4
Friday, September 24, 1993
OPINION
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
2
VIEWPOINT
THE ISSUE
President Clinton's health care reform proposal would mandate that all small businesses provide and pay for identical health coverage for its employees.
THE BACKGROUND
Many small businesses do not provide health insurance for all their employees under the status quo. Clinton's plan would change this. A plan advanced by moderate Republicans would not mandate that employers pay premiums for all employees.
THE OPINION
Clinton health-care plan will hurt small business
President Clinton must be open to outside opinions like any good doctor.
Clinton emphasized principles rather than steadfast proposals in Wednesday's speech. This is the only approach that will make health care reform a reality But before performing major surgery on the health care system, he must work with the Republicans to keep small businesses out of critical condition.
In Clinton's own words, small businesses are the engine of the economy. Even in today's sluggish economy, it is the innovation and initiative of small businesses that create jobs and incomes for thousands of Americans.
Clinton's proposal, even with its modest subsidies would cripple small businesses that currently do not provide health insurance for some or all of their employees. While small business employees may not be covered, many are covered by their spouses' health insurance. Clinton's plan does not take these possibilities into account, and those small businesses forced to pay could go bankrupt.
This fate is already facing many small businesses in Kansas because of higher property and sales taxes. Mandated increases in health care costs could put them over the edge.
The Republican's plan, even with its flaws, would guarantee that small businesses stay afloat.
It does not mandate employers' pay for health insurance. It relies on cuts in insurance processing fees and reduced lawyer compensation from malpractice settlements to cut cost. It opens the way for employers to decrease costs without forcing higher costs on smaller businesses.
Just as Clinton's plan places emphasis on universal coverage at the expense of the nation's economy and employment rate, the Republican plan may sacrifice the health of workers for health of the economy.
Only a compromise that proposes a smaller and more flexible premium plan for small businesses can address health care reform and fill the needed prescription.
TERRILYN MCORMICK AND CHRIS REEDY FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
Census bureau correcting inaccurate head-count
Saying that city and state governments have a lot riding on the question of whether to correct the next census by estimating the number of people overlooked in the count is to be labor the obvious. The current system's failure to reflect a more accurate decennial head-count has raised questions in recent years about its credibility.
Urban leaders have rightly complained that the census overlooks millions of Americans, many of them inner-city African-Americans, homeless and Hispanic people. As a result of under-counting,
which federal officials don't dispute, the local officials maintain that minorities have been victims in a number of ways—such as having their health risks underestimated or their roles in crimes exaggerated.
We believe the Census Bureau is moving in the right direction with the 1995 test. An official, single count based on scientific methods would be in the best interest of not only the under-counted minorities but the nation as a whole.
THE TIMES-PICAYUNE NEW ORLEANS
UNIONIZE! I DON'T HAVE TIME TO UNIONIZE. THIS IS A FULL-TIME JOB!
School system needs competition to thrive
Several studies issued last week suggest that a significant number of students enrolled in public schools lack an adequate understanding of basic writing, reading, and math skills. Is this surprising? It's not to most employers.
The costly task of having to retrain unprepared high school graduates is all too real for many American corporations. This lack of preparation of our students for the workplace is not the fault of parents, as suggested by U.S. Education Secretary Richard Riley, but of the noncompetitive structure of our public school system.
The nation's monopolistic public school system has been inefficient and unproductive for years. Chester E. Finn Jr., former assistant secretary for research and improvement in the U.S. Department of Education, stated, "Our school system today holds few incentives or rewards for entrepreneurship or risk-taking for initiative or heterodoxy. Success brings no prizes, failure no sanctions, mediocrity no response at all except intermittent alarms sounded by distant national commissions." Without competition, Finn's words will ring as true tomorrow as they did seven years ago when he said them.
A lack of competition has never been a problem for the excellent public and private universities in the U.S. that continue to rank as the world's elite institutions. This has resulted in part because both the public and private universities are allowed to operate in an open marketplace.
STAFF COLUMNIST
If a university wants to attract students it has to first offer quality programs and intelligent professors to oversee those programs. The failure to provide a proper educational environment will result in both a loss of money and possibly the closing of that particular inefficient university.
With public schools receiving a guaranteed amount of money each fiscal year, there is no incentive to increase either the quality of education, the standards expected of the students, or the merits of the instructors.
The best policy to create competition in our nation's school system is the voucher plan. This program would provide the student with the same allotment of money it takes to educate that student in a public school. With this policy in place, the student could attend the school of his or her choice, and in the process create competition among the schools for the student's money.
Thus, students' academic skills are increasingly deficient compared to the growing demands of the high-tech job market. At best, this cycle will continue to produce mediocrity unless the element of competition is introduced into the equation.
With students being granted a choice of school, the inadequacies in today's schools could be alleviated. The schools that provide the best academic agenda and the qualified teachers to implement this agenda will profit for their efforts.
To restrict the inevitable demand to enter these profitable schools, modest admission qualifications would be set up to maintain the high degree of quality in these programs. However, students who couldn't academically qualify for the best public schools would still have a choice among the other schools in their districts.
Thus, the substandard expectations that are currently demanded from today's students would change, because certain levels of academic achievement would have to be reached if a student wanted to attend the best schools.
The biggest hurdle between mediocrity and a quality education is a noncompetitive public school system. To overcome this we must present an alternative plan to the students and teachers who are willing to work harder and achieve greater goals.
The competitive university model would provide a strong foundation from which the new voucher plan would operate. This system would create a sizable increase in the standards and expectations set for both teachers and students, but in this case I think the ends justify the means.
