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University Daily Kansan
Opinion
Monday, Nov. 18, 1985
Curtain rises on Geneva
Like an audience packed into a movie house for an early showing of the first-run film, the world eagerly awaits this week's meeting of the superpowers.
As the lights dim and the curtain rises on Geneva, the attention of the nations is riveted on President Reagan and Soviet Premier Gorbachev.
The audience has been pled to the hilt with promotions and advertisements. It's time now for action.
The meeting of the two leaders holds the greatest potential for patching relations between the two countries in the decade since detente.
Both sides have flaunted their bargaining chips. Encouragingly, this time those chips carry names and numbers.
Apparently we have something to talk about with the Soviets. And they with us.
Gorbachev wants to talk about cutting both countries' nuclear arsenals in half. Reagan mentions sweeping Europe, or parts of it, clean of nuclear weapons.
With hope, more will come of the two days of meetings than pictures in the papers and on the news of men in high-back chairs smiling nervously across shiny wooden tables.
If so, improved trade agreements, exchange programs and a nuclear weapons accord likely lie on the horizon for the United States and Soviet Union.
If not, the world will have fallen for another round of empty posturing — the equivalent in politics of a glitzy ad campaign for a dud of a film.
Paring malpractice costs
If a special committee's recommendations are heeded, the Kansas Legislature will have a chance in January to relieve some problems with medical practice.
On Nov. 7-8, the interim Committee on Medical Malpractice decided to recommend a limit of $1 million for malpractice lawsuits and the same limit on payments from the state Health Care Stabilization Fund for one judgment.
Current state law sets a ceiling of $3 million. The committee must give final approval to its proposals Thursday or Friday.
High malpractice damage awards have raised costs of malpractice insurance, sometimes even scaring good physicians out of their profession. They also lead at times to overtesting of patients. All of this affects the cost and quality of medical care.
Most lawyers oppose the limits on awards, and ideally none would be needed. But the best care for all means having
limits and confronting malpractice in other ways.
Fortunately, the special committee is recommending other useful steps besides dollar limits.
The best way to reduce problems with malpractice is to end the so-called "conspiracy of silence" that harbors doctors who are incompetent or careless. The report requirement, which has the threat of a $1,000 a day fine and license revocation, gives hospitals incentive to speak up.
Most important is one requiring hospitals and other licensed health care institutions to report alleged malpractice to the state Board of Healing Arts. The report would be made if an internal hearing determined that allegations had merit.
Limiting malpractice damage awards is not an easy choice. But coupled with increased vigilance of possible malpractice, it can work toward providing good health care at prices people can afford.
A measure of success
Those who expect a better world to advance in giant leaps have few reasons these days to celebrate.
But recent efforts to cool some of the world's hot spots cheer those of us who take heart at small steps.
Great Britain's agreement with the Irish Republic last week is one such small step. It asks the Irish government to help peacefully resolve the bloody conflict between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland.
Since 1969, when the Catholic minority took to Belfast streets to protest discrimination by the Protestant majority, more than 2,000 people have died in political violence in Northern Ireland.
Most of the deaths can be blamed on the gunners of the Irish Republican Army, who favor reuniting with the Irish Republic, and the Ulster Defense Association, the Protestant terrorists.
Throughout the years of violence in Northern Ireland, Britain has treated the matter as an internal problem — sending in troops and imposing, in 1973, direct British rule.
Last week's agreement expands the republic's influence in Ulster, although it remains only a consultant.
The Irish Republic has remained merely an interested bystander.
Most important, officials in both countries hope the agreement undercuts support for the IRA among Catholics while stilling Protestant fears that their province might be merged with the republic.
But over time, this tiny step may be valued more because it started moving in the right direction than because of the distance it covered.
In the short term, extremists probably will step up their violence in hopes of sabotaging the agreement.
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Professor shares his relative philosophy
"Just call me Tom, as my students
"They look like pajama pants, Professor Narrowsea."
"Forgotten my pants? Get your mind out of the history books and into the gutter. This is the 20th century. And these are my new pants."
Strolling through the halls of Wescoe the other day, I heard the most unusual argument behind one of the closed office doors. It was between Tom Narrowsea, professor in philosophy of relative non-existence, and his new, stuffy receptionist.
"Excuse me sir. I do believe you've forgotten your pants."
Evan Walter
Staff columnist
do. And these are pajama pants, I'm getting the look of the now, like my students. This summer, they all came to class wearing sweats and what looked like boxer shorts. So here I am, Joan."
out with chivalry. Loosen up, drop in,
and drop out."
"Call me Mrs. Thompson."
"Mrs. Thompson? You're too cold.
Get into the groove. Formality died
"Professor Narrowsea!"
"Look, don't argue with me. I know what I'm doing. I've been teaching here for eight years with a Ph.D."
I once had a class with Prof. Narrowsea — I mean Tom, and he did seem to know what he was doing. Only I don't think anybody else did.
Although only 35, his long hair and his slow, philosophical- sounding voice made him appear 10 years older. I'm not quite sure why he speaks with an English accent. He supposedly lived in Kansas his entire life.
Safer ways to have fun
Mailbox
Why must people write on subjects they know very little about? I am addressing the letter from Nov. 8. "Training bearsay."
Obviously the author of that letter knows the training game very well, but he does not know very much of what happened to the young man who was killed a few weeks ago while participating in the game.
