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Tuesday, November 4, 1975
University Daily Kansan
COMMENT Opinions on this page reflect only the view of the writer.
Suits suit lawyer
In a forum on professional liability insurance at the Kansas Union last week, Gerald Michaud, Wichita, president of the Kansas Trial Lawyers' Association, denounced malpractice insurance for doctors and defended the present system of malpractice litigation.
The present system allows a patient to bring suit for as long as 12 years after treatment and provides a large contingency fee for lawyers. This fee encourages lawyers to accept questionable cases that probably wouldn't be litigated otherwise, in the hope of getting large financial settlements.
"We are unwilling to take away the rights of the injured patient," Michael said. "The answer is doing away with insurance, not the rights of the patient."
HOW NOBLE OF Michaud to fly to the defense of the poor, injured patient! Why, everyone knows what a racket the medical profession is. Physicians control membership in the profession, set high standards for admission and, worst of all, make more money than the average American.
Well, I wonder how fast Michaud would change his tune if he or a member of his family needed an operation to survive and no doctor would perform it because malpractice insurance had been canceled.
Saving lives is a high-risk business and doctors are human. Mistakes happen, as they do in any profession. If a lawyer makes a mistake and loses a case, can his client turn around and sue him? Can a congregation member sue his minister for being negligent in giving him spiritual guidance?
IN CASES OF GROSS or deliberate negligence, of course, malpractice suits are warranted, but in the case of unintentional errors that result in minor consequences or nonpermanent injury, should physicians be plagued Why should physicians be plagued by suits for minor, inconsequential errors when other professionals aren't?
Malpractice insurance protects doctors against the nuisance suits of patients who are looking for a way to make a fast buck. Even when a patient has been injured and does have a legitimate complaint, the size of the award sought is often ridiculous and malpractice insurance keeps the physician from losing everything he owns.
SURE, THE MEDICAL profession may limit membership, set high standards and earn profit, but it's easy to forget that for every doctor on the golf course there are probably two or three in offices and hospitals, performing skills that take years of education, training and practice to learn.
It's also easy to forget that a doctor spends a minimum of seven years in college (as many as nine or 10 if he's a specialist). If malpractice insurance is abolished and the doctor is left at the mercy of the money-hungry patient who needs him, his suit will fractured arm fails to heal properly, how many students will be willing to spend seven years and $25,000 to go to medical school?
ALSO, IF THERE WERE no malpractice insurance, how many doctors would be willing to perform high-risk operations? Most doctors would even refuse to perform an appendectomy without insurance. An appendectomy without insurance is the malpractice suit could mean losing everything he's worked hard for.
There's no getting around it. The medical profession performs an invaluable service and is absolutely vital to society and malpractice insurance is absolutely vital to the medical profession. To abolish malpractice insurance is not to promote the rights of injured patients, as Michaud suggested. It is to endanger their chances—and the rest of society's—getting medical care.
Contributing Writer
Crosby Noyes
Security means snoopers
WASHINGTON- These are hard times for the intelligence community. To judge from the expressions of horror and shock from our liberal legislators, we are back in the era of infiltration, and we had that "gentleman don't read other people's mail."
cused of reading the mail or listening to the phone calls of a few people suspected of being security risks or involvement in international drug traffic, the foundations of our fundamental civil liberties are said to be in deadly peril.
Of course, it's perfectly okay for private citizens to steal secret government documents and deliver them by the crate to sympathetic newspapers. But when the government is ac-
Nixon administration in the Watergate affair. We are on the way to a kind of reverse McCarthyism, in which the most elementary activities of security agencies are denounced as deep-dyed plots against individual freedom.
It's fashionable these days to be against all intelligence-gathering activities. It's even fashionable to be against technology like this is automatically related to the excesses of the
In this I suspect there is a large element of hypocrisy and political miscalculation. Americans may depole the government on the activities of their fellow citizens, but most would also recognize the legitimacy of mail interception and phone taps in order to national security, *kidnaping* or organized crime.
communication. Almost everyone over the age of 50 has lived in a community party hall, and many were assumed to be monitored and where the telephone operator was always the best-informed gal in town. In every city that had a resident foreigner is expected.
It's hard to contend—as some liberals do—that communications is a concern right guaranteed all citizens.
