European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - June 17, 1991, Darmstadt, Hesse Monday june 17, 1991the stars and stripes Andrew j. Glass commentary they called it a the Bubble because jets of air kept its flexible roof and sides up. Near Riyadh the saudi capital a 1,000-hour air War against Iraq was mounted from within a the each Day Brig. Gen. Buster c. Glos son wrote the a air tasking orders that blew another part of Iraq to Smithereens. Colonels then prepared the necessary a a packages to get the Job done. Such a a a package might be made up of dozens of b-52 bombers plus a Bevy of supporting air escorts enemy fire suppressors and tankers. Or it might be made up of just eight f-117 stealth fighters and two tankers. Either Way the final damage would be about the same. But the final Cost to the taxpayers of a a Standard package would be More than four times the Cost of the a stealth those recent events came to mind when Kent Kresa showed me an air Force Chart titled a if you like the f-117, wait till you see the b-2.�?� Kresa Heads Northrop corp., prime builders of the b-2. The Chart showed that when it comes to High tech weapons it All depends on How you look at the numbers. After committing $30.8 billion for .15 planes the House voted this month to halt the b-2 program. Since that works out to More than $2 billion a copy the legislators told the Pentagon to try something cheaper and simpler. A it All depends on How. You figure a notes Kresa who Learned his math at Bayside High school in Queens n.y., and Mit. If the taxpayers fund All 75 of the b-2s that the White House wants to buy then the per copy Cost Falls to Only $864 million. The air Force says that just two b-2s Are equal in firepower to an eight plane f-117 stealth a a package used Over Baghdad. Of course each time one flies you put at risk two pilots and enough Money to fund a fair sized City for a couple of years. Some of the aging b-52s that Strick iraqi targets took off from bases As far away As Louisiana. Americans Arab partners in the War saw the b-52 As a no dear bomber Force aimed against Russia. George f. Will Ovi ass Smi Success b a Tough sell kindly keep them away from our soil they said. May Well have similar qualities Kresa suggests. But you would need Only three b-2 bases to strike any target on Earth. Still its a Tough sell. The planets test schedule has slipped and wont end before 1995. Jimmy Carter gave the b-2 its real Start. George Bush will have left the White House before it can prove itself in combat. House members run every two years. Some of them have trouble thinking ahead a couple of Days. Its no easy task for lawmakers to commit Many billions for a plane that takes a generation to build and that will be flown by children As yet unborn. Northrop employs 37,000 workers mostly at two big California Sites. The b-2 is the company a largest program. It is says Kresa a perhaps the most Ini por Tant military program in the if the b-2 program succeeds technically Kresa says it will he largely because its key people a Are not necessarily born in at the same time he adds work on the shop floor is becoming More Complex. Yet workers Are arriving with fewer critical skills. That a where . Security and Domestic concerns converge. Today a poor math scores plug into wars that might be fought in the next Century. As issues that Span decades they defy easy labels on the right and the left. C Cox news service dose of Rockefeller a healthy idea for 92 Many have noted the oddity of sen. Jay Rockefeller member of a Rich and Republican family representing a poor and democratic state but oddity is not new to West Virginia. The state was created in an act of Semi secession to help win the War against secession. It was cobbled together in 1863 from some Virginia counties that had few slaves or Confederate sym a. Thies. A a a a a. The civil War ended slave Power and unleashed industrialism fuelled by a form of Power West Virginia has plenty of Coah extraction industries arc usually dangerous and unrewarding to the people who do the actual extracting. Small wonder health care a its availability and Cost a is an old worry in a state where not Long ago one fifth of the families contained miners. Rockefeller is a prime mover behind the democrats new plan to contain health care costs and broaden act Cess. The plans most controversial provision is suited to a dry fiscal season the government would mandate Pri vate sector spending. Employers would be required to provide health care coverage or pay into a fund that would finance coverage. The plans Radical potential is in its nuances a the formulation of standards medical and administrative concerning the proper use and pricing of particular medical procedures. The subject of health care is a migraine inducing soup of acronyms polysyllabic scientific terms and did Lar figures containing three commas. Rockefeller is so marinated in the details he sometimes turns this subject of National anxiety into an aesthetic numbing the senses with numbers. It is As though he feels the need to prove that he is intelligent enough to have earned the Eminence to which he was bom. He is and no one is born into elective office. Think of him As an upwardly Mobile poverty worker. Before Rockefeller now 54, was governor and Sena Tor he was a Vista Volunteer in a West Virginia Village of 256 people where there were teen agers whose Teeth were half gone so scarce was adequate dental care. The first time he got a Pap smear Van to come to town no woman visited it. The second time was the same. After leafleting and other advertisements a few women came Lor the vans third would people not Avail themselves of what was made available life Rockefeller says has been so hard in the hollows of his mountainous state highest mean Altitude in the nation people Are reluctant to risk learning More bad news. So a teen Ager West Virginia has the highest rate of pregnancy among White teen agers May not learn she is pregnant until her second trimester and May never get proper prenatal care. Just $500 Worth of such care substantially reduces the risk of Low birth weight requiring neonatal intensive care. Such care costs $2,500 a Day As in Chicago a Cook county Hospital or Between $5,000 and $10,000 a Day in even More technologically armed hospitals. Such care often lasts for two to three months. You do the math. And done to forget the Cost to society of coping with the consequences of permanent cognitive impairment a welfare special education prisons. The population is aging medical technology is becoming More sophisticated and expensive and malpractice litigation is provoking defensive Medicine perhaps 30 percent of health care costs result from unnecessary or inappropriate procedures but at least lawyers Are confounded and machines Are amortized. All of this takes an enormous told a the competitiveness of american Industry which is paying the Bill. The health care crisis is optional in the sense that it is rooted in foolish modifiable behaviour. Human beings Are the Only animals that eat smoke drink drive and use drugs recklessly and done to exercise naturally. And the composition of the medical profession a too Many expensive specialists not enough primary care physicians practising preventive Medicine a reflects the perverse incentives of a disease oriented Hospital entered High technology health care system. Rockefeller a subject these Days is health care but his nascent theme is general negligence. Occasionally the arid ass of his utterances is irrigated by passion As when he says Republican a the word bites As studied understatement can a to the nation s Domestic problems is a president Bush says Rockefeller has a this head in Rockefeller says with a refreshing absence of Fol Derol a i want to be before his family vacation in August he will decide whether to run in 1992. Today the democrats health plan seems like just another big program hard to understand and impossible to pay for. But if Rockefeller can put health care into a larger context As Reagan made tax cuts serve a larger theme he might make 1992 interesting. My Wager is that he Washington Post a
