Your health in question
The
typical health care “consumer” has no lack of concerns about the future — how
high health insurance premiums will climb, how much employers will contribute
(and whether one’s job will exist), how many hospitals will survive, how many
people will have to fend for themselves. So a new publication from the Finger Lakes Health Systems Agency (FLHSA), a multi-county planning organization based in the city of Rochester,
is especially timely.
The booklet, The Potential Effects of Hospital Consolidation on Access to Care:
Questions for the Rochester Community, is matter-of-fact. But a sense of
urgency comes through the flat prose. That’s because the issues have already
mobilized the community, or at least frightened a good many people.
What issues? The booklet lays them
out in question form: real and actual hospital closures, forced by things like
intense market competition; the rise of more expensive health technologies, and
more demand for them; health-care worker shortages, helped along by increasing
workloads and stagnant pay; cutbacks and structural adjustments in
employer-provided health benefits; and “declining reimbursements from public
payers,” as the booklet describes government’s retreat from social
responsibility.
In an appendix, “History of
Rochester Hospital Consolidation,” you can read some interesting things between
the lines. For example: A generation ago, “health care services [here] were
well distributed across the community in concentrated service areas, contributing
to only minimal competition among hospitals.” Later, “major forces,” including
insurers and “the largest employers” put stress on the system. And by the late
1990s, the Rochester area no longer had much unity of purpose and coordination
of services, but four health systems that sometimes were at odds with each
other.
Copies of the booklet are available
from FLHSA, 1150 University Avenue, Rochester 14607, 461-3520, e-mail
flhsa@flhsa.org.
Tax-cutters
strike again
Two
weeks ago the US House of Representatives, under the ineffable sway of Tom
DeLay (R-Texas), passed an $82 billion tax
cut bill that was to be a repair-job extending the newly-increased child
tax credit to the working poor. The vote was 224-201, with 10 not voting.
The increased child credit accounted
for only $3.5 billion of the bill, however. As news reports put it, the
remainder of the $82 billion went to “middle and higher income families.” That
is, in the view of critics, more goodies for those who need them less or least,
under the guise of “economic stimulus.”
How did our local House delegation
stack up? Democrat Louise Slaughter voted against the bill. Republican Tom
Reynolds, the bill’s sponsor, cast an enthusiastic yes. The LA Times quoted him: “This bill will
achieve even greater parity and fairness in the tax code.” The other local
Republicans, Amo Houghton and Jim Walsh, also voted yes.
Seeking
blessed community
Led
by California-based Rabbi Michael Lerner, the Tikkun Community held a four day “teach-in on Middle East peace”
early this month in Washington, DC. Like several other new peace-and-justice
groups grounded in the American Jewish tradition, Tikkun offers a rational yet
spiritual program to oppose organizational and state terror, end the massive
human-rights violations against a people under occupation, and dispel the
hopelessness that attends an inadequate “road map” (already widely known as the
cul-de-sac).
Longtime peace activist Jim Berger,
a native Brightonian who lives in Wayne County, was one Upstater who attended
the conference. The centerpiece of the event, he says, was a “Resolution for
Middle East Peace” that the Tikkun Community wrote for presentation to members
of Congress.
Among other things, the resolution
calls for the “return of Israel to its pre-1967 borders, with minor border
modifications mutually agreed upon,” “a politically viable Palestinian state in
all of the pre-1967 West Bank and Gaza including East Jerusalem,” “an
international Truth and Reconciliation Commission” modeled on the one in
post-apartheid South Africa, and “an international fund to provide reparations
for Palestinians and to resettle Palestinian refugees in the new Palestinian
state, and to provide reparations for Israelis who fled from persecution in
Arab lands, and to resettle Israeli settlers within the pre-1967 borders of
Israel.”
Underlying this political agenda is
the Tikkun philosophy, grounded in expansive spirituality, ecology, and
non-violence. (For the nuances, see “Tikkun: repairing worlds, transforming
spirits, making waves,” City Newspaper,
March 13-19, 2002; or visit www.tikkun.org.)
Berger says he and others spent one
day visiting Congressional offices to drop off materials and make personal
contact. Senators Schumer and Clinton, he says, didn’t appear in person, but
their staffers listened to the message. A few members of Congress did respond
more directly and favorably, though. Chief among them, says Berger, was
Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), who gave a lengthy interview to Tikkun magazine last year. Kucinich,
says Berger, “got us in the door [and] spoke a couple of times to us.”
The conferees, says Berger, also
heard talks by leading public intellectuals and activists like Harvard’s Cornel
West, author Jonathan Schell, and Global Exchange director Medea Benjamin.
Next comes the home front. Berger
says some local people who’ve formed a Tikkun group will meet Sunday, June 22,
5:30 p.m., in a Corn Hill home. For details, contact Berger at 244-2415 or by
e-mail: mij49@hotmail.com.
Flag
this vote
On
June 3, the US House of Representatives voted 300-125 (with eight not voting)
in favor of a bill “proposing an amendment to the Constitution… authorizing the
Congress to prohibit the physical desecration of the [US] flag.”
Known popularly as the “flag-burning” law, the measure could
result in a weakened First Amendment. Symbolic speech could be criminalized and
restricted in a strange and frightening way.
So how did the local delegation line
up? Along party as well as ideological lines. Representatives Amo Houghton, Tom
Reynolds, and Jim Walsh, all Republicans, voted yes. Rep. Louise Slaughter, a
Democrat, voted no.
This article appears in Jun 25 – Jul 1, 2003.