A few years ago, I remember calling Lydon Johnson's presidential assistant McGeorge Bundy at the White House with an indiscreet question.
From its inception, the telephone has been the most insecure means of private
"Surely," said Bundy, "you can't expect an answer to that—especially over the telephone."
distasteful by the presumption that officers' mail was uncensored.
The same goes for the sanctity of the mail as an inviolable constitutional right. Many of them worked against the intelligence services spent many disagreeable hours as officers in the American army and in other countries, and the letters of their own enlisted men—a duty made more
Mechanics, repair thyselves
We are not in a state of war today, but the principle that privacy and communication is international of national security—and presumably also the war against organized crime—wouldn't be seriously disputed by the majority of American citizens.
really are now. For this you have my love, O gurus of the gas station.
Thank you very,very much.
The conflict between the rights of individuals and the rights of society, represented by a democratically elected government, is not exactly new. What is essential today is that these differing and not always compatible citizens in a way that will protect honest citizens (by legal rather than political definition) without compromising the right of the state to defend itself. It is one of the more urgent tasks of the post-Watergate period.
How do I love thee, O great brotherhood of automobile mechanics? Let me count the machines?
I love you for the time one of my brethren checked my Volkswagen's al flow and then failed to re-insert the dipstick. I enjoyed the smoke-screen effect on the engine, started to cook
I love you also for the time one of you was working on an engine to attach the gasoline line leading to the carburetor. I appreciated the fragrant stream of oxygen superpumped into engine as I drove. I must con-
(c) 1975 Washington Star Syndicate Inc.
food buyer's problem, not the supermarket chain's. Right?
You've finally made me face reality. I see things as they
Paula Jolly
My love for you reached its
myelife, however, when one of
you looked at my car's battery
a few days ago, and yet said
fess, however, that I appreciated even more the other driver who noticed a steady stream of gas coming out of my car and who knew what was amiss when we ooened the hood.
nothing about its bone-dry condition. It was I, not you, who divertec a veritable Niagara river. What is almost bottomless thirst.
And verily, my love for you became even greater when one of your liked him was on the side of me. I would not notice to notice the balloon on the side of one fire. In blight innocence I did drive for days thereafter, unaware that the potential threatened at 58 miles per hour.
arrest, from this woman?`
Actually, the comma after `arecive, from this woman?` is a semicolon.
Let's look at the word `damm` again. It's `damm`.
Wait, let me re-read the whole line.
`arrestive, from this woman?`
`arec
I also realize that being a mechanic is only a job, and that it's old fashioned to expect anything as outdated as a plastic bag, particularly, a feeling of responsibility for a job. That's about as unrealistic as expecting a food processor to keep all your products just because they might cause cancer. Or expecting a supermarket to provide paper sacks instead of plastic ones just because plastic easily environmental pollutant.
I guess I'm a demanding, unrealistic person for expecting
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By GREG HACK
Volunteer Army unchallenged
Guest Writer
In Vietnam, the Army didn't win quickly, as it had done so often before. Large numbers of men—forced into combat by the draft—came to doubt the justness of the war. Drug addiction reached incredible rates, and desertion wasn't uncommon. Sergeants were caught stealing money from the army, and they weren't being killed by their own discriminated men.
Ten years ago America became deeply involved in a war in Vietnam. Five years ago domestic upheaval and unrest created an even larger State University. Many American institutions were challenged and temporarily crippled; many were forced to flee to other states. Some challenged or cripped as much as the United States Army.
IN AUGUST 1969, Col. Thomas Tackshaw's Alpha Berry probably on the minks of many other companies. The men refused to fight. An entire team move forward when ordered.
With the passing of Vietnam, however, things changed. Whereas thousands of young men once went to great lengths to become soldiers today doesn't have room for all those of volunteering for service. A Harris poll a year ago ranked the Army as the fourth most active institution, right behind medicine, the Supreme Court and colleges. Few would dispute that the Army has improved in training since it improved? And just how strong is the Army today?
BY THE END OF 1971,
American fighting strenght',
in Vietnam had been reduced to
a mere 30%. It was better
better off. For the first time
veterans returned without victory or respect.
Many pitied the Army, for it seemed that it could exist only by forcing men into service. So many soldiers took years from the lives of men and then not disciplining them enough to make those years constructive. The push all-volunteer Army began.
