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Show DESERET NEWS. SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH A5 We stand far the Canshhjtrvi of A $totes with its three departments of government, each ful!y independent in its own fie id Rx for easing the malpractice problem What drives up malpractice insurance fees and who pays? causes! cancellation of many non-essenti- ai surgery cases. Not long ago, a California jury That threat is so real that state awarded $4 million to a legislatures are taking firm steps to child in a malpractice suit. It was the trim down the suits and limit the size of awards and the time in which highest such award in history. In another malpractice case malpractice suits may be filed. Just this week, Florida imposed a iawjcrs for an girl, blind from birth, sued the doctors and four-yestatute of limitations on the hospital which gave her oxygen upon filing of lawsuits. The new law also premature birth IS years ago in what requires patients to take their claims as then a standard procedure for to a mediation panel as a prerequisite treatment of preemies. Unknown to to going to court. medical science at the time was the The act also is aimed at errant fact that such a procedure caused doctors. For the first tune, it gives blindness in some infants when they Hondas Board of Medical Examinwere given too much oxygen. The ers and hospitals the authority to lawyers collected. revoke the licenses and dismiss docIn the latter instance, particularly, tors found guilty of malpractice. the jury appeared more swayed by the Those are steps Utah should also sense of providing for the girls future taka in dealing with the malpractice than in determining any fault or issue. While doctors in Utah have been malpractice on the part of the physiless affected than others by soaring cians and hospital. malpractice insurance fees because of Thats the type of thinking that is a r insurance agreement, that sending physicians malpractice inpact runs out in November of 1976. But surance premiums even some individual doctors not insured threatening to drive doctors out of under the group plan face a review of practice. Already, doctor protests their premiums in August, with exo or premium rates in California have pected premium hikes of 10o to 200 ld ar five-yea- sky-hig- h, percent. Fees rationally now range AAA 4 AlW so.,ooo. miuJ niuKu iiu mistake: Such hikes are passed on in the form of higher health care costs. While the Florida law provides some safeguards, it does not go far enough in solving the problem. Utah legislative action should also limit the contingency fee basis on which a lawyer takes a ease. Such contingency fees tend to inflate the size of the suit lvoeausc the larger the award, the higher the lawyers tee. A carefully-writteUtah bill also should include terminology on what actually constitutes malpractice. Many suits are instituted not because the doctor erred but simply because the patient didn't get well a guarantee no doctor can give, even with the most skillful use of the most modern techniques. With insurance fees scheduled for dramatic increases soon from levels, the need for speedy action is apparent. If such a bill cannot be prepared in time for the special session of the Utah Legislature next month, it should be rc ady and included in the budget session next January. 1 J I rum $,,UOU 10 n End this spoils system on Utah road crews Not too many years ago, the State Highway Department was riddled with political appointments and was considered a prime plum for patronage jobs. That condition has changed dramatically with institution of the t system. But apparently it has not been completely stamped out, iin-ii- self has firm rules against political patronage. In a letter to the governor a year ago, the department declared that Instructions, have been given that no political clearance will accompany any application. highway department. The youth reported he was told he must have clearance from local Democratic Party leadership before he would be considered for the job. Political patronage, even in summer jub hiring, should not be a part of the slate highway department or for jobs that don't involve policy-makin- ii Yet it appears someone hasn't gotten the word. That policy should be reaffirmed in words that will leave no doubt in anyone's mind that qualification and experience are the requirements for a job in state government not how the applicant voted in the last election. g any other government agency, for even now. that matter. Such a system is and Yesterday, this page carried a always has been a cause of inefficienletter to the editor from a Provo cy and corruption in government. student seeking a summer job with the Furthermore, the department it in . free and open society. And for that, reason, a free press is one of the first v ictims of any Communist takeover. That tactic was demonstrated once again this week when Communist agitators forced suspension of the last daily newsmajor paper in Lisbon, Portugal, the Socialist newspaper Republica. The pretext for the closure: Communist janitors and printers objected to the newspaper publishing a Communist document they felt should have been kept secret. The document called lor a new purge in the government-owne- d television and radio network, Now and then a truly topnotch book comes along in the field of public anah s a book so dear and cosent that one wants to shout its merits from the rooftops. Such a book just came ovi! the transom. It claiming that more than 70 employes were either reactionary or latent homosexuals. The closure is a ianuliar pattern to a party which is now expert in all the means of seizing and holding absolute power in a country in the name of the workers. To succeed, Communism must muzzle dissent in any form. Any newspaper which dares to speak out must be silenced, as the Republica Afterthoughts The real danger in a revolution the moderates are the first ones that is to go, being equally detested by both sides, and so the resolution of the conflict takes place between extremists, neither of which sees reality undistorted by ideology. 