I was a close friend of that young man and do not appreciate the implications that were made in the letter about that particular accli-
dent. The author had some very good points, but they were not the most important points that needed to be made.
Susan Bragg Lawrence freshman
No one thinks that all of KU is "running in front of trains." I know that my friend did not intentionally run in front of the train to end his life.
The answer is for everyone to stop, evaluate the situation and weigh the consequences. Are a few minutes of dangerous fun worth a lifetime of sadness over a lost friend?
There is only one logical answer to this question, and that is no.
to ask us question.
We must next time any of us find ourselves with nothing to do, we'll stop and not include training as one of the options.
Training is an extremely dangerous form of fun. It involves
It was for a thrill, a variation of a game that has been around Lawrence for a long time. He made a mistake. Perhaps now the rest of us can learn from his mistake.
thrills that can only lead to disaster.
On the first day of class, I recall, he told the class that blind allegiance to theories and opinions was the biggest, fallacy of mankind.
In the real world, only opinions and theories exist, he said. Any man who believes his theories or opinions to be absolute rules is a fool.
"Any facts we believe now," he said, "chances are history will disprove them. So take steps ahead of your contemporaries — don't believe
His own adamant belief in his theory was the evidence supporting his argument.
He also wrote the class textbook, in which he dedicated the whole first chapter to that theory.
In summary, he said society bound people with the deception of their own importance, and in truth everything was a fake.
Meanwhile, Prof. Narrowsea continued his lecture to the receptionist. "Those who advocated the dress, codes were fascists, Joan."
"Call me Mrs. Thompson!"
"The best thing about the new styles is they allow pure freedom of expression. I'm not afraid to express my true identity."
"Likewise, I don't believe in bouns
daries between me and my students,
but I'm sure I'll succeed."
"Besides, formal dresswear is shallow and superficial. I open up. So what have you got to say for yourself?"
"I quit!"
Verbatim
Welfare vs. workfare
Welfare. It has been around since the 1830s, but many now want the structure of the program to change. The Reagan administration has brought a part of the program to the forefront through the catch phrase, workfare. Ann Weich, associate professor of social welfare, recently talked with staff columnist Kathy Flanders about welfare, workfare and poverty.
What is the difference between welfare and workfare?
WEICK: Workfare is part of the welfare program. Welfare is public assistance — a program offering support provided by tax dollars.
Public assistance provides financial benefits and social benefits to people eligible. Workfare is the requirement that public assistant recipients participate in a work program or seek employment.
How long has the workfare program been around?
WEICK: The work requirement has been around as long as public assistance has been available to people -- it has been around since the beginning of the country. But in the past, when it has received increased attention.
A new emphasis began when the states were allowed to include fathers as well as mothers on public assistance. One requirement many states made is that one unemployed parent seek employment.
In 1967 the work incentive program came into existence — that indicated another attempt to require adults receiving public assistance to work as a condition of receiving assistance.
The hope, of course, was that people would find employment and therefore not need public assistance.
How do welfare and workfare differ?
WEICK: The difference invariably is the stringency with which the work requirement is applied.
The Reagan administration has renewed the concern to reduce welfare costs. One strategy is to place stricter guidelines on the work requirement.
It is up to the states to define the way those requirements will be enforced, but Kansas, for example, requires adults who are receiving public assistance to participate in job searches and other avenues of employment.
Ann Weick
How do Social and Rehabilitative Service programs know whether someone is seeking employment?
WEICK: The programs sometimes use the aunts of the employment services to register for employment. Kansas also developed a program called the Job Club, which attempts to provide work for those receiving assistance.
Is workfare a good strategy for reducing welfare costs?
WEICK: One important thing to understand about public assistance is that the majority of beneficiaries are children, the elderly and the disabled. We do not expect them to work.
So the first problem with workfare is that it creates the illusion that there are many able-bodied persons on welfare.
jobs pay very low wages and, in fact, offer no assurance that people will not be poor.
The problem with this notion is that it (ails) to take into account that many
The second difficulty of workfare as a strategy is the notion that work is the best solution to poverty. In other words, because of the strong work ethic in America, we believe everyone ought to work and people should jobs the problem of poverty would be greatly reduced.
The central issue in workfare is whether people are being given opportunities for good jobs. The reality is that most attempts to require people to work require them to take any available job regardless of wage level.
People who are receiving minimum subsistence on public assistance are often, through the work approach, being required to choose jobs which may lead to equal or even decreased income compared to what they are receiving on assistance.
Are workfare and welfare just treatments for the symptoms of poverty rather than solving the root of the problem?
WEICK: I think that's a fair statement. If we as a society are prepared to examine the structural aspects of poverty — for example the lack of good jobs — we would need to consider strategies that would change conditions for everyone affected, not just for a few of those.
In what direction do you see the United States moving in relation to poverty and workfare?
WEICK: The current direction, from my point of view, is a regressive one. The gains made in developing more adequate social progress in the 1960s have, in the last few years and particularly the most recent years, been reversed.
Social programs are being cut, and an attempt is being made to make it more difficult for people to receive the assistance they need. This creates the illusion that people can get along without programs.
However, the statistics are pointing in the opposite direction. Rather than solving problems, they are creating - by cuts - many more problems the American society will pay for in the coming years. The result of that is likely to be an increase in infant and health problems and problems in childhood development.
Those who support the current strategy of massive cuts in social programs help support the illusion that we must be totally responsible for taking care of ourselves. The reality is that none of us really do that.