Universal Access

Wouldn't it be wonderful to have all the medical care you needed or wanted, without ever worrying about the bill?And wouldn't it be wonderful to drive to work every day without ever paying a toll or stopping at the red light?The second question usually provokes much more critical thought than the first. Before people vote the money to build a freeway through their downtown, a lot of inconvenient objections are raised.The idea of "comprehensive health care reform" to "assure universal access" should stimulate the same thought process.

For universal access to early education In "Hail to the educator in chief" (Commentary, Nov. 19), Kalman R. Hettleman failed to note a critical difference in the education platforms of President-elect Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain: In contrast to his opponent, Mr. Obama offered a firm commitment to education programs for children from birth to age 5. For example, Mr. Obama's proposed Early Learning Challenge Grants would provide funding to enable...

Washington. -- Hard trigger. Soft trigger. Roy Rogers and Trigger. The debate over restructuring the nation's health care system is beginning to sound like the shootout at the OK Corral.Which it sort of is, politically speaking. The stakes are very high for President Clinton, the members of Congress and virtually every American. All will be affected by whatever legislation emerges -- or fails to -- before the matter is resolved this year.Still to be answered are such difficult questions as whether health insurance coverage will be provided for everyone, by what date, and who will pay for it. Looming large over the process are the concerns of those already covered by insurance who fear they will wind up worse off.Thus, the inevitable Washington jargon that has been coined as the common tongue of health care reform serves two purposes: It provides a short-hand means of expressing complicated concepts, and it puts a political slant on certain tactics to suit the needs of the user.

AUGUSTA, Maine - Just behind John Baldacci's desk, under dutiful portraits of the first Maine governor and his wife, there's a small plaque with a question carved into the wood: "What have you done for the people today?" This is not the quote of a great philosopher or some modern pollster. It's what Mr. Baldacci's father, a JFK Democrat and Italian restaurant owner from Bangor, used to ask, with needling humor, when his son came home from a long, hard day of lawmaking. If all goes well, Governor Baldacci will have a pretty decent answer.

Now that the Cuban baseball team has visited Baltimore, the city will move into its next exchange with the Communist nation Sunday by sending doctors to Havana.Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke said yesterday that four area doctors, a city nurse and two hospital administrators will join city Health Commissioner Dr. Peter Beilenson in observing the highly praised Cuban medical system on a three-day trip.Despite being a poor nation, Cuba provides residents universal access to health care. At the top of the list of issues city officials want to explore is the infant mortality rate, considered a critical measure of poverty.

SHREVEPORT, La. -- Taking on his health care critics before an audience of friendly auto workers, President Clinton warned yesterday that the slowed growth in medical costs will "go right back up again" if the country does not follow General Motors in supporting his reform plan.Mr. Clinton, speaking at a Chevrolet light-truck assembly plant here, told auto workers not to believe business groups and insurance companies that contend that his plan would bring about a government takeover of the health care system.

When interstate highways stitched the nation together in the 1950s, many of the towns they bypassed withered and died. Now information highways -- vast computer networks that will bring voice, video and data services into the home -- promise to link Americans in a new way.But many fear they, too, could bypass whole communities, including the nation's poor, disabled and elderly."

UNITED NATIONS -- A consensus reached at a 180-nation conference in Cairo, Egypt, five years ago on a new strategy for limiting world population growth by improving the status of women is facing serious religious, ideological and financial difficulties.The strategy would allow the world's population to rise from its present level of about 5.9 billion people to close to 9.8 billion by the year 2050, and then hold it at around that level.But a review conference convened here at the end of last month to see what progress countries were making toward the Cairo goals broke up with barely half its work completed.

For universal access to early education In "Hail to the educator in chief" (Commentary, Nov. 19), Kalman R. Hettleman failed to note a critical difference in the education platforms of President-elect Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain: In contrast to his opponent, Mr. Obama offered a firm commitment to education programs for children from birth to age 5. For example, Mr. Obama's proposed Early Learning Challenge Grants would provide funding to enable...

Washington.--Health-care costs consume a larger share of gross domestic product in the United States than in any other developed country and are growing faster than the economy.Rising health-care costs are the major cause of rising deficit projections. High and rising health-care costs inhibit U.S. companies' competitiveness in global markets. Health-care costs are eating an ever larger share of workers' take-home pay with every passing year.But the entire health-care reform debate today seems to center on one question: How much more should we spend?

