OUR VIEWS

A healthy idea

He asked that they not walk off the job for a day and proposed a one-shot favor: He and the current governor would agree the doctors could pay less to a state fund helping cover premium costs. The health insurance companies could make up the difference, according to an Associated Press story.

In neighboring West Virginia, no such offer was made and more than two dozen surgeons have started a job action at four Northern Panhandle hospitals, causing the cancellation of almost all surgeries.

Sorry, but there's no solution in the Pennsylvania propoal. At least nothing that will last.

Already, insurance companies are getting out of the medical malpractice business in Pennsylvania and elsewhere because it is a lose-lose proposition for them. The lawyers and plaintiffs are badly abusing the system, making them pay through the nose. And if on top of that they further adjust rates to reflect low-yielding investments, they are accused of being dastardly.

Now, the state's leadership has hit them again, making it little short of crazy to be in the business there.

The doctors — not just in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, but through much of the nation — are being hounded as if miserable miscreants, and patients will pay. They will pay because doctors will test them too much and avoid the worthwhile procedures the lawyers especially like to pounce on. The doctors will continue to severely limit their practices or retire early. They will be hesitant, too, about divulging errors; that way lies ruin. Patients will have less care available, and long waits to get what they need. Inevitably, health will spiral downward.

The biggest part of the answer is fairly obvious. California hit on it better than a quarter of a century ago.

When patients win a suit, give them whatever economic damages they suffered, but limit awards for pain and suffering to $250,000. That way, insurance premiums will not go up 50 percent a year or twice or several times that much, and doctors will still be able to make a living that reflects their training.

Pennsylvania may move that direction, it is reported. It is reported, too, that Congress may enact such limits for the nation next year. And that is an excellent idea.

Unfulfilled promises

As George W. Bush campaigned his way to the White House, he promised an intriguing alternative to state-run welfare. Forget big government, he said. If we really want to help the poor, we must enlist all sorts of community groups to spend federal antipoverty dollars. The concept was called "compassionate conservatism," and it struck a chord with voters. But in two years, President Bush has done little to put the theory into practice. America's poor, it can fairly be said, are suffering more today than when Bush first came to Washington.

Perhaps it can't be helped, for who could have foretold the disaster of Sept. 11, 2001? That crisis and its aftermath have sopped up much of Washington's spare cash and attention. Even so, it's worth noting when presidential pledges go unfulfilled. As The Washington Post reported recently, Bush so far has accomplished few items on his list for helping the poor — and hasn't even tried to make a case for many of them. While he's won backing for tax cuts, defense spending and a generous homeland-security budget, he has let the "compassion agenda" sit stone cold on the back burner of his administration's stove.

Take Bush's plan to boost community access to antipoverty funds, for starters. He said he wanted a 10-year, $90 billion "Compassion Capital Fund" that would help religious and other nonprofit groups tap tax money for good ends. But he failed to push the idea with vigor. Congress reacted to the plan as it might to a platter of slugs on toast. The House cut Bush's fund to $6 billion; the Senate never passed it.

So what about volunteerism — which Bush has said should be the core of the antipoverty quest? Thus far, his argument hasn't won many congressional hearts. Bush responded by scrapping his plan to boost volunteer enlistment through tax credits and scholarships. He's also dallied shamefully in pushing to expand AmeriCorps and other national-service programs — thereby squandering the chance to channel the surge of patriotism loosed by Sept. 11.

So if the president's structural reforms are kaput, what's left? There are the half-dozen changes he pledged to pursue after winning the White House — reforms like promoting retirement accounts for Ordinary Joes, encouraging homeownership and investing in education. That list also included plans for refundable health-care tax credits, new prescription-drug benefits for the elderly and enhanced support for religious charities.

Many of those ideas are more or less sensible. But two years on, only one of them — the big education bill — is actually a reality. And that plan, which could be the saving of strapped local school districts, is now the focus of a nasty budget squabble: The White House wants to spend billions less than many lawmakers do.

If Bush is hoping to hold onto the "compassionate conservative" moniker, he'll have to work some magic to give it meaning. And he'll have to move fast, for the numbers aren't looking good: After nearly a decade of decline, the Census Bureau says, the poverty rate rose last year as median incomes fell.

The poor are getting poorer, and the president is doing too little to help. He's looking a lot like an all-talk, no-action sort of guy. It's enough to make a person wonder. When Bush insisted there was a new way to care for the poor, what did he actually have in mind? Just letting things be? Doing pretty much nothing? That can't be what compassionate conservatism is all about.

YOUR VIEWS

GOP can gain, but can't hold power

Just a short while back, the GOP cleaned the Dem's plow, gaining power via "Contract With America" — only to immediately begin apologizing for portions of the contract which the Dems along with its "National Media wing" chose to shrewdly and choreographically protest. — duh — And now the GOP cleans their plow again in the mid-term election — only to begin apologizing for "Republican insensitivity to slavery" born of an innocent faux pau built into something clearly orchestrated to paint all Republicans as racists. It makes one feel that maybe Republicans should bring their able and unapologetic campaign staff along to Washington.

Armond "Si" Simmons
104 Wadsworth Lane
Pell City

Corporate state?

On Nov. 2, President Bush signed H.R. 2215 into law prohibiting automotive manufacturers from requiring automotive dealers to sign contracts that contain predispute binding arbitration clauses. Do "We the People" know what their elected representatives in Washington have done?

In the beginning, our creator endowed each person with an inalienable right protected by the Seventh Amendment. But the Washington cabal previously passed laws allowing motor vehicle dealers to impose predispute arbitration clauses on consumers — and the Supreme Court upheld that immoral law. Now those same disciples of Mammon have used their power, not authority, to grant Seventh Amendment rights to a created entity, the corporation.

Will the Washington cabal eventually say that the Bill of Rights protects only corporations and not "We the People"? Isn't that the legal system in vogue in Europe during the 1930s for governments based on the corporate state concept?

Joe Boyett
3807 Rouse Ridge Road
Montgomery

Name caller

She makes the statement that anyone who condemns welfare is just using code words for racism. She probably does not know this but the majority of people on welfare are white. However, if she did some research she might know this.

Welfare is an issue which should be discussed in an intelligent manner with statistics and information. Calling anyone who wants to reform welfare a racist is not conducive to meaningful discussion.

For her to call 70 million people in this country racist is appalling. Her hate filled diatribe is not going to make any Republicans vote Democratic. If she was intelligent she would realize her column just helps the party she claims to despise.

In the future I would prefer as a reader of the Birmingham Post-Herald that you select op-ed pieces that display some research and effort on the part of the writer. Kindergarten children are told to not call each other names, the same should be expected of columnists.

Katherine Sechrist
3560 Hampshire Drive

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