Price of Caring

To the Editors:

Your story "Medical Costs--Seeking the Cure" [May 28] almost scared me sick. The best solution for keeping medical costs within reason is to stay well.

Mark Insalata Ossining, N. Y.

I do not fear the rising costs of health care as much as I fear yet another multi-billion-dollar Government program. It will only advance us closer to a socialist U.S. and mean more inflation for the middle class, who must support this "something-for-everyone" program.

Sheri Hendricks Zion, III.

I was expecting yet another attack on America's latest whipping boy, the medical profession. Instead, I was pleased to find a clear, concise and unbiased account of an emotionally charged issue.

John Allen King, M.D. Gainesville, Fla.

Americans as a whole have done little to preserve their health, and most do not deserve medical care at reasonable cost. Advertising of cigarettes and any unhealthful products should be banned, and the money put into health care.

Mark H. Thompson Huntsville, Ala.

Before the plug is pulled on this dialysis patient, be sure someone is around to answer the question of whether society can afford not to have me around just because my kidneys don't work.

Kathy R. Patterson Oxon Hill, Md.

You are to be congratulated for focusing on the subject of the rapidly rising cost of health care. But we were disappointed that you failed to mention a Republican health insurance bill, the Dole-Danforth-Domenici proposal.

Our catastrophic health insurance proposal has three key parts. First, those eligible for Medicare will be protected by expansion of their present benefits. Second, the large majority of the employed will be assured of the availability of adequate private insurance protection. Third, those who are part of the residual marketplace, and not already covered, may choose to have the Federal Government serve, in some instances, as a financial backup, in contracting with the private insurance companies for catastrophic coverage.

Bob Dole, Jack Danforth, Pete Domenici U.S. Senate Washington, D.C.

Senator Kennedy's health insurance plan would provide coverage for all Americans and aim at limiting costs, an admirable scheme. But along with any plan to ration medical care and limit its cost comes a compromise in quality. Will the Senator tell us this?

Andrew Jamieson Fargo, N. Dak.

As a medical student, I found myself agreeing with the Boston specialist about the physician's right to charge high fees. It's disheartening to realize that while the public apparently demands perfection in technique and diagnosis, it pays for it rather grudgingly.

Terry J. Gioe Indianapolis

The argument that doctors have a right to charge high fees because of the "long years of learning and not earning, the killing hours and loss of contact with family," etc., is rubbish. At no time during premed, medical school, internship or residency did someone put a gun to my head and force me to continue.

Leon Reinstein, M.D. Baltimore

We all should listen to the modern Hippocratic statement made by Alan Alda--a man acting as a doctor imploring doctors to act as men.

George Eddy Parker Cornwall-on-Hudson, N. Y.

Who decided that more than ten years of education are necessary to treat the common cold, nervous tension, arthritis, acne, allergies, childhood diseases, minor infections and a myriad other simple ailments or chronic maladies? This country needs more paraprofessionals.

Larry Golbom St. Paul

Or, perhaps more grandmothers who can make chicken soup?

White Verdict

If the jurors, the defense counsel and the psychiatrists are trying to tell us that Dan White [May 28] did not premeditate the senseless killings of Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Milk, they've got to be the insane ones!

Glducio H. Bechara East Lansing, Mich.

If a junk-food habit truly indicates a chemical imbalance in the brain, as the defense argued, then most of the American populace must be suffering from acute depression.

Cynthia D. LuBien Cambridge, Mass.

Sparks About Gasoline

Oh hum, now I can relax. No more worries about the gasoline shortage. My confidence was restored when Energy Secretary James Schlesinger said: "I think it would be safe to say that we hope the worst is over" [May 28].

Harold D. Bean Bynum, Ala.

What a spineless, irresponsible performance by the House on gasoline rationing. For heaven's sake, let's begin rationing now. I believe most Americans would like to know where they stand. If we know we can only expect so much gasoline, we'll make do.

Charles R. Kolb Vicksburg, Miss.

Buzz off, Government. You're messing too much with things that have made this country great. Get out of my gas tank. I want supply and demand.

Katherine W. Rogers Greenwich, Conn.

Leaving our cars home one day a week is like fighting a dinosaur with a BB gun. It is simply not the answer. Walking, running, bicycling, taking buses, subways and car pooling are all alternative ways to satisfy our need for mobility.

Adrian Kalil Philadelphia

If, in Jimmy Carter's words, the present energy situation is the moral equivalent of war, then Bob Hope should start making tours of the gas stations and singing Tanks for the Memories.

Charles G. Gessner Bean Station, Tenn.

Backfire from California

As a native Californian, I was offended by your article "Gas: A Long, Dry Summer" [May 21]. Californians are not selfish, greedy gas hogs. California has been hit the hardest in the nation, but we will survive.

Kim Mauvais El Toro, Calif.

I found your comments on the behavior of Californians a terrible affront. During the years following World War II, an excellent rail system serving the entire Los Angeles basin was systematically bought up and dismantled by an unholy alliance of General Motors and Standard Oil of California. They literally forced what is still the nation's fastest growing state into total reliance on the internal combustion engine.

So get off our backs!

Henry A. Miller San Francisco

Enduring Evangelist

In your book review of the biography of Billy Graham [May 28], you refer to Charles G. Finney as a "backcountry camp-meeting" evangelist. That hardly does justice to the man. Finney, a lawyer by training, did his most effective preaching to professional and business people, climaxing a series of successful revivals in major Eastern cities by settling briefly at Broadway Tabernacle in New York City, before being called to a chair of theology and later the presidency of Oberlin College in Ohio. His theology "demolished" the rigid Calvinism of his day, and his Lectures on Revivals of Religion is still read today by students of evangelistic methods and techniques.

Erwin A. Britton, Executive Secretary National Association of Congregational Christian Churches, Oak Creek, Wis.

More on the Good Doctor

Thanks for turning Paul Gray loose on the good doctor Lewis Thomas [May 21]. It's good to see that at TIME, Gray matter matters.

John L. Phillips Paris

TV or Not TV

Why should I be "learning to live with TV" [May 28]! If any TV advertiser wants to have my support let him learn to live with me.

Marilyn J. Hendrick Shelbyville, Ind.

As an advertising agency executive, I am often ashamed of my support of the banality on TV. It seems appropriate that today's TV writers, producers and executives are held in an esteem and reverence once reserved for mystics and charlatans. Fred Silverman just may be mankind's consummate alchemist. He has devised a method of transmuting brains into pudding.

Bart Lewis Lincoln, Neb.

What an absurb and insidious statement by the official of KNXT-TV: "Reading becomes exciting because students can imagine those words being spoken by an actor or actress on television." Incredible! Not only is the natural order of things reversed--life imitating art--but the art in question is crummy.

Scarlet Cheng Arlington, Va.

No Deal by the Sunday Times

TIME magazine perceptively reported the finding [May 7] by the European Court of Human Rights that the British government violated free speech in the suppression of the Sunday Times article on the drug thalidomide. But it is not correct that we avoided jail and fine by a "deal" with the government. We risked these very penalties when we began to campaign in 1972 for the thalidomide families in defiance of the contempt laws. Later, we agreed that a draft article, alleging negligence by the company, should be subject to a prepublication hearing. We did this to test the laws of contempt, and we have now, finally, been vindicated in Europe.

Harold Evans, Editor Sunday Times London

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