“I do believe that was part of his concern,” said his girl friend, Cathy Stahurski, who took him to the hospital, too late.  He died on the way.

He had been “making excuses” not to seek medical care, she said.  She felt he didn’t want to seek help because he didn’t have insurance coverage.  He did have a policy for catastrophic care, she said.

The coroner’s office, according to the Plain Dealer, ruled his death as a “heart attack.”

Hauser didn’t have a job.  An electrical engineer, he was laid off 10 years ago by LTV Steel.  He had been working temporary jobs recently but was out of work.

He certainly was working but you don’t get paid by being a great citizen.

As Mike Roberts wrote recently of Hauser in Cleveland Magazine...

“The town could use a few more good men like Ed Hauser.

“Hauser is a pain – a persistent, nagging, unyielding pain.  On the medical scale of one to 10, he would rate a 10.  What makes him so painful is that he challenges the way the town and its dysfunctional government work.”

Hauser saved (for the time being anyway) Whiskey Island – named so because it housed an early distillery – from being gobbled up by the Cuyahoga-Cleveland County Port Authority.  The island – which really isn’t an island – sits on Lake Erie immediately west of the Cuyahoga River.  His unyielding work to keep the island from development earned him the title of “Mayor of Whiskey Island” and the tag of honor, “Citizen Hauser.”

Hauser attended Port Authority meetings, demanded documents and even videotaped its meetings.

He was the burr that wouldn’t go away.

It cost him his health.

So the richest nation in the world couldn’t or wouldn’t save Ed Hauser.

Here we sit in Cleveland, Ohio, the home of the famed Cleveland Clinic but Ed Hauser waited too long to get medical help.  He died waiting.  I don’t blame specifically the Cleveland Clinic but it definitely is an institution, as they say when a crime is committed, “of interest.”

Our corporatized society likes to keep costs low.  Ed was one of the casualties of that policy.  Even when the auto companies are drowning in debt, they aren’t in the vanguard of demanding universal healthcare, which would relieve them of huge costs.

Why?  Ideology.

As Sen. George Voinovich pointedly said of President-elect Barack Obama, he’s a “socialist.”  That’s an ideological position, one that fits corporate think... the kind of thinking that denies many Americans even minimum healthcare.

How many Ed Hausers are there?  We know there are tens of millions of them without proper health insurance, thus without proper healthcare.

In 2007, the U. S. Census Bureau reported that 47 million Americans were without health insurance, a figure rising each of the previous seven years.  With the recession a year old that figure likely has been rising considerably.

As the economy continues to deteriorate, there will be tens of more millions soon.

Ed has received many deserved plaudits for his selfless work as a citizen activist.  This is fine and proper.

There are other Ed Hausers out there who do similar work, maybe not as doggedly or as persistently as Ed has.

Cleveland also is the home of some of the large and well-funded foundations.

I think there ought to be at least some interest in funding activists who monitor government agencies.  However, the great foundations don’t seem to gravitate to this kind of citizen action.