European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - September 26, 1994, Darmstadt, Hesse Monday september 26, 1994 commentary the stars and stripes Page 13 in female discord jars chorus Over values Ellen Goodman anyone who tunes in politics even for background music can Tell you How the sound has changed. Two years ago they heard Only a shouting match Over family values. This year they can hear a on the right left and Center May not be hit Ting exactly the same notes but like sopranos tenors and baritones they re pretty much in Harmony. The tune we hear again and again is a Dirge about increasing numbers of children coming into the world an growing up without two parents. Especially without fathers. Even Dan Quayle and Bill Clinton have done a duet on this subject. Recently the for Meryce president went Back to the stage where he first took on Murphy Brown. Rewriting his tory and his original lyrics Quayle said what i was talk ing about then and what i am reiterating today is the importance of fathers. Too often fathers walk away from their children or worse yet they Don t even know who their children Days later the president added a verse or two at a convention of Black baptists somebody has to say again it s not right. You should t have a baby before you re ready and you should t have a baby when you re not married. We be got to turn it the refrain running through political speeches and ads is about the Man who got away the absent father the dad in Dan Only much of this is music to the ears of the family pol icy Folk. We finally have what David Blankenhorn of the Institute for american values Calls an emerging consensus across political lines that the fragmenting of the family is the principal cause of declining child Well fathers Are no longer peripheral to. This Dis Cussion they Are Central. But our minds Are changing much More than the reality. As Blankenhorn puts it we re going through a period of hand wringing about social decline that we re on the wrong track but on the ground everything is staying the every year More children Are born out of Wedlock nearly 30 percent in 1991 while 60 percent of children will spend some part of their child Hood in a single Parent Home. The truth is that prosecuting Deadbeat dads makes Good politics and policy talking about reconnecting fathers and children makes Good sense but it does t get to the heart of the matter relationships Between men and women. We can t talk sensibly about the frayed connections Between fathers and children without talk ing about the frayed connections Between fathers and mothers men and , there Are essentially two fathers movements in America there is the fathers rights movement a collection of divorced often angry men who embrace a Model of Post divorce father. There is the Promise keepers a burgeoning grass roots movement with a Welcome message about male responsibility but with a dubious subtext Sug Gesting that men go Back to the family As its patriarch. In some ways they both skirt the Issue. Us Tel fathers take responsibility for Thler offspring a flu. All pay the Price for their neglect. This carries a Large. Cost indoor epucat10nal achievement in crease drug abuse Crim amp welfare be Pendency births to unmarried of a Uttrup fault the unwed teen age Mother on welfare and the unwed professional Mother Are examples of the same thing at either end of the economic scale the failure of relationships. A teen Ager who gets pregnant May be full of fantasies about relationships. An older woman who chooses to have children alone May be All too fan Tasy free. They have something in common with the larger population of divorced parents with the difficulty and inconstancy of relationships. Blankenhorn who has written much about fatherhood in America says a major weakness of the current Way of talking about fatherhood is that we Are not having a serious conversation about How men and women find a com Mon life How they find it and keep it. Americans believe that people should marry Only for love and stay married Only As Long As there is love. We also believe that most children Are better off with their two parents when the two beliefs conflict we still fall into confused or polite silence. In his speech Quayle trod carefully Over that treacherous turf of divorce. His grandmother was divorced he said. Clinton has also distinguished Between the never Ved and the once wed. Finally we have a chorus loudly and publicly worry ing about children. We Are All singing the blues about absent fathers and unwed mothers. But the next ques Tion is whether we can turn to the subject of men an women relationships and marriage in a changing time. C Boson Globe world s Best health system off needs Marybeth Nessler is neither a physician nor a researcher. But get her started on the subject of a drug and she sounds nearly As knowledgeable As Many of them and a Good Deal More agitated too. Since the drug was approved by the Fra last year scientists have been keenly inter ested in bet Aseron because it was the first drug thought to slow and alter the debilitating course of multiple sclerosis. But Nessler a 38-year-old Mother from Oregon with the chronic disease became an expert on the drug because she could not get it. Her Case makes a powerful argument for an overarching policy that has fallen out of favor since the evening a year ago when president Clinton held up a health care Security card on television. Health care Reform has been flagrantly politicized Ever since. The refrain of the opposition has been simple repeated until it has the ring of familiarity if not absolute truth the United states should not tamper with the finest health care system in the if the measure is the ability to transplant a heart to administer chemotherapy to reattach a leg the slogan is accurate. But logistically the system s a Are Many ways to measure this from those who can receive insurance reimbursement for a Hospital stay but not less expensive Home health care to those Given medical care that they neither wan nor truly need As they approach death. Nessler s situation illustrates Why there is no contradiction betwee being the. Best and in need of an Over haul. Like the 300,000 other is patients throughout the country she was elated at the first reports of bet Aseron s reduction of the frequency and severity of attacks of is which can Lead to Lack of coordination tremors and impaired was disappointed to learn that be cause demand had outstripped initial supplies she would have to enter a lot Tery to get the inject Able drug. And finally she was enraged to discover Thatte Maseron would Cost $10,000 a year and that she would be ineligible to be reimbursed through her insurance because she was on Way i could afford it on my own she a Little multiplication it looks As if $250 million Worth of bet Aseron will have been prescribed in the first year alone. Or Jeffrey Latts vice president of clinical research arid development at Ber Lex laboratories which developed the drug says that does t cover the investment in Many years of re search although he s not sure what the break even Point might be. I be never seen that kind of analysis he added. He did say that the company which has been helping people with no insurance obtain the drug would announce a broader Aid program soon. Surely someone will say it s too bad that everyone who needs bet Aseron can t get it but that s life. The truth is that it s too bad for All of us and the High Cost of drugs is less important than the High Cost of not making them available. Socialized Medicine some still cry but it s Long been social Ann Quindlen sized with those covered paying for those who Are undo insured. American medi Cine is simply socialized badly Penny Wise and Pound foolish. As Nessler writes the National is society estimates that the average Hospi Tal stay for someone with is costs an average of $ 12,000. The average person with is is hospitalized once a year. If medicare covered the Cost of bet Aseron that s already a savings of $2,000 per per son per Nessler reports several positive developments she. Finally qualified for state medicaid benefits which will pay for Beta Seron and she s not sure she wants it any More. There s a new drug that she s re searching and she s taking steroids for strength. I be been really Lucky she says. But she knows others who have not insurance that does t cover prescriptions or that covers prescription Sut not injections. The system might save in the Long run if those people were Tak ing bet Aseron today. But the Long run gets Short shrift As we waste time Trum Peting our medical supremacy. C now York times