Amid modern furors about insulating state from church, it is comfortable to ignore the immense role that faith played in the evolution of democracy. I know no book that has ever more fascinatingly traced that historic phenomenon than "Wide as the Waters: The Story of the English Bible and the Revolution It Inspired," by Benson Bobrick (Simon & Schuster, 384 pages, $26). Much of the concept of individual rights, of course, occurred in England, where the principal conventions of Western democratic values grew.

Now that the Cuban baseball team has visited Baltimore, the city will move into its next exchange with the Communist nation Sunday by sending doctors to Havana.Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke said yesterday that four area doctors, a city nurse and two hospital administrators will join city Health Commissioner Dr. Peter Beilenson in observing the highly praised Cuban medical system on a three-day trip.Despite being a poor nation, Cuba provides residents universal access to health care. At the top of the list of issues city officials want to explore is the infant mortality rate, considered a critical measure of poverty.

UNITED NATIONS -- A consensus reached at a 180-nation conference in Cairo, Egypt, five years ago on a new strategy for limiting world population growth by improving the status of women is facing serious religious, ideological and financial difficulties.The strategy would allow the world's population to rise from its present level of about 5.9 billion people to close to 9.8 billion by the year 2050, and then hold it at around that level.But a review conference convened here at the end of last month to see what progress countries were making toward the Cairo goals broke up with barely half its work completed.

Washington. -- Hard trigger. Soft trigger. Roy Rogers and Trigger. The debate over restructuring the nation's health care system is beginning to sound like the shootout at the OK Corral.Which it sort of is, politically speaking. The stakes are very high for President Clinton, the members of Congress and virtually every American. All will be affected by whatever legislation emerges -- or fails to -- before the matter is resolved this year.Still to be answered are such difficult questions as whether health insurance coverage will be provided for everyone, by what date, and who will pay for it. Looming large over the process are the concerns of those already covered by insurance who fear they will wind up worse off.Thus, the inevitable Washington jargon that has been coined as the common tongue of health care reform serves two purposes: It provides a short-hand means of expressing complicated concepts, and it puts a political slant on certain tactics to suit the needs of the user.

SHREVEPORT, La. -- Taking on his health care critics before an audience of friendly auto workers, President Clinton warned yesterday that the slowed growth in medical costs will "go right back up again" if the country does not follow General Motors in supporting his reform plan.Mr. Clinton, speaking at a Chevrolet light-truck assembly plant here, told auto workers not to believe business groups and insurance companies that contend that his plan would bring about a government takeover of the health care system.

WASHINGTON -- At the close of the winter meeting of the nation's governors here, Republican Gov. Carroll Campbell of South Carolina, the group's chairman, was asked whether in the conversations they had with President Clinton on health-care reform, the president had ever reiterated his State of the Union veto threat to Congress."

AUGUSTA, Maine - Just behind John Baldacci's desk, under dutiful portraits of the first Maine governor and his wife, there's a small plaque with a question carved into the wood: "What have you done for the people today?" This is not the quote of a great philosopher or some modern pollster. It's what Mr. Baldacci's father, a JFK Democrat and Italian restaurant owner from Bangor, used to ask, with needling humor, when his son came home from a long, hard day of lawmaking. If all goes well, Governor Baldacci will have a pretty decent answer.

Having exhausted other avenues, the Annapolis chapter of the Benevolent and Protective Order of the Elks is now prepared to challenge in court a newly-minted Annapolis law denying liquor licenses to private clubs with discriminatory bylaws. The suit asserts the city has stepped outside its authority in making liquor laws more restrictive than the state requires and that the law is unconstitutional because it excludes religious groups.This action seems predicated less on true conviction than pressing practicalities.

When interstate highways stitched the nation together in the 1950s, many of the towns they bypassed withered and died. Now information highways -- vast computer networks that will bring voice, video and data services into the home -- promise to link Americans in a new way.But many fear they, too, could bypass whole communities, including the nation's poor, disabled and elderly."

Washington.--Health-care costs consume a larger share of gross domestic product in the United States than in any other developed country and are growing faster than the economy.Rising health-care costs are the major cause of rising deficit projections. High and rising health-care costs inhibit U.S. companies' competitiveness in global markets. Health-care costs are eating an ever larger share of workers' take-home pay with every passing year.But the entire health-care reform debate today seems to center on one question: How much more should we spend?