OUR HEALTH CARE QUANDRY Kudos to the East Forest Kitchen staff, myriad volunteers, and local business people who donated goods, time, and effort this past weekend to sponsor a spaghetti dinner to help raise money for an East Forest student who was seriously injured in an auto accident this past fall. The student was home from the hospital and present at the East Forest Invitational Basketball tournament this weekend to watch his brother play. His father says his son is doing well and should be home for good on December 17. What a merry Christmas this should be for friends and family. Thanks to one and all who contributed their Sunday to make this a true demonstration of the Christmas spirit in action. In the debate over the nationalization of health care, people are divided. For the privately employed person, like the father of the student, hospital costs can easily bankrupt anyone. There is a need for all people to have access to reasonable health care coverage. Many of us who have good coverage take it for granted. When our company recently reviewed the benefits package for all its employees, it was dumbfounding to me how expensive health it was. If I were privately employed and wanted to have the same coverage that I now have with Blue Cross/Blue Shield, it would cost a cool $3300 a year. In the past eight years, our company switched carriers three times. Since 1987, family premiums rose from $1500 to over $3300 a year. Nothing in our economy grew as fast as health care premiums. While interest rates plunged, hospital costs exploded. What is not clear to many people on the sidelines of this debate is how can costs rise so rapidly in such a short amount of time. What causes the distrust, the confusion, the resistance to accepting an entirely new program, hatched in Washington and administered by politicians and bureaucrats? Can the government do it any better than the private sector? The government often applies the "rob Peter to pay Paul" philosophy when it comes to paying its bills. With the present 4 trillion dollar deficit, many people are leery about letting the government move into another financial endeavor when it hasn't even cleaned up one of its last fiascos: the savings and loan scandal. When people are uninsured, they still receive care. They go through emergency room doors, are treated, and then don't pay their bills. Many cannot, and this is the problem. Someone pays for it. We do. How? The hospitals charge those who can pay via insurance a lot more for services so that they can care for those who need to be cared for gratuitously. What do we do? I believe we need more information and less rhetoric. If we knew how the national health care system would really work, how it would be paid for, what it would cost me, we might be more willing to accept it. But for the President and his lobbyists to expect us to blindly support a system with so much gray area to it is unacceptable. If President Clinton wants Americans to accept this new system, he will need to be longer on substance and shorter on rhetoric. I'm not dismissing Madame Vice-President's intelligence and skills, but I wonder if she is the best person to ram-rod this program. If I were to advise Clinton on appointments, I would suggest he seek the assistance of some knowledgeable Republican to take the lead in developing a comprehensive national health care system. When only one party initiates a plan, the other party generally is antagonistic toward it. Gore's role is limited as Vice President. Even though he debated Perot on NAFTA, he still is in the background on health care. Using him to lead the fight for national health care might have received greater support. Gore is no political novice. He understands the workings of Congress. Ironically, this weeks Presidential radio address did not focus on health care at all. The "winds of street war" occupied most of Clinton's thinking on Saturday, December 12. Here are some excerpts from it, verbatim, taken from >Internet:Publications@Whitehouse.gov. 10:06 A.M. EST The Oval Office. The President: "Good morning. "This morning I want to talk to you about crime and violence and what we can all do about it. On Tuesday evening in Garden City, New York, a gunman shot and killed five rush hour commuters on the Long Island Railroad, and wounded 20 others. On Thursday night in California, there was a memorial service for 12 year-old Polly Klaas. She'd been kidnapped from her bedroom two months ago. Her little body was found last Saturday. These tragedies are part of the epidemic of violence that has left Americans insecure on our streets, in our schools, even in our homes. The crime rate has hit every American community from our oldest cities to our smallest towns to our newest suburbs...If our nation is to find any meaning in these tragedies, we must join together to end this epidemic of violent crime and restore the fabric of civilized life in every community... There is now some hope amidst this horror because decent people are fighting back against crime...On Thursday, together with Attorney General Janet Reno, FBI Director Louis Freeh and Drug Policy Coordinator Lee Brown, I met with mayors and police chiefs from 35 cities. They told me they need more police on the streets, a ban on assault weapons and action to keep drugs and guns away from vulnerable young people. And I intend to give the folks on the front lines the resources and the support they need to win the fight against crime...Let's face it- -drugs and guns and violence fill a vacuum where the values of civilized life used to be. Work and family and community are the principles, the institutions, upon which the great majority of Americans are building their lives. We need to restore them, and the sense of hope and discipline that will give every man and woman, every boy and girl the opportunity to become the people God intended them to be...Whether we're ministers or moviemakers, business people or broadcasters, teachers or parents, we can all set our sons and daughters on a better path in life so they can learn and love and lead decent and productive lives...As we begin this season of celebration and rededication, let's remember the words of Theodore Roosevelt, a great president who was once a police commissioner, too: 'This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in, unless we make it a good place for all of us to live in.'" What happened to health care, Mr. President? As Abraham Lincoln said, "Events do make the President."