European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - May 27, 1994, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Friday May 27, 1994 commentary 1 the stars and stripes Page 17 what a the difference Between the Clinton health plan and Elvis Presley according to sen. Phil Gramm Elvis is the one who might be alive. Nobody in Washington doubts that the presidents grandiose scheme to place one seventh of americans Economy under government domination is dead. That a because americans have come to realize that permanent Price controls Euph Emited As a Premium Caps require rationing or denial a and most of us do not want the health care we already have taken away. Equally obnoxious is the notion of statewide collectives Euph Emited Salii end the patients a particular doctor is the euphemism is care issues William Safire Ancess that would Freedom to choose and forcing employee a mandate to Bear the Cost of insurance will Hurt Small business and cause workers to get fired or be treated As part timers. To top off the rising resistance the proposal to finance coverage of the unemployed with a cigarette tax a while we move to ban smoking a is widely seen As the Selling of unsaturated Snake Oil. The real Bill with taxes on the Middle class would hit Home hard soon. Does All that sober second thinking mean that a health care Reform is a dead Duck. A a a. A a a a a a. V a a no. A a a. It Means Only that we have come to the time for improving health cares free Market without undermining it first forget a a mandates forced coverage wont Fly. That includes the misbegotten Republican alternative of a individual mandates a forcing each of us to buy our own insurance. Envision a to spot this fall a we democrats want your employer to pay for your insurance but the republicans want to make you pay for it. Which do you prefer a sure answer Force my Boss not me. That a Why republicans will have to Stop fiddling with compromises on Coer Sale Wong of boat of a Tople. Cion insurance must be voluntary. Plain economic sense not legislation will drive Small businesses to form purchasing pools to get better deals from insurers. Concentrate instead on an idea whose time has come everybody should be Able to buy some health insurance. Clinton is right a pre existing conditions should no longer be a bar to getting coverage. The insurance Industry will have to be forced to accept people who Are poor risks. These a Community ratings a or risk spreading among Large pools of people should not go to the extreme of human homogenization. Smokers and drinkers and gluttons should pay More than nonsmokers and Teeto tales and dieters its a free country but if you choose to run a risk you have no right to demand your neighbor share the Cost of your risk. The health insurance Reform Bill should include the ability to keep the insurance you have when you change jobs provided you or your next employer pays for it. Portability of insurance and of pensions fits in the new social and business fabric of our time. To encourage More insuring our tax system should give individuals including the self employed the same tax Breaks on insurance Premium payments now Given other employees. Medical iras Are another Way to help people pay for better coverage. A a a a. Quot a ,. But wont this result in some people getting better health coverage than others yes. A a you work for Money so that you can buy better food better clothes better housing and better health care than the next Guy. Our system Calls it  that docs not mean we let the poor starve or Lack for clothes or shelter or deny them Basic treatment for illness. But after providing a floor for those in poverty a subsidizing premiums for the lowest Cost plans inc better off should not be prevented from providing better for themselves and their families. The coming bipartisan health care Bill ought to provide More Money for University medical research than does the abandoned Clinton plan and should reject his odious imposition of racial quotas for medical schools. It should encourage rather than disparage pharmaceutical research. It should stay Quot away from a a National health boards a which would come under political pressure to Grant Over greater benefits at taxpayer Cost that individual americans should remain Able to choose or reject. If Clinton is re elected with a larger majority in Congress liberals could extend these sensible insurance reforms into the revolutionary health care leveling they have in mind. If not not. C now York time3 a a Justice act May doom death penalty come november voters should remember that in the Spring 219 House members and 41 senators voted in effect to abolish capital punishment. Many of the legislators who voted for the racial Justice act portion of the crime Bill know that abolition will be its probable consequence if it becomes Law. Those who voted for it not knowing that were culpable careless. The act says no person shall be executed under a sentence imposed a on the basis of  the act says that a compelling inference of a racial basis is established if in a particular jurisdiction race was a a statistically significant factors in decisions to seek or impose capital punishment. Which Means what precisely precisely nothing. Which Means it is an incitement to litigation. And that is the Point. According to the act relevant evidence of race As a basis of a death sentence May include statistics showing death sentences Are imposed a significantly More frequently upon a persons of one race than upon persons of another or More frequently a was punishment for capital offences against persons of one race than As punishment for capital offences against persons of another race.�?�. ,. About half of americans murder victims Are White about half Are Black. A a but about 85 percent of the victims whose killers have been executed were White. So juries place a higher value on the deaths of Whites right not so fast. Capital punishment is especially Apt to be imposed on killers of police officers. Eighty five percent of murdered police officers Are White. Are juries placing High value on the lives a of White people or police officers juries sympathies May vary with the moral character of the victim. A higher percentage of Black murder victims than of White victims Are killed while involved in illegal drug activities. Prosecutors Are More Apt to seek capital punishment when a murder is committed during the commission of another crime such As robbery or rape. According to one Broad Survey 20 percent of White murder victims and 12 percent of Black victims Are killed by persons committing another crime. Since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976, 232 persons As of several weeks ago have been executed. Of those 91 a or 39 percent a were Black More than three times the Black percentage of the population. However since 1976 the annual per Cen Lages of Blacks among those convicted of homicide have ranged from 44 to 52. If those statistics prove discrimination does it favor or injure Blacks suppose the racial Justice act becomes Law and prompts states to equalize the percent age of the killers of Blacks and Whites who Are executed. Given that 95 percent of murdered Blacks Are killed by. Blacks the result might be More executions of Blacks. However the real purpose of the act is to end All executions. Its aim is to generate litigation so burdensome that states will conclude that the Only Way to ensure statistical proportionality that cannot be litigated forever is As sen. Orrin Hatch a Utah says a to have the incidence of the death penalty equal Zero a that is to abolish the George f. Will death  Hatch cites the Case of Earl Lloyd Jackson a California murderer who in 1984 won a state court ruling that he was entitled to a hearing on his statistical claim that capital punishment was being imposed in a discriminatory manner in California. Hatch says Jackson was Able to require the production of such voluminous data that a special task Force was created just to Cope with his Case. In three year until a . Supreme court ruling truncated Nis Appeal a his statistical claim Cost California More than $1 million. The racial Justice act by enabling a killer subsequent to his conviction to Pul the prosecutor on trial is a transparently anti democratic Man Euver by opponents of capital punishment to frustrate this society a considered affirmation of capital punishment. For years opponents argued that society so evolving standards of decency had rendered capital punishment a which the Constitution explicitly contemplates a unconstitutionally cruel and  thirty seven states discounted that theory by reaffirming capital punishment. Now the racial Justice act would make capital punishment prohibitively draining on the resources or the criminal Justice system and would do so with an oblique Ness that bespeaks cynicism. The act is fresh evidence that As liberalism continues to lose its Power to persuade the Public it retreats from Legislatures into courts preferring litigation to legislation to achieve its ends. The House barely passed the act. The Senate rejected it. A House Senate conference will decide if it stays in the Bill. If it does that will be sufficient reason for defeating the Bill. C Washington Post