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Former surgeon general still tells it like it is Joycelyn Elders says sex education's lacking and universal health care should be a U.S. priority By BILL KETTLER ASHLAND - Dr. Joycelyn Elders flashed some of the candor here Sunday that led to her dismissal as the top health officer in the United States back in 1994. The former surgeon general chided government for its tepid approach to sex education, criticized Congress for failing to provide universal access to health care and castigated the Bush administration for a proposal that would extend health-insurance coverage to embryos. "I think (the Bush proposal) is a bypass to try to make abortion illegal," Elders said in an address at Southern Oregon University's McNeal Hall. "If a woman is pregnant and eligible, she's already covered," Elders said. "If they really wanted to put some money into something, why not put it into family planning?" Elders, the nation's first black surgeon general, was forced to resign after she infuriated conservatives by suggesting adults provide youngsters with truthful information about masturbation. She returned to the University of Arkansas, where she still teaches, and came to Ashland to help Southern Oregon University mark Black History Month. Speaking forcefully to a sparse crowd of students and 50-somethings, Elders repeatedly said that sex education encourages young people to take control of their lives by helping them avoid having children at an age when they're incapable of parenting. "The most common cause of poverty," she said, "is children becoming parents before they become adults. If you can't control your reproduction, you can't control your life," she said, noting that the children of young parents often fall victim to abuse and neglect. Elders juxtaposed her own life experience with the world that today's children inhabit. She grew up the eldest of eight children in a home with no electricity or running water and attended a segregated school where her teacher was encouraged to teach students to "become good maids." Her mother's education stopped at the eighth grade, but Elders recalled that her mother always encouraged her children to learn as much as they could. "She would always say, 'If you want to get out of the cotton patch, you've got to have something in your head.' " Today's children often don't have similar positive mentoring and don't know what's right because no one has taken time to show them. "You can't be what you can't see," she said. "It's important to model and mentor what we'd like our young people to see. They do what they see." She characterized the U.S. medical establishment as a "sick-care" system rather than a "health-care" system because it focuses on treating sickness and disease rather than helping people stay well. "It costs too much, and it delivers too little," she said. "We need (disease) prevention strategies rather than intervention strategies," she said. "The problem is insurance companies won't pay for it." She said insurance companies will pay $1 million for a baby in a neonatal intensive care unit, she said, "but they won't pay $30 for a doctor to talk to teens about pregnancy." Elders said arguments that universal health care is too expensive miss the point. "We are the only industrialized country in the world that does not provide universal access to health care." "We pay for everything else," she said, including a war in Afghanistan. Elders commended Oregon for its innovative state-supported health-care system, and encouraged Oregonians to expand programs that provide preventive care. "I think you'll show that it costs less and provides better care and you will keep people well." Reach reporter Bill Kettler at 776-4492, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.