Page 2
University Daily Kansan Thursday, May 10, 1962
The Attack on Medicare
A New Jersey doctor has started a boycott move aimed against President Kennedy's Medicare program.
His efforts have been backed by 250 New Jersey doctors and physicians in several other states. His plan in effect calls for not treating any patient whose hospital bill would be paid under the King-Anderson bill, which ties medical care for the aged with the social security system.
The chief spokesman of the American Medical Association defended the threatened boycott yesterday. In reference to the boycott, he said that "at no time was any threat made or intended to deny care to those in need of it."
THIS THEN is the picture. Under the boycott, the medically indigent would be treated. But those who merely wished to avail themselves of the provisions of the bill passed by Congress and signed by the President would not be treated.
Under the boycott, those in actual need of a doctor would be treated. But those who would have their hospital bill paid under the King-Anderson bill would be turned away.
The exact definition of when a person would be treated and when he would not be has not been firmly established. Charges and countercharges concerning this have been many.
It is almost completely certain, however, that some of the aged attempting to get medical care under the King-Anderson bill would be turned away.
The AMA by defending the threatened boycott has given up the usual pressure methods of influencing Congressmen to defeat a bill. They have in effect told the Congress that passing the bill will do no good because the boycotters backed by the AMA will not comply with it, and that if Congress does pass the bill chaos will result.
SECRETARY OF Health, Education and Welfare, Abraham Ribicoff, has called the boycott threat an attempt to "blackmail Congress and the American people."
In essence, this is what the super-organized, super-high pressure AMA is attempting to do by backing the boycott movement.
The New Jersey doctor, his sympathizers, and the AMA by defending the move, have assumed an omnipotence that would transcend the laws of the nation.
If the King-Anderson bill is passed, any person who wishes to use the services it provides has a right to do so. Doctors who don't particularly care for the program certainly have no moral or legal right to tell him he may not do so.
—Karl Koch
An Important Meeting
Last week the leaders of two local organizations with partially similar goals met and arranged extended cooperation of their objectives.
The co-chairmen for next year of the KU People-to-People and the executive board of the Lawrence International Friendship Enterprise (LIFE) held a breakfast meeting and worked out plans for a coordinated effort again next Fall.
Both organizations, although still in their infancy, have provided an invaluable service to the university, city and country.
THE PROJECT on which the efforts of the two groups will be combined is that of greeting the new foreign students when they arrive in Lawrence, providing transportation to housing facilities and finding housing if necessary.
By doing this the foreign student is given an immediately favorable impression of Lawrence, KU, and in many cases the United States.
Such a service is a great benefit to all involved, and the work which was done last year
and will be continued next year shows another interesting and beneficial advancement in relations.
NOT ONLY ARE international relations bettered by such a program but the relations between the University and the city become stronger and tighter. Such cooperation between city and student groups goes a long way in continuing the friendly feeling which should exist.
People-to-People was begun at KU and the LIFE program appears to be somewhat unique. Thus there exist two organizations which were conceived within the last year working together. The People-to-People program has been started at the other Big Eight universities and there are undoubtedly groups somewhat like LIFE in the cities where the other schools are located. KU and Lawrence initiated their programs and are continuing to maintain a lead in this area by setting a fine example of what can be accomplished.
-Bill Sheldon
Books in Review
TREASURE ISLAND, by Robert Louis Stevenson. Doubleday Dolphin, 95 cents. KIDNAPPED, by Robert Louis Stevenson. Dell Laurel, 35 cents.
My 11-year-old daughter saw me reading "Kidnapped" and gave me some queer looks. As well she might. Adults don't normally sit around reading children's books,
not when the library shelves are full of controversy and good juicy trash.
Well, all of us need to get away from 1962 once in awhile, and one way to do it is to pick up an adventure tale, preferably a story of the sea or the jungle or the American frontier, preferably one that has an amusing villain like Long John Silver or a dashing adventurer like Alan Breck Stewart.
And off we go for an hour or so.
There is perpetual magic in these stories. "Treasure Island" to me represents the epitome of adventure. Thirty years or so ago I used to read it once a year at least. "Kidnapped" is slower, being bogged down by all the Scotch dialect, but it's a fascinating and swift-moving tale.
Daily Hansan
So—no apologies from this quarter. Dead ahead; James Fenimore Cooper and Sir Walter Scott.—CMP.
