Best Care?
Jeane Kirkpatrick claims in her March 29 column that American health care is "the best in the world" because of "the incentives of the market system." Neither of these assertions is substantiated in her column.
By what objective measure is American health care "the best"? Is it life expectancy? Infant mortality? Satisfaction of Americans with their system? It cannot be any of these because the U.S. ranks poorly in all these categories.
Although I agree with her concerns about the bureaucratization of health care under the Clinton plan, I would take exception with her assertion that we presently have a market system.
Health care is the only market where the "seller" (i.e., the physician) decides what the consumers need and then "sells" it to them by collecting the payment from a third party. It is because of this that insurance companies have developed expensive bureaucracies to regulate health care.
Clinton's health care plan is not "socialism"; rather it accelerates the corporatization of health care that is already occurring.
We need to stop treating health care like a commodity. A national health program with a single, publicly-run insurance system like that in Canada would provide universal coverage with less expense and less need for the coercive bureaucracy that Ms. Kirkpatrick fears.
Darius Rastegar, M.D.
Baltimore
WBJC's Play List
As a recent resident of Baltimore, allow me to chime in on the side of letter writer Edward A. Riggio (March 10) with the opinion that WBJC-FM's constant diet of classical and romantic era warhorses, with an occasional baroque "Twinky," does get a bit hard to take.
General programming needs more diversity, and the total absence of vocal music is hard to understand.
It would be nice to get through two nights in a row without Mozart.
How about some lieder and songs by Mahler, Berlioz and Duparc, and an occasional choral work? Time could be found for zarzuela arias, and whatever happened to Gilbert and Sullivan?
I'd like to hear some Martinu, Honegger, Villa-Lobos, Ginastera, later Stravinsky and the great string quartets of Bartok and Shostakovitch.
Baltimore music lovers deserve more than classical top-40 and highbrow elevator music.
WBJC deserves applause for bringing us the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts.
The station's staff of announcers are, for the most part, pleasant, enthusiastic and knowledgeable. An occasional slip can be excused.
Recently Rossini's "Semiramide" was described as being a setting of the Cinderella story.
The announcer momentarily confused Semiramide, the hapless queen of Assyria, with Cenerentola, the Italian name for the abused stepdaughter with petit feet.
Ken Valides
Baltimore
Right to Hunt
I have made it a point to ignore Roger Simon's column in your paper for several years now, but the headline on his Mar. 20 column prompted me to read it.
As usual, Mr. Simon over-simplified and narrowed the issue to suit the point of his theme.
Hunter interference laws are designed to protect the rights of people engaged in a perfectly legal activity from being prevented from doing said activity.
I always thought that a right was something no one was allowed to take away or interfere with.
While freedom of speech is also a right, as the old saying goes, your right to swing your fist stops at the point of my nose. No one has a right to stop or interfere with a person while engaged in a legally sanctioned pastime.
Your editors and Mr. Simon have a right to write and print almost any trash their narrow little minds want. I have a right not to read it; I do not have a right to stop anyone else from reading it.
If Congress can find ways to link the rebuilding of the Pennsylvania Station in New York City to the earthquake in California, they should be able to link restricting a hunter's Second Amendment right to own firearms to his or her ability to legally use ones they are allowed to have.
David A. Titus
Baltimore
Church Concerns
Angela Winter Ney's March 27 article, "That new-time religion," quoted the Rev. Sandy Mason, senior pastor at Grace Fellowship in Timonium as saying, "Our foundation on the Bible is what keeps us from becoming a chic liberal church like the Unitarians."
The article underscores the phenomenal growth of non-denominational groups such as Grace. Close review reveals that several significant things are missing.
In the long article about those in the premium ages of the early thirties who are serving themselves at Grace through lip service to Jesus and the Bible, there was no mention of our children, our aged and other kinds of diversity of membership, nor the social responsibility of religion for addressing the major and aching ills of our city and country.
It was Hillel who warned, "Separate not thyself from the congregation and its concerns."
Robert L. Zoerheide
Baltimore
The writer is minister emeritus, First Unitarian Church.
Call It Justice
Poor John Thanos. Try as he might