The Dallas Post Dallas, PA
Wednesday, May 20, 1992 ; 5
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JW.J.
Greed helped create the health care crisis
By J.W. JOHNSON
Senator Harris Wofford sounded
one very loud note in his trumpet
during a successful upset victory
for that senate seat over former
Governor Richard Thornburgh.
Health care.
illions and millions of Ameri-
» are without any sort of health
ca coverage whatsover. And only
a few states (Minnesota being the
most recent) have made any com-
prehensive attempt to deal with
this issue.
| Most vulnerable, of course, in
the health care squeeze are young
families with children and senior
citizens. And seniors daily face the
twin ogres of escalating health care
costs, and constantly decreasing
Medicare coverage.
* And it's clear that some sort of
national health care program will
be.necessary; Wofford benefited
i Pennsylvania citizens who
believe the same thing.
As for senior citizens in the
cuggent scheme of things, for many
th is a daily fear of getting sick,
of going broke, of going into a
nursing home or both and all
compounded by the fear that they
will eventually become a burden to
loved ones.
Thus motivated by fear, many
become susceptible to buying hope
in the form of duplicate health
insurance policies to supplement
Medicare.
Many of these so-called policies
are virtually worthless. Some of
these companies employ sales
agent and pay them a cut of up to
60 percent of the premium of any
policy they sell to the elderly. It is
then only logical to realize that if a
company pays its salespeople 50-
60 percent and keeps out any sums
at all for profit and administrative
expense, then the amount which
can be returned in claims to the
elderly is very low.
At the same time this corporate
greed is not that difficult to under-
stand as it is little more than a
reflection of debased individual
values.
How about, for example, those
individuals whom, day after day,
purchase lottery tickets in hopes
of getting rich from someone else’s
misfortune?
And isn't a large portion of infla-
tion when it occurs really the re-
sult of individual greed? Of indi-
viduals not satisfied with what they
have, always seeking (and going
intomonumental debt, encouraged
by credit card companies) to ob-
tain items once called luxuries but
now regarded as necessities?
Is it really surprising, then, to
find insurance companies spoon
feeding hope and then financially
draining senior citizens, when at
the individual level we hear, for
example, a person boasting of how
he or she “made money” on an
autoaccident claim by patronizing
a shop willing to jack up the bill
with a resultant split of the so-
called profit?
It's clear that both parties in
this case are thieves; nothing more,
nothing less.
And nothing has yet been said
here about the millions in Medi-
caid and Medicare fraud by physi-
cians whose professional training,
social position and oath of office
requires them to help the needy,
not help themselves illegally to
public largess.
No, none of this behavior, either
corporately or individually is
strange anymore. It's run-of-the-
mill; and more’s the pity.
This kind of behavior cries out
for a renewal of ethical and moral
values once thought by many to be
inherent in Americans. It's also
clear that when a society forgets
that its corporate actions reflect
little more than its individual de-
sires, any large scale efforts to
them ideal with the society's so-
called undesirable elements, ends
up begging the question. Former
Boston mobster Vincent Teresa put
it this way:
“The only reason the Mafia ex-
ists is because the people want it
to exist. The goods and services it
offers are bought by someone. And
that someone, in one form or an-
other, is the public seeking to get
rich quick, or acquire some other
forms of immediate gratification.
Who's kidding whom?
Indeed, Mr. Mobster. Indeed.
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Mystique
Lehman Junior High students
send a message to the future
Time capsule will be opened in 2092
By GRACE R. DOVE
Post Staff
If everything goes as planned,
Lake-Lehman students in the year
2092 will unearth a time capsule
prepared and buried by this year’s
eighth grade English students.
Ninety eighth-graders in Mrs.
Sandy Weyman's and Mrs. Carol
Oliver's classes have collected
mementos of issues important to
today's youth, to be preserved in
plastic and sealed inside a plastic
Coleman cooler for their descen-
dants.
Beth Turner is assembling a
collage of pictures of popular fig-
ures, including Vanilla Ice, Amy
Grant, Jody Foster and Arnold
Schwarzenegger, and writing a
short description of each person.
Amanda Zdonczyk contributed
memorabilia from Berlin, collected
by her sister, Lori Stafford, while
Lori was stationed in Berlin with
the Army.
