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Prince George's County Councilman Tom Dernoga made a controversial statement to local residents when he said, "We already have universal healthcare," at a community healthcare forum May 27 in Clinton.

"Unfortunately it's not the universal healthcare you want," said Dernoga (D-Dist. 1) of Laurel, referring to the 150,000 uninsured Prince George's residents burdening the troubled county hospital system. "It's bad for you, it's bad for the uninsured and it's bad for the county."

Mel Franklin, president and founder of the Greater Marlboro Democratic Club, who announced he plans to run for the 2010 District 9 County Council seat, organized Monday's event in order to start a community discussion that he hopes could spur the creation of a task force to address county health issues.

"We need an agenda, we can't just talk about these things," Franklin said.

The Bowie Health Campus, Laurel Regional Hospital and Prince George's Hospital Center in Cheverly serve more than 180,000 patients a year, a high number of whom don't have health insurance. The strain has caused the hospitals to operate at a loss for more than a decade.

There are currently nine local and national companies vying to buy the three county hospitals.

Members of the Prince George's County Hospital Authority, which was created last year in an effort to sell the hospitals, said they hope to sell each of the centers by Aug. 1.

Donald Shell, the county's health officer, said hospital inadequacies stem from many of the roughly 600,000 Prince George's County residents who have health insurance but seek treatment in other counties or states.

"Prince George's residents go to other counties to spend their healthcare dollars. But other counties don't come to Prince George's," Shell said.

Unfortunately, "it's a Catch 22," he said, adding that for the hospitals to improve, residents need to seek local treatment, but residents avoid local treatment because of its poor reputation. If insured residents were treated locally, they would help offset the cost of the many uninsured residents treated at area hospitals.

Shell said residents must demand quality care at local institutions.

Fort Washington resident Edward Smith said the stage has been set to start a grassroots community effort that would demand better health care in the county.

"It's going to take action, so let's see what action we can get," he said.

Vincent DeMarco, president of the Maryland Citizens Health Initiative, a program founded in 1999 to educate state residents about healthcare, attended to promote a proposal by the Maryland Health Care for All! Coalition to provide affordable health insurance for the unemployed, self-employed and those employed by small businesses throughout the state.

DeMarco said the coalition's proposed universal health care plan, which was pitched to the Maryland General Assembly in the fall, would pool individuals and small businesses, giving them the same buying power as larger corporations and dropping the cost of health insurance.

Separately on May 27, the Prince George's Black Chamber of Commerce endorsed the Health Care for All! plan, as did the Greater Baltimore Black Chamber of Commerce and the Black Chamber of Commerce of Anne Arundel County Inc.

Hubert Green of Clinton, president of the Prince George's group, said Friday that many members of the chamber's constituency are small business owners or self-employed.

"It's becoming a problem for small businesses to provide health care for their employees," Green said. "The cost is prohibitive, and as a result businesses cannot expand."

E-mail Megan McKeever at mmckeever@gazette.net.