9 Wien the distraught parent Rev. Andrew Greeley You've created a straw man, a stereotype," they tell me Your version of the liberal intellectual' who hates the American people just doesnt correspond to reality. Youre fighting someone who doesnt really exist. Says who Almost any week you tail fit! several articles in a national journal la winch Americas 'liberals express their fears and anxieties, in which they describe the American public as a savage beast, British, authoritarian, destruetn e Take an article m a recent issue of tbe ponderous, journal. The SaturStephen Arons, day Review from the faculty of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, has produced an article called The Rise of Police Logic. lie tells us ifjl (pol.ee logic' of has crept into the thought of all of us, from the average citizen apprehensive about being mugged to the nt of a criminal cries out in selfjustification, I have him everything he wanted, what the parent really means is I gave him nothing he really needed young Biii of Rights: By . . . Sydney Harris . incident shows. For if the true nature the Communist plans were known, such as the media purge, the Communists would have great difficulty in carrying them out. First the press, then free speech. Then the freedom of assembly goes, because where people are assembled, an plot may be formed. Massive repression is necessary to any Communist boss in order to insure his very survival. An agitator, said Lenin, will strive to rouse discontent and indignato collect and utilize every tion grain of even rudimentary protest. nt ... A century earlier, John Philpot Curran sounded this warning: It is the common fate of tbe indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance. . . A free press is a long step in that direction. 'strong support' dum of the public. legislators who approved preventive detention or search laws. In fact, the retreat of Libertarian thinking at the hands of police logic is so widespread that not long ago it was found in a senes of opinion polls that if the Bill of Rights were up for adoption today, a majority of Americans would vole it duwn Now I submit that this is a real man who authored a real article for a real magazine. It is not a straw man I have set up to knock down. Professor Arons does not toll us what the public opinion survey taken not so long ago w Presumably he is referring to Samuel A. Steuffers famous civil liberties study which indeed showed that only a minority of Amencans supported the kinds of freedoms guaranteed even to Communists and atheists under tlie Bill of Rights. The Stouffer findings did NOT that if the Bill of Rights weie put up for a ballot in ilie exact words m which it is expressed in the Constitution it would tie defeated. It rather showed that certain rights guaranteed under the Bill of Rights would not be sustained by a majority of the general public. Of course, the whole point of having a constitution is that it is not subject to periodic referen show - The principal weakness in Professor Arons argument is the not so long ago. I take this to mean sometime in the last tew years, because the lead line in his article is, The last five years have seen a decline of civil liberties in the American consciousness. Well, time does fly. The Stouffer study was done in 1954, which may seem like only a few years ago, but was in fact two decades ago. Moreover, recent research done at the National Opinion Research Center shows that there has been a dramatic change in the ensuing two decades. NORCs director, Janies A. Davis, has brilliantly demonstrated that not only have Americans become more tolerant but that this change is NOT just the result of a younger and more tolerant generation coming into adulthood. Most social change involves not change of attitudes but the dying of older people and the emergence of a new generation into adulthood. But in fact Professor Cavis proves in his artic le (to be published soon in the Amencrn Journal of Sociology) the change to civil liberties attitudes has occurred at all age and all educational levels. Many Americans have changed tlieir i Roeer A Tb" Growth American Government: A Morphology ot Ihn Weltare State The science of morphology involves Die study of the form and structure of biological organisms. What Freeman has done is to take the two decades between 1952 and 1972, and to examine the changes that occurred in the cellular growth of government. He finds, and he documents, changes so vast that they fairly may be described as revolutionary. These changes have occurred to two broad areas: the expansion of government, and the contraction of freedom. The growth of government is generally recognized but imperfectly comprehended. In the period under study, government assuredly grew, but the rate of growth, compared to the two preceding decades, was not spectacular. In 1952, government revenues were 29.7 percent of the Gross National Product. In 1972. they amounted to of of minds on the rights of Communists and atheists, and the change has been of substantial magon the average of 2ti nitude percentage points. So instead of the American publics turning against the Bill of Ri gilts, there ha 3 been a massive shift in the opposite direction. The American public has become much more tolerant of dissent in the last