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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Karin who wrote (38704)	9/20/2000 11:54:04 PM
From: Tom Clarke	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769667

Washington Post editorial page unloads on Gore. The wheel has turned... Al Gore vs. Business Wednesday, September 20, 2000; Page A32 MORE THAN most people in public life, Vice President Gore has mastered the intricacies of public issues like arms control and the environment. His current rhetoric demonizing business is a blemish on that serious record. In lashing out against big oil, big pharmaceutical firms and big health maintenance organizations, Mr. Gore is playing the demagogue, and he himself must know it. The candidate devoted Monday to attacking the managed-care industry, especially for its treatment of women, who are said to be key to this election. He said these firms should cover the costs of screening tests for cervical cancer and breast cancer, as well as of hospital stays that doctors recommend after operations. "You cannot call it cost control when you are actually preventing people from getting the treatment that they need in order to have the quality of life they deserve and in order to save their lives," Mr. Gore asserted. Never mind that many HMOs already provide the services Mr. Gore demands--that he is, in that sense, erecting a straw man. It is perfectly true that the managed-care industry practices cost control, which inevitably means rationing care: You can't have one without the other. If Mr. Gore dislikes the rationing, he must accept that insurance premiums will go up--leaving more Americans unable to afford any coverage whatever. But the candidate not only glosses over that trade-off. He speaks with glib certainty of a "quality of life" that people "deserve," as though post-operative hospital stays were a birthright, or at least a federal entitlement. But for better or worse, health care for most of the population is not an entitlement. What's more, during the primaries Mr. Gore took a deliberate choice not to propose a federal guarantee of care, even though he faced an opponent who pressed him on this issue. The candidate plans to go after, in the same vein, a different industry every day, each target undoubtedly poll-tested. In an interview with The Post this week, he said that "the absurdly high prices for prescription drugs, the rising price of gasoline" are evidence of "unfair efforts by powerful interests to take advantage of the American people." No one can dispute that there is much to criticize in the behavior of U.S. corporations. We share with Mr. Gore his concern, expressed yesterday, for example, that many firms aren't doing enough to protect their customers' privacy. Yet these issues are rarely a matter of good vs. evil, as Mr. Gore and his running mate (a longtime friend of the insurance industry) know well. Drug companies may charge too much for their products, but lower prices would probably reduce the incentive to create new drugs. Most of the blame for rising gasoline prices lies with the market price for crude, and anyway (as Mr. Gore might once have reminded us) higher gas prices are good for the environment. Even the privacy issue has its complexities. The more technology advances, the more privacy is threatened by omniscient databases. But there is a cost to protecting privacy, too: If firms are deprived of information, they will market their products less efficiently and therefore more expensively. There are fair points to be made about the right balance between free enterprise and regulation, and useful debates to be had. Mr. Gore seems more intent upon telling us that he's for the people, not the powerful. Given his history, the slogan seems about as sincere as it is useful. washingtonpost.com