George Reykdal can be seen somewhere in the Davies Center most weeknights, carrying out his duties as a rotational custodian. He is a veteran of the Vietnam War, and sports a mustache and crew cut.

George is an LTE, a Limited Term Employee, and will work here as long as the University can use him. He receives no health insurance from his job, though he emphasized he is grateful for simply having work. He said, "I don't blame my lack of health insurance on my employer or the state. Wisconsin, I think, is actually ahead of the curve on that. They have BadgerCare where the state foots the bill and there's also Medicaid where it's footed by the Federal Government. But you have to have kids for either one and I never married."

Having no health insurance is a worry for George sometimes, like when he thinks about someday maybe needing to have an operation performed sooner than the space-available treatment open to him as a veteran could be done. There is a six month waiting list for veterans for surgeries. If George needed one sooner in an emergency it would need to come out of pocket.

He doesn't agree with the amount of money being sent over to Iraq. He said that the $87 billion President Bush successfully applied to Congress for made him think the Iraq War would be, "a repeat of the same thing that happened with the Vietnam War."

He continued, "During the Vietnam War there was a 300% increase on the defense department budget, and after the war it never dropped a nickel. It just set a new bar for military expenditures and knocked health insurance off the table."

It seems wrong to George that we do not have universal healthcare. He said, "I don't blame my lack of health insurance on my employer or the state, but I do blame the Federal Government." He said also, "In Sweden their Constitution does not allow them to spend any more on defense than they need to defend their borders. And look at what they have. They have universal healthcare, free daycare for working parents, almost free university education. And it's because they don't piss their money away on military equipment like bullets and tanks that get used in battle once and they're done."

George submitted a poem for this issue in person. It appears here. We would like to thank him for letting us use it.