European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - November 18, 1994, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Friday november 18. 1994 commentary the stars and stripes Page 17 ii o is i i r Lon to Listie a iat Clinton got trea George f. Will it was surreal and revealing when in his postelection news conference pres ident Clinton said on the health care Issue i will con cede that by the time the folks who were characterizing our pro Gram had finished with it and one of your publications said that they thought about $300 Mil lion had been spent lobbying against the healthcare Reform it looked like a government program designed to solve the problem by restricting the choices of the american people Ana injecting the government More into health  sen. Pat Moynihan asked recently who had misunderstood Clinton s plan Clin ton or the people said the american people got it Clear enough adding there were two Cost containment provisions in that Bill. The first was to Cut the number of doctors in the country by a Quarter. If you have fewer doctors you have fewer doctor Bills. But you Don t associate it with improving Medicine. And two let s just Cut the number of specialists in half. From the hundreds of thou Sands of documents generated by the 500people who toiled for Hillary Rodham Clinton s task Force Moynihan cites a memo signed by 13 of them critical of the president s proposal to Cap the number of resident physicians in training. That Cap combined with the administration s plan to raise the ratio of medical generalists to specialists expresses this administration View each physician is a Cost Center generating costs by receiving a salary ordering tests and admitting patients to hospitals for example. The critics who wrote the memo note tartly that controlling demand by limit ing Supply is  they said that when presidents of major universities were apprised of the proposal to restrict entry into the medical profession they were incredulous that policy would aim to limit Access to a Learned profession with its millennia history of achieving social Good and its recent history As a path for immigrant 901 Universal health care social  in a letter to the new York times last aug. 28, Moynihan rebutting a column headlined swamped with specialists argued that general practitioners Are a function of demography you need say 85 per 100,000 people. However specialists Are a function of science new discoveries create new specialities. Said Moynihan we Are no swamped with specialists we abound in them. And that is surely the glory of this great moment of medical  the next Day or. Walter Reich director of the program on health values and Public policy at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for scholars wrote to Moynihan about the threat of a deliberate dumping Down of  the  Reich said that one should Avert the expense of medical procedures by getting tid of the specialists who understand or carry them out or by making sure that hew specialists Aren trained makes As much medical sense As getting rid of the possibility that a person will experience future illnesses by prophylactically removing All of his healthy organs at an Early age. That Organ free person will surely never get say pancreatic cancer or hepa Titis because he no longer has his pancreas and his liver but neither will he be Able to survive very Well or very happily for very  government limits on the training of specialists is Reich wrote anti intellectual anti scientific and by anybody definition  it is he said even medieval to curtail medical expenses by curtailing expensive knowledge this approach is so illogical and strange that characterizing it As medieval does a profound disservice to what was in comparison to this age of anti medical scientism an intellectually Luminous epoch. Attempting to dismantle the edifice of specialization seems Akin somehow to the deliberate torching of the great Library in Alexandria now reread Clinton s news conference statement above. Disregard. His silly lament that he armed with the entire executive Branch and backed by Many private interests could not get his program understood by the Public. But note this most people still do no understand As Moynihan and Reich do the plan s worst features. Regarding Clinton s bizarre claim that his plan would neither restrict choices nor inject government further into health care a plausible explanation is that so Low is his opinion of the Public and so High is his estimate of his Clever Ness he thinks he can say anything and get away with it. The 1994 elections Sug Gest hot. Clinton s health care deception the Centrepiece of his presidency flowed from his 1992 Campaign itself a Long deception in which he presented himself As someone opposed to the sort of statist excess that his health care plan was. " the 1994 elections were consign punishment for both deceptions. C Washington port election was a lot closer than results indict it requires a surprisingly Small shift in total vote to effect great political landslides As we discover Cour Tesy of the new York times and Mitofsky International. We have from them a record of the political changes recorded every election year beginning with the Rea Gan Victory of 1980. And we discover that a Mere 2 per cent of the total vote going Over to the gop is responsible for All the clamor of last week. Ronald Reagan brought the Senate along with him but not the House. In 1980,48 percent of the total vote went Republican. In 1994, 50 percent. A Mere 2 per cent and All this commotion. ,. Jand As one would expect the internal breakdown titillate. American women by and Large lean toward democrats. I have never heard an explanation for this that is plausible. In 1980, 45 percent of women went Republican this year a grudging 46 percent. By con Trast men were Republican in 1980 by 51 percent and by 54 percent this last time around. Has the swelling Black Middle class affected the Vot ing no. In fact Black Republican votes decreased. From 13 percent to 12 percent. Among hispanics there was a rightward creep if rarely discernible from 28 percent to 30 percent. Asians were not counted in 1980, at least not by Mitofsky. We come to the category however you wish to Des Ignate it that separates White protestants Catholic Sand jews. And we learn that among White protestants the republicans gained enormously m the 14-year interval from 59 percent to 66 percent. Catholics move Din the same direction from 41 percent to 48 percent. The jews for reasons that Don t come instantly to mind went in the democratic direction from 31 per Wilma of Buckley cent to 22 percent. Come to think of it a probable Rea son is that Reagan was associated with the Stout Wing of the cold War an Issue no longer relevant but one around which a Hardy minority of jew ish voters Clung. Does education affect ideological inclinations not significantly though Democrat picked up on those voters who did not graduate from High school. Those with some College did not move 53 percent re publican in 1980, 53 percent in 1994. But tectonic demographic shifts were recorded. Nothing new in the staid old East 48 percent-48 percent. But the Midwest moved solidly from 50 percent to 56 per cent the South moved massively from 46 percent re publican in 1980 to 55 percent on tuesday. The West in which of course California is pre dominant moved As dramatically in the opposite direction from 51 percent Republican to 41 percent. The reasons for this will be explored meticulously by  in the months and years ahead but surely something there has to do with the figure of Ronald Reagan a californian who headed the ticket in 1980. Given the figures which in the context of Greate America appear so slight How is it that the impression is so solid that the political change is substantially important the reason surely is that whatever one says about the negative character of the campaigning and the advertising done by contending candidates the lineaments of the alternative positions were pretty Clear. When Gingrich and sen. Phil Gramm of Texas said Over the weekend that they acknowledge a mandate that Calls for less government reduced Federal extravagance and a diminished Federal appetite to accept the Burden of zoo keeping in Walla Walla it somehow did not matter that the numerical vote was so close. For one thing the Mere 2. Percent evolves into the difference Between a Senate controlled by such As Kennedy Biden Sarbanes and one controlled by such As pole Gramm Helms. A football Victory 52-50 is no less a Victory for the Winner. The talk Over the weekend tended to focus on the blood lust of the new congressional Bosses. This Point was nicely dealt with on television by upcoming House majority Leader Dick Armey. When he was asked whether there would be a rout of democratic staff members in Congress he observed that As things now stand republicans have about 30 percent of congressional staff an allocation decreed Over the years by the democratic majority. If the republicans persevere in cutting Dow the size of congressional staff maintain their existing 30 percent and reduce the democratic staff to a corresponding number i.e., 30 percent of 30 percent that Means a lot of sex democratic staffers. A but then that s the Price we pay is it not for coming in 2 percent ahead c unt versa press Syndicate