Postcards, newspaper articles,
a piece of barbed wire and photo-
graphs - including a shot of a
greeting to the family in Sweet
~ Valley spray-painted on the Berlin
Wall - round out the collection.
Kim Steinhauer and her trusty
camera visited popular hangouts
to illustrate what a 14-year-old
Discount for early women's conference signup
The Luzerne County Women's
Conference has received a mini-
grant of $1,000 from the Pennsyl-
vania Humanities Council to use
for programming for the 1992
Conference, according to Phyllis
Belk, director of University Rela-
tions for Penn State Wilkes-Barre.
The conference will be held Satur-
day, June 6, all day on the Penn
State campus in Lehman.
The Women's Conference com-
mittee, with the Penn State coordi-
nator, Melissa Noderer, specifically
asked PHC to help to bring in the
keynote speaker Susan Shown
Harjo, whose talk will be at 8:45
a.m. the day of the conference.
living in the Back Mountain in
1992 does for fun, including skat-
ing at Rollaway and excursions to
Wyoming Valley Mall, Gateway
Cinema and Grotto Pizza.
Francis Gurnari photographed
popular school activities.
Other students are compiling
booklets of fashions, popular
sports, a medley of popular music,
photos of technology and trans-
portation and a video of a typical
day at Lake-Lehman junior high
school.
A pressed daffodil, an explana-
tion of the Cancer Society's “Daffo-
dil Days” and a poignant story of a
student's experience with cancer
in the family will remind kids of the
future that it wasn't all fun and
games back in the good old days of
1992.
“The kids got the idea of a time
capsule alter reading Ray
Bradbury's short story ‘The Drum-
mer Boy of Shiloh,” which will be
included in the time capsule,”
explained Mrs. Oliver.
“They wanted to leave a part of
themselves for the future,” Mrs.
Weyman added.
Originally the students couldn't
decide whether to bury the time
capsule for 50 years, so that they
would still be alive when it would
The program of the 1992
Women's Conference will feature
71 workshops and 115 persons as
presenters, in addition to Ms.
Harjo. The cost of the all-day con-
ference has been kept low because
of the support of the PHC and
many local sponsors. The cost of
$16 for the total conference will go
up to $21 after May 23 so inter-
ested persons are urged to meet
the deadline. Senior citizens, over
65 may attend for $10 if they reg-
ister now; $15 after May 23.
The Pennsylvania Humanities
Council, in addition to the mini-
grant, is sponsoring one of the
workshops entitled “Feminism and
be unearthed, or to bury it fora |
century, trusting their descendants
to remember its location. oe
After considerable debate, the |
students voted to go for a century.
The location, which must re-
main secret for the time capsule's 1
protection, will be registered at the |
Lehman United Methodist Church |
and possibly the Wyoming Histori- |
cal and Geological Society. ti K
The students plan to leave |
plaques at the church, the junior
high school and the high school to
remind future generations tomark |
their May, 2092 calendars for
unearthing the time capsule.
And what will the kids of the
future find? hi
Unopened cans of Pepsi and
Coke. A pair of Gap designer jeans.
A copy of Fifty Ways to Save the
Earth. Baseball cards. Kids' per-
sonal memoirs. Favorite short
stories. Instructions: how to make
a hamburger, a pizza and a milk
shake. A key to the junior high |
school (if it's still standing.) Amap |
of the Back Mountain. Maybe even |
a copy of The Dallas Post. 2 7
The students hope that, after |
examining these treasures from |
the past, their descendants will
better understand what issues
faced the eighth-graders of 1992.
the 1950s Family” which will be ]
given by Pat McPherson. gar
Other workshop topics range |
from “Making Tomorrow's Artists |
Out of Today's Children” given by |
Madeline Volpettiand Susan Davis, |
to “The Commnity Involvement of
Women" led by Susan Shoval, to
“Incorporating Fitness into a |
Demanding Lifestyle,” givenby Jan
Elston, Michelle Steele and Penn |
State Fitness leaders.
For a list of the 71 workshops,
and a registration form, call Penn
State, 675-9114. Most public li-
braries also have brochures avail-
able. :
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