ENDEAVOR - When the topic is health care, U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold said he never knows what he's going to hear when he sets up a listening post.

One group might be dominated by people who oppose any government involvement in health care. One group might adamantly favor the adoption of a public, single-payer system of health insurance.

In Endeavor on Saturday, the Wisconsin Democrat heard those ideas, and more.

If we're even going to think about having the government provide health insurance - either as an optional alternative to private insurance or as a single payer for all U.S. health insurance - then Congress needs to address the burden that illegal immigrants place on the health-care system now, said one participant in Endeavor.

Yes, said another, but we need to give people the option of acquiring health insurance through the government if they can't get it from a private insurer, either because it's costly or because health conditions make private insurance impossible to obtain for a particular person.

Joe Rogozinski of rural Oxford offered a third perspective.

"If we have a public option," he said, "we'll have a two-tiered health-care system. The private system will end up insuring the people they like to insure - the healthy people. But the government will end up taking care of the people who are harder to care for."

Feingold's session at the Ada Mills Donner and Melvin R. Donner Civic Center attracted a full house of more than 50 attendees, and an assortment of perspectives on numerous federal issues - with health care dominating the discussion.

Feingold told attendees that federal legislation is needed to make good, affordable health-care coverage available to all Americans.

But how that's going to happen, he said, is something that Congress needs to work out amid a vast assortment of strong, yet contradictory, opinions of the American people.

Whatever solution that Congress decides on, Feingold said, both Democrats and Republicans need to support it.

"You need buy-in from both parties to succeed," he said.

And, though people have strong opinions about whether particular solutions would work in the United States - solutions such as allowing people to choose to buy either public or private coverage, or creating a single-payer system similar to that of Canada - it's impossible to know until these systems are tried.

That's why one possible approach is allowing four or five states to set up pilot programs to field-test them.

"You know, I get a lot of positive feedback from people in Canada who like their system," Feingold said. "And, some Canadians don't like it. But how do we know whether it would work here unless someone tries it?"

Feingold said health care has been a hot topic at the nearly 1,200 listening sessions he's held throughout Wisconsin since 1993. Saturday's session in Endeavor was his 39th this year.

Feingold said he believes every American should be guaranteed coverage, and that a "strong public option" is key to achieving this goal.

Some attendees raised questions about proposals to tax the health-care benefits that many people receive now from their employers.

Others wondered why vision care and dental care are separate from health insurance coverage.

But health care was not, by far and away, the only discussion topic.

Jeanne Cummings of rural Endeavor said she believes it's unfair to use government money to bail out people who are in danger of foreclosure on houses they couldn't afford in the first place.

"Some of us ants," she said, "are being overwhelmed by grasshoppers." She was referring to the children's fable about the hard-working ant who prepared for winter while the lazy grasshopper did not.

Feingold said he couldn't agree more.

Frugality, he said, was "the way I was raised. I'm the poorest member of the Senate, and I'm proud of it."

Other issues raised at the listening session:

• Luke Haas, owner of Elite Marble, a small business that offers marble countertops, asked how a small businessperson can stay afloat when so much of what they earn is taxed. "I feel like I'm being demonized in a certain way," he said. Feingold said one thing that might help small businesses would be to increase the level at which small businesses are exempt from estate taxes, because "I want you to be able to pass on as much of your business as possible to your children."

• Haas' wife, Kari Haas, wondered whether she should ask Feingold, or a state official, about the rapid loss of jobs in Wisconsin. Ask me, said Feingold.

Trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement and new pacts between the United States and China, he said, have not included adequate safeguards for U.S. workers.

• Robert Goldsmith of Westfield wanted to talk about a particularly troubled business - that of the family dairy farmer.

"I have a son and grandson who were milking," he said, "but they couldn't stay in the business."

He blamed imported milk that can be had for $8 per hundredweight, whereas dairy farmers today are earning $9 to $10 per hundredweight for the milk their cows produce.

Feingold also blamed the "middlemen" of the dairy distribution system.

"Somebody's making a bunch of money in the middle - retailers, co-ops and others - and the dairy farmer can't get a fair price," he said.

ljerde@capitalnewspapers.com

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