[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 159 (Friday, October 13, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1946]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           MILLIONS WILL SUFFER AND SOME WILL DIE, NEEDLESSLY

                                 ______


                        HON. FORTNEY PETE STARK

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Friday, October 13, 1995

  Mr. STARK. Mr. Speaker, I would like to enter in the Record an op ed 
from today's New York Times entitled ``A Giant Leap Backward'' written 
by Emory University Professor Melvin Konner.

                [From the New York Times, Oct. 13, 1995]

                         A Giant Leap Backward

                           (By Melvin Konner)

       Now it's official. The Republican House plans to cut a 
     total of $452 billion out of Medicare and Medicaid over the 
     next seven years. Medicaid would lose $182 billion, even 
     though it covers a disproportionately large number of 
     children as well as elderly people who have spent themselves 
     into destitution to qualify for it. Later this month, the 
     measure is to be voted on as part of the budget 
     reconciliation package, and Speaker Newt Gingrich plans to 
     block a Presidential veto by forcing the country to the verge 
     of default on our national debt. International markets await 
     news of this potential disaster with thousands of pairs of 
     hands poised over keyboards.
       Default would be only the latest step in the third 
     worldization of America. The gap between rich children and 
     poor children here is larger than in Switzerland, France or 
     any of the 15 other industrial nations examined in a report 
     this year by the Luxembourg Income Study, a non-profit group. 
     Not only that, we have a health care delivery system that 
     overtreats the well-to-do--not actually a good thing for 
     them--while all but withholding treatment from 43 million 
     uninsured citizens.
       Where will the savings from health care cutbacks go? 
     Republicans argue that the money will insure that Medicare 
     and Medicaid remain solvent. But they are also pressing for a 
     huge tax cut for the middle class and well-to-do; presumably 
     that money has to come from somewhere. And of course nothing 
     Republicans do will be allowed to slow profit-taking in the 
     health care industry, whose profits outpace national 
     corporate averages by far. Characteristically, the American 
     Medial Association came out in support of the Republican plan 
     only after payments to doctors were carefully protected.
       Few people may realize that our much praised health care 
     system, about to be made worse, is already an international 
     disgrace. The most scientifically advanced medicine in the 
     world has limited practical or moral value when nearly a 
     fifth of the population cannot get to it. During the past few 
     years, while the spirit of health-care reform was being born 
     and then started dying, the throng of the uninsured swelled 
     from 37 million to 43 million. This trend will only worsen. 
     Cutbacks are closing emergency rooms and clinics, and the 
     great public hospitals are being sold off or destroyed in New 
     York, Los Angeles and other cities. Does anyone care where 
     the poor will go?
       Republican leaders say they have a mandate to cut costs. 
     But only about 38 percent of eligible voters went to the 
     polls in 1994 and only slightly more than half of those voted 
     Republican. The result is perfectly democratic, but it is not 
     a mandate. Sixty percent of voters currently say they are 
     dissatisfied with Congress. Time will tell whether the voters 
     of 1994 were indulging in conservatism or merely in 
     volatility.
       Mr. Gingrich says he wants to renew America, but the only 
     thing he is likely to renew is the frustration and anger of 
     people who can only gape at the good life, and good health 
     care, without hope of having it themselves. Senator Phil 
     Gramm, a Presidential candidate, invokes the Second Coming on 
     the campaign trail. Which Second Coming? The one brought on 
     by Armageddon, or the one that many Christians believe grows 
     gradually in the world through the imitation of Jesus Christ?
       Deep in the Judeo-Christian tradition are such sentiments 
     as ``Do justice to the poor and fatherless; deal righteously 
     with the afflicted and destitute.'' A modern politician who 
     transfers wealth from the suffering to the comfortable and 
     cuts off poor people's access to decent medical care might 
     wonder how he would stand in a Second Coming.
       America is taking a great step backward. All other 
     industrial countries seem to know something we don't: having 
     no place to take a sick child does not encourage people to 
     identify with their country or its interests.
       Americans have always been torn between self-reliance and 
     compassion. Those who think that conservatism is now set in 
     stone should study American history; they are only watching 
     part of the arc of a pendulum swing. Compassion, fairness, 
     cooperation--these are the forces that will stop this swing, 
     whether in one year, five or seven.
       In the meanwhile, millions will suffer and some will die, 
     needlessly, for want of decent medical care.

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