In 1971, Congress increased the pay for a new private from $134 a month to $288, and it is $344 today. A figure of $424 million was allocated for dormitory facilities, and the military's advertising budget was raised from $1.1 million in 1970 to $26.7 million for 1973. But the Madison Avenue selling job, office, and retail barracks and rock concerts on the posts, didn't do the job.
THE NUMBER OF 'volunteers' was 15 per cent short of expectations, and 45 per cent long in the high school dropouts. The draft, expected to end in early 1972, continued. Shortly after the announcement of the draft's extension, the Army's critics own, Denagin, a political cartoonist, mocked the Army's recruiting slogan in a cartoon of a young man reading a letter about the Army wants to join you! 8:30 am. Saturday at our place."
A year later the statistics were no better, but it was clear that Congress wouldn't renew the President's authority to draft. On Jan. 23, 1973, the Pentagon announced an end to the draft. Many said the Army commander in chief armed force of 785,000, and for a years it appeared they were correct.
HOWEVER, IN 1974, things began to turn around. More than 75 per cent of those joining
the army are now high school graduates, the highest percentage in the Army's history. Military education programs turned 20,000 more into high school graduates.
Even though the minimum enlistment time for the Army was increased from two to three years, it still takes more than 30 per cent over its quotas for enlistment of men with a year or more of college and 20 percent of the civilian population. But why the sudden change? No one can say for sure, but the changes in the Army, society and the economy had to have occurred.
THE CHEAP GIMMICKS of the Army's early promotion were trained for substantial reforms. Recruits worked eight-hour days and got weekends off. Entrance was restricted as revillee were eliminated, and civilians were hired to do K.P. and other clean-up duties.
Society quieted down, and a generation of 18-year-olds came who were barely in high school when anti-Vietnam sentiment peaked. A significant portion of young people seemed turned off by the permissiveness and the violence. The Army was viewed as a victim of Vietnam, rather than a major villain.
Many high school graduates found that jobs were no longer plentiful, even for college graduates, and inflation was making college tuition difficult to afford. The Army offers a free military security and little danger from another war in the near future.
THE $344 A MONTH salary isn't bad when one considers that the Army provides free housing, meals and health and dental care. Discounts on food and clothing are an education programs of many types, make the package even more attractive. A Pentagon
study showed that the average private was better off financially than the average worker in civilian industry.
While needless duties were dispensed with, necessary discipline was restored. The 40-unit medical unit worked with hard work and the recruits seemed to respond well. The New York Times, no Army apologist collected the documents from average recruits:
"I COULDN'T FIND a job, and the recruiter told me I'd get a bonus and get in shape. I feel a good deal. I feels good to short hair."
"Work is hard to get on the outside, and I wanted to make something out of myself."
"They called me Pillsbury back home because I was so fat. I was washed, I mean, at home, we were just screwing around every night getting wiped out. I was stunned and enlisted and now I feel good. I feel like something, like I'm part of something."
But even if the Army is more than meeting its recruiting quotas, how good is it? Could the Army fight another war reasonably well prepared? Unfortunately, nobody knows.
STATISTICALLY, THE FORCES look prepared. The Army has met its goal of 13 combat divisions, the most combat-ready, and three more active divisions are being created by cutting the number of men only trained as support units. The two combat troops and roughly half of the combat officers have never seen real battle action, so there are only opinions on how to perform on the battlefield.
However, it also might be noted that the U.S. Army had little battle experience entering World War I and World War II,
so battle experience isn't the ultimate criterion in judging quality.
But one could be alarmed by recent statements by military leaders who admit that the Army isn't getting the training they need, and has been able to train with live ammunition for six months, nor to travel in formation for similar periods of time. In addition, he has simply made realistic combat training too expensive.
For example, a set of tank tracks that cost $4,700 in 1974 now costs more than $10,000.
Despite an 18 per cent reduction in oil consumption last year, the Army's fuel bill rose 75 per cent. The Army needs more money if it is to be as well trained as possible.
A veteran captain recently said, "This is a vastly improved Army. We are not yet what we should be, but if we continue what we started after Vietnam, we soon will be."
One hopes that he is right about the all-volunteer Army. And one hopes that another war won't come along to answer the question, "Just how good is our army?"
THE ELEVEN O'CLOCK
TONIGHT OUR INVESTIGATIVE TEAM BROKE INTO...