Access To Health

The state's top health official recently suggested that Maryland is working on a plan to extend basic health care benefits to all citizens. What, if anything, should the state do to ensure everyone has access to health care? We are looking for 200 words or less; the deadline for responses is June 23. Letters become the property of The Sun, which reserves the right to edit them. By submitting a letter, the author grants The Sun an irrevocable, non-exclusive right and license to use and republish the letter, in whole or in part, in all media and to authorize others to reprint it. Letters should include your name and address, along with a day and evening telephone number.

WASHINGTON - Internet programs designed to block pornography also inadvertently restrict access to many legitimate sites providing health information, according to a study published today. The study in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association found that commercial Internet filtering software offered little more protection in blocking pornography when set at the most restrictive levels than at the least restrictive levels. But it also found that at the most restrictive levels the software blocked roughly one in four legitimate Web sites offering health information.

Housing policies put low-income residents out on city streets Walter Roche's fine piece on HOPE VI and the housing crisis confirms the experience of the Health Care for the Homeless staff, which has found it impossible to locate affordable housing for our clients ("Housing reform's victims," Sept. 24). When 3,000 units of low-income housing are destroyed, people with low incomes become -- and remain -- homeless. Homelessness is fundamentally a housing problem. Too many of our neighbors are unable to afford housing; the most vulnerable become homeless.

AS MILLIONS of working Americans already know, having a job does not mean having access to health care. A new survey by the Bethesda-based Center for Health Affairs has found that some 41 million Americans, mostly middle class, are unable to obtain medical care for at least one important service.Unlike many such surveys, this one went beyond basic questions about the ability to see a doctor to include other essential services like surgery, dental care, eyeglasses, prescription drugs or mental health treatment.

Even before its formal unveiling next week, the Bill and Hillary health care reform plan is the standard against which all other proposals -- and there will be a lot of them -- will have to be judged.The president and the first lady have labored long on one of the most ambitious social overhauls in American history. It is already attracting tough criticism but also cautious acquiescence from such major players as the American Medical Association and the American Hospital Association. An alternative blueprint offered by moderate Senate Republicans reveals ample room for compromise.

Canada health planThe Evening Sun (May 3) and other sources have reported that government experts predict that President Clinton's health care plan may cost between $100 billion and $150 billion annually.Although health care reform is certainly needed, increased spending is neither desirable nor necessary.The United States already spends far more per person on health care than any other country in the world, and yet we are the only industrialized nation except South Africa that doesn't guarantee universal access to health care to all citizens.

The Women's Law Center is sponsoring an all-day conference exploring women's health care issues Saturday at Goucher College in Towson."The Medical Gender Gap and the Crisis in Women's Health Care: Medical, Legal and Political Issues" will bring together physicians, public policy researchers, sociologists, epidemiologists and attorneys to discuss such issues as fighting for research money, breast implants and access to health care.Sidney Wolfe, director of Public Citizen Health Research Group and author of "Women's Health Alert," will deliver the keynote speech at 9 a.m. Other participants include Grant Bagley from the Food and Drug Administration; Frances Visco, president of the National Breast Cancer Coalition; Devra Davis, a scholar from the National Academy of Sciences; and Trudy Bush, an epidemiology professor at Johns Hopkins' School of Hygiene and Public Health who is helping run clinical trials to study the effects of hormone replacement therapy.

THE Health Care Financing Administration, the folks in the federal government who run the Medicare program, just issued a report stating that our collective bill for health care will hit $1.7 trillion by the year 2000.In less than seven years medical costs will be eating up more than 18 percent of the nation's entire economic output. Current rates of spending on medical care in the United States are absolutely bonkers. Health care costs are ruining our economic competitiveness, skewing our domestic spending, destroying jobs and ruining our children's future by saddling them with backbreaking levels of debt.

WASHINGTON -- Hillary Clinton will need all of her lawyerly skills as she tries to forge a consensus on health care reform, an issue on which special interests and their congressional allies have blocked change for years.Recognizing the obstacles posed by interest groups and the sheer complexity of the issue, Mr. Clinton yesterday named his closest adviser -- his wife -- as the unpaid head of a health care task force. Mrs. Clinton, an attorney, served in a similar position in 1983 by helping her husband, then governor of Arkansas, buck teachers and other interests to pass school reform legislation.