two decades despite all the turbulence and unrest that has shaken our society. Furthermore, while one can share some of Professor Arons concerns about recent Supreme Court decisions, it is still true that there are more civil liberties m the United States than in any nation in the world. Even our shier English-languag- e democracies, the United Kingdom and Canada, have laws which permit arrest and detention without trial. Such a law would be unthinkable is this country. Civil liberties must be perpetually guarded, but to depict the American public as a neofas-cmonster hardly seems to be an appropriate way to guard those liberties especially when the evidence shows that the public has moved strongly in the uppGdtt direction. So who's setting up the straw man? Kt m hew i ) ends well.' teen-age- rs Freemans Communism vs. a free press in Portugal ( Welfare state: eritir boitibCK Jaded How it grew is Communism cannot survive in a well that ,14.7 percent. A reader in Orlando wrote that in a Christmas letter from her niece, she casually mentioned that her senior class trip this year would be to Jamaica. We went to Jamaica on our honeymoon! said the writer, ami thought it was a big deal. Not only that, for our senior trip we took a bag lunch on a bus to Starved Rock State Park with an intermediate stop at Indian Burial Mounds uud liked to have fainted from Lhe excitement. Have I missed something? The only thing I can figure is while you were skipping rocks at the state park, someone invented the round wheel and the square credit card and the world got smaller. Admittedly it gets tougher and tougher trying to impress todays young travelers. A few summers ago I rode all over New York City with my sons on a sightseeing bus with instructions, If you see any thing you want to return to, let me know. As we climbed off the bus, I poised my pencil and said, Okay, fellas, what'll it be? A tour of the United Nations? A trip to the top of the F,mpire State building? A cab ride through Central Park? One son spoke up, There was a store near the river had cut-o- lf jeans for a buck ninety nine. Theyre open until 8:30. that much greater significance, in Freeman's view, is the breathtaking change in the way these revenues are spent. In 1952, federal expenditures for domestic services amounted to $13.4 billion. Since that time, they have multiplied 10 times. Between 1952 and" 1972 as much was added to toderal outlays for domestic purposes every two years as had been m the preceding 163 On another occasion, I took one of them with me to Philadelphia where I was doing a Mike Douglas show. I showed him the Liberty Bell, Betsy Rosss house, Ben Franklins grave, and the Wax Museum and let him touch Marty Allens hair. years." There isn't a parent alive who will not admit to the frustration of yelling to the kids m the back seat, By these are the Egyptian pyramids and if you don t put down Mad magazine and enjoy them I'm going to break every bone in your body. Of The changing structure may be better understood by look'ng bat k to 1902, when P7 pereent of federal spending went for defense, international relations, veterans' benefits, the Post Olfice, and the like Fifty years later, these traditional functions eluimod kl penent of the budget. Then came the explosion. In 1972, the division was 47 percent for traditional services, 53 pereent for health, education, welfare. Social Security, and the, like. We began these two decades, relatively-speakingas a free society ; we ended them relatively speaking, as a welfare state. Inevitably, in Freemans view, more government has resulted to less freedom. The two decades saw significant changes m the redistribution of two directions of power. Both redistribution the and income, trends continue. For good or ill, public policies are directed toward reducing economic differences and toward shifting the decision-makin- g power from the individual to organized society. Have these phenomenal changes benefited American life? In Freemans view, no. He potto to New York City, lurching toward bankruptcy under the load of welfare spending. He examines public educat.on: Outlays tor education soared from $8.4 billion m 1952 to $67.5 billion m 1972, an increase of 704 percent against an 87 percent increase to enrollment, with no discernible improvement ui the quality of education. He looks at public welfare spending with the same cool eye. Outlays for law enforcement have had no better results. Freeman is a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford, where lus book was published a few weeks ago. Born to Austria to 1904, he came to the U S. to 1940. His perceptions are thus both Eurofiean and American. His wise old eyes perceive a revolution to progress; and if this revolution is less dramatic than the first one, 299 years ago, it uwy be equally significant for the years ahead He turned to me at the end of the day and said, Could we go back to the hotel now? I want to play on the elevators." As an adult, Id like to believe the Sanlonzed world was better, but it wasn't. Todays children are seeing more of the world than they have ever seen before and in spite of their worldliness there is something to be said for finding joy m a pair of jeans for a buck ninety-nine- , playing on the elevators, or chuckling over a magazine. Aid one day when they are saturated with worldliness, it wouldnt surpnse me a bit to hear a senior class president say, look, everyone has dune Europe, South America, most of us Asia, and some of us Africa How about a trip to Starved Rock State Park with an intermediate stop at Indian Burial Mounds? DOUG SflEYD Vn '7 called if defied v i 1 . v spending ? bad checks. 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