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904. triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912 Telephone Viking 3-2700
Telephone Line 3-270
Extension 376, business office
Telephone 376, business office
Member Inland Daily Press Association. Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Service, 18 East 50 St., New York 22, N.Y. News service: United Press International. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University year except Saturdays and Sundays. University holidays and examination periods. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas.
. . .
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Ron Gallagher ... Managing Editor
Kelly Smith, Carrie Merryfield, Clayton Keller, Assistant Managing Editors; Bill Sheldon and Zeke Wigglesworth, Co-Assistant Managing Editors; Jerry Musil, City Editor; Steve Clark, Sports Editor; Martha Moser, Society Editor.
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Bill Mullins ... Editorial Editor
Karl Koch. Assistant Editorial Editor.
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
THE BAD SEED. by William March. Dell, 50 cents.
Charles Martinache ... Business Manager
Hal Smith, Advertising Manager; Dick Kline, Classified Advertising
Manager; Susanne Ellermeier, Circulation Manager; Bonnie McCullough,
National Advertising Manager; Harley Carpenter, Promotion
Manager.
The reputation of the late William March rests on a small body of writing, the best known of which is this horror tale that has become well known through the theater and the movies. "The Bad Seed" is a frightening story, that of a sweet child who is as evil as kids can come, and that's pretty evil. Quietly and methodically, Rhoda Penmark, 8, disposes of her victims, and only her mother comes to a shocking realization of what is taking place.
Now anyone who has had rudimentary training in criminology will have to concede that "The Bad Seed" misses scientifically. Rhoda is the granddaughter of a kind of Lizzie Borden, and her mother recognizes that her daughter has "inherited" criminal tendencies. So, as most readers will know, she disposes of herself, but little Rhoda is still living at the end.-CMP.
By Robert D. Tomasek Assistant Professor of Political Science
COLOMBIA—A CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL SURVEY. by John D. Martz. The University of North Carolina Press, 1961, $7.50.
This book is focused largely on the activities of the Colombian two-party system during the last twenty years. The Conservative and Liberal parties of Colombia have long interested political analysts. The parties are old and have so much traditional appeal that strong third parties have never appeared. Thus, the two-party system of Colombia is unique in Latin America. Its uniqueness, however, has not necessarily produced more democratic results than multiparty systems elsewhere in the hemisphere. In fact, one could argue that the two-party system has actually been detrimental to democracy.
The two parties are both very conservative on social reform questions; yet their strong organization and traditional appeal have precluded reform parties from developing. The two parties are so antagonistic toward each other that fighting among their members in the backlands during the 1940s and 1950s took somewhere between 300,000 and 800,000 lives
The strife among the two parties led to the dictatorship of Rojas Pinilla. As a result of this the two parties came to the realization that a type of forced cooperation between them was necessary before the country was torn apart. A pact was signed agreeing to alternate the presidency between the two parties until 1974. Since the 1958 free elections following the overthrow of Rojas Pinilla the agreement has been strained. Rampant factionalism within the two parties has led some to predict the breaking of the pact. All of this is related in the final chapters right through 1960. The coverage of the different factions and political leaders is the best published yet. All in all this is a very good book indeed.
THE AUTHOR touches on these points in a very detailed account of Colombian political history since the 1940s. It is one of the most detailed political histories this reviewer has yet seen on any Latin American country. Events are related chronologically on a year-by-year basis through most of the book. The author judiciously uses both Colombian and United States newspapers, magazines and books to develop his material. His extensive coverage does not necessarily lead to a loss of perspective. The separate chapter arrangement ties many of the events together and there is enough analysis to make things coherent.
Worth Repeating
We could not fail to learn, from the demonstrations of the results of our experiment in popular government, that the Constitution was made for the people and not the people for the Constitution; and that there is no rigid and fixed formula that can be applied to the changing processes of the daily life of a nation... It is not perhaps too much to say that we would not have survived the first century of our existence under a strict application of the written letter of the Constitution. Its most remarkable feature is its elastic flexibility and its latent power through which it has been enabled to conform to the necessities, the passions, and the aspirations of the people. —J. J. Ingalls of Kansas, president of the senate on the 100th anniversary of the promulgation of the Constitution
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
S C
A F
sition
three
a pan
Just n
Lar and a Ruth and M more, civil o
But fessor fallou some
"I' a posed fer s thing thoug alway
"TRANSLATION: LINCOLN STUDIED LATE AT NIGHT AN' HIGE BECES BEEN BLOODSHOT"
PR a she the shou prog cause build