. It was just amazing. Vicki Curry>> Now the County Supervisors are taking it away, at least temporarily. The hall is shutting down operations while experts study what it would take to restore the building. Jay Morales>> You have an eighty-five-plus year old building. The wiring is obsolete. The plumbing definitely is obsolete. Vicki Curry>> In getting ready for the move, the vets have uncovered some long-lost treasures. Morales and a few other volunteers have spent months sorting through countless documents that have been stored away for decades. So each year had a book like that? Jay Morales>> Each year has a book like this, an historian's records. It shows what is happening in Los Angeles as far as the American Legion was concerned and what they did for that particular year. Vicki Curry>> Seven presidents have visited Patriotic Hall, along with numerous military heroes and foreign dignitaries. Jay Morales>> President Herbert Hoover came to Los Angeles and was hosted by the veterans in this building. President Wilson, who was the founder, was here and actually was the man who signed the Charter for the American Legion when he was president. This is Douglas McArthur, by the way, "With affectionate greetings to my comrades in arms at Los Angeles Post 8" from McArthur. This is a very priceless picture, I'm told, of a young Winston Churchill taken in 1921 when he was Vice Lord of the Admiralty. We also have the accompanying letter that he sent us in 1921. We have a complete collection of the French general staff, the English general staff, as well as all the Americans. Vicki Curry>> The ten-floor building also holds flags, helmets, weapons, medals, artifacts soldiers have brought back from the battlefields. Jay Morales>> You know, we read about it in the history books and here it is, the original stuff. You know, real German guns from World War I and real battle flags. General Patton gave us his military uniform with all his medals. Every meeting room in this building had some historical memorabilia on its walls dedicated for that room. The general himself, Omar Bradley, one of the last living five-star generals, cut the ribbon to dedicate that room. Vicki Curry>> But over the last few decades, much of the memorabilia was taken off the walls and put into storage. Los Angeles County started renting out the rooms for parties and meetings. A Korean church moved into the auditorium. And as far as Jay Morales is concerned, all that activity wasn't good for Patriotic Hall. Jay Morales>> A lot of the damage, the graffiti, some of the wear and tear occurred within the last five or ten years because of that. Vicki Curry>> He's even more concerned about the damage to their collections. After years of improper storage, some items are in bad shape or missing. But now that they're out again, he's hopeful for the future. Jay Morales>> The heart of our collection which is extremely valuable is still here and now we're putting it back together. We've been told by professionals and experts in the field that some of it, of course, is priceless and it's one of a kind. We don't just have an historical collection. We have a world-class historical collection. Vicki Curry>> The county is hiring experts to catalog and store the collection. Morales would like to see it professionally displayed and available for education. Jay Morales>> I am a graduate of a school that's located just four blocks down the street here called St. Vincent's. I remember coming here for history classes and being totally awed by this place. I mean, just totally impressed. Back then, you definitely knew you were in some special place. Things like this, this kind of historical documents, historical photographs and handwritten letters and articles, they don't exist anymore, you know, because not everybody kept it and we did. We kept the originals and now we have it all as part of our history. That stuff is irreplaceable. You're not going to find that everywhere. Vicki Curry>> First, Patriotic Hall needs to be restored. Jay Morales>> But the building was built rock-solid. They built it with thirty-seven inch thick walls and, the ground, they put solid pieces of rock down there on the foundation. The marble that we have here that was quarried up here in the San Gabriels and the imported wood, everything was first-class. The original funds that were raised by the veterans in 1921 to build the building was over eight hundred thousand. By the time they were finished, the building cost them a million dollars. Here is the way that the auditorium looked when it was brand new. These pictures were taken the month that the building opened. Vicki Curry>> Since then, thousands have been inside the building and millions more have seen it in the movies. It's appeared in more than three hundred films. The auditorium was used for the opening speech in "Patton". [Film Clip] Vicki Curry>> The stairwell was in "Vertigo". [Film Clip] Vicki Curry>> And the big audition scene in "Flashdance" was shot in the Nimitz Room. [Film Clip] Vicki Curry>> But all along, it still served the veterans. There was an attempt in 1984 to demolish the hall to make way for a parking structure, but Morales led the fight to save it. He found out that the deed to the land specified that it be used for a veterans' facility in perpetuity unless the veterans themselves choose to vacate it. So before making this move, Post 8 put it in writing that they're not vacating, just temporarily relocating. Jay Morales>> There are some people, however, who felt that this building could serve a better purpose or another purpose and we needed to remind them that there was only one purpose for this building. It sounds cliché to say it, but our freedom isn't free. It has to be paid for by people willing to put their necks on the line. Well, this is their legacy. This is their cathedral. This is their home. This is what we're about and the county of Los Angeles should be proud to have this. I think they are and I think they recognize that and I think they're doing something about it. Val Zavala>> And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. Announcer>> Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education. And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg. Sponsored in part by:  | |
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