Lance Hamby is a Wichita junior majoring in political science and journalism.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Boardheads banned, but they'll still skate
I would just like to take this opportunity to tell the University Daily Kansan and everyone else that you can arrest me for skateboarding in the Union courtyard, you can throw me in the slammer for being a "boardhead" at Checkers Foods, you can send me up the river for skating rather then dying at the Kwik Shop on Ninth Street, and you can shoot me on sight for being a "skater geek" on the almighty Jayhawk Boulevard, but
you cannot stop me from skate-
boarding.
John Tyburski
Lecompton senior
Kansan missed point,
physician brings quality
I am extremely disappointed in your coverage of the new female physician at Watkins Memorial Health Center in the Sept. 20 issue of the University Daily Kansan. Your story angle was to chronicle the addition of a female physician
to the staff, as if the only newsworthy item is the fact that she is a woman.
Never mind the fact that Leah Luckeroth is an incredibly well-educated, three-time KU graduate who has had an extremely impressive career thus far as an internist. Luckeroth's presence on this campus is important because her expertise will ensure top-quality care for all KU students. That is the real story, and it is one you overlooked entirely.
Kyle Davis Van Vliet Lawrence resident
Unrealistic ideas about abuse victims irresponsible
I am writing in response to Scott Gillaspia's column "Abuse Doctors Justify Violence in Any Case," which appeared in the Sept. 17 issue of the University Daily Kansan. I believe his column was irresponsible for a number of reasons.
First, one cannot logically compare domestic violence that results in the death of an abuser with gang violence, no matter what the circumstances. Many abused women who kill their husbands do not kill merely out of revenge, as Gillaspie's vague comparison to gang violence would have you believe. Most are cases of self-defense.
GUEST COLUMNIST
Second, Battered Women's Syndrome is a controversial defense, not an automatically accepted one. Jim Lenore Walker's theory is that wives in abusive relationships sometimes have difficulty leaving because they fear that their abusers may stalk them and become more violent. Anyone can say that an abused woman should get out of the relationship, but it isn't always that easy. Not all women who kill abusive husbands escape punishment on grounds of Battered Women's Syndrome. Most, in fact, do not, Gillaspie stated, "Yet killing someone who has beaten you repeatedly, simply because you didn't want to be beaten any longer, does not excuse murder. This does not constitute self-defense..." Perhaps we don't all believe that the motive was merely that they "didn't want to be beaten anymore." There are valid reasons that a victim might indeed fear for her life. The legal system does not make it easy to obtain protection from abusers. Some situations are escapable and some are not.
Third, Gillaspie states, "...abused women must make other attempts to bring an end to their situations Attempts can be made to leave abusive husbands or boyfriends, and in the case that this doesn't work, other actions within legal limits must be tried until a solution is found." If it sounds too simple, it probably is. Are we to assume automatically that the victim is able to seek adequate medical attention? Are we to assume that seeking police assistance will solve the problem? Are we to assume that if the woman leaves the abuser she will always be safe? Despite orders of protection, restraining orders, divorce and police reports, abuse can, and often does, continue to occur. Gillaspie obviously does not take that into account when he refers to the "legal advantages" of abused women I fail to recognize any legal advantages. If the world were as simple as Gillaspie must believe, the system would correct the problem of wife abuse, and women would not have to fend off husbands in the first place.
Here is a final fact to consider: it was not until October 1984 that a U.S. District Court judge ruled that "a man is not allowed to physically abuse or endanger a woman merely because he is her husband. Concomitantly, a police officer may not knowingly refrain from intervening in such violence and may not decline to make an arrest simply because the assailer and the victim are married to each other."
Samanttha Christy is a Uniintonown senior majoring in environmental science.
KANSAN STAFF
KC TRAUER, Editor
TOM EBLEN General manager, news adviser
JOE HARDER, CHRISTINE LAUE
Meeting editor
BILL SKEET, Systems coordinator
Editors
Assistant to the editor ...J.R. Clairborne
News ...Stacy Friedman
Editorial ...Terrilyn M Cornick
Campus ...Ben Grove
Sports ..Krist Fogel
Photo ..Klip Chin, Renee Knoeber
Features ..Exra Wolfe
Graphics ..John Paul Fogel
AMY CASEY
AMY CASEY Business manager
JEANNE HINES Sales and marketing adviser
Business manager
AMY STUMBO Retail sales manager
AMY STUMBO
Business Staff
Campus sales mgr ... Ed Schager
Regional Sales mgr ... Jennifer Perrier
National sales mgr ... Jennifer Evanson
Co-op sales mgr ... Blythe Focht
Production mgrs ... Jennifer Blowey
Kate Burgess
Marketing director ... Shelly McConnell
Creative director ... Brian Pusco
Classified mgr ... Janice Davis
Letters should be typed, double-spaced and fewer than 200 words. They must include the writer's signature, name, address and telephone number. Writers affiliated with the University of Kansas must include class and hometown, or faculty or staff position. Letters should be typed, double-spaced and fewer than 700 words. The writer will be photographed.
The Kannan reserves the right to reject or edit letters, guest columns and cartoons. They can be nailed or brought to the Kannan newsroom, 111 Stauffer Flint Hall.
University of Mars
PART 3: TYPES OF VIOLENT SHOWS
THE ACTION/ADVENTURE
DRAWBACKS: Recycled Scripts make for predictable movies.
PERKS: Great One liners.
by Joel Francke
EVENING NEWS
GOOD STUFF
BAD STUFF:
More violence # TRAGEDY THAN ANY SYNDICATED SHOW.
More violence # TRAGEDY THAN ANY SYNDICATED SHOW.