Access To Health

When Pennsylvania's Harris Wofford won an upset victory over Attorney General Richard Thornburgh to retain his Senate seat last fall, his relentless emphasis on health care got much of the credit.Politicians across the country -- including President Bush -- began to pay more attention to the issue. It looked as if health care reform had finally made it onto the political agenda in a big way.With the presidential campaign in full swing, access to health care is still a big concern with voters.

ANNAPOLIS -- A January summit conference raised the issue of health care reform with sound and fury. But at the end of the General Assembly's regular session last night, the legislature had little to show for its efforts to make health care more available and affordable to Marylanders."

AN ESPECIALLY pathetic event took place in the House of Representatives last week. A man labored mightily only to give birth to a mouse.President Bush had promised that he would lay out a bold vision for health care in his State of the Union address. But what we BTC got was mousy, not bold.The president had assured the voters of New Hampshire that he understood what it meant to lose one's job and thus lose one's health insurance; he had told the people of Pennsylvania that he got their message about the importance of health care access when they sent Dick Thornburgh packing.

Improving America's health care system to eliminate what are seen as inequities and disparities between blacks and whites has been urged by civil rights advocates and health care officials."

Seattle. - Rarely have the nation's governors exhibited the collective outrage, frustration and resolve to rouse a somnolent federal government as they did in debating health care at their annual meeting here recently.''What you saw . . . was a controlled explosion of anger,'' said Washington's Booth Gardner, the National Governors' Association's outgoing chairman. ''Now,'' he predicted, ''you'll see a chain reaction throughout the states as we mobilize to address health reform. And we believe this will translate into action at the federal level.

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has received another recommendation to broaden the nation's health-care system to protect the uninsured poor.Various health policy experts estimated that the cost to the federal government would be at least $4 billion a year. Medicaid, a state-federal program, already finances health care for 27 million poor Americans.A report drafted for an advisory panel appointed by the administration is recommending that Medicaid be expanded to cover doctors' services and hospital care for an estimated 10 million people below the poverty level who have no insurance.

It's a truism that the future of any region rests with its children. In Baltimore, that future may well be clouded by health problems -- many of them easily preventable. A recent report from Advocates for Children and Youth has brought together statistics showing how the city and state are not only failing to reach national goals for maternal and child health, but actually falling further behind. If good information is crucial to setting priorities and finding solutions to problems, perhaps this document can spur officials -- and voters -- to invest in the kinds of programs and priorities that will create a healthier future.

Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who is emerging as the leading congressional spokesman on health care matters, was in a sentimental mood when he recently visited the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health.This was, after all, the school which his famous grandfather had bankrolled 75 years ago to the tune of $267,000 -- a handsome sum indeed for the time.But instead of bringing money, Mr. Rockefeller could only bring a sober warning: "We have got to do something immediately to stop the explosion of health care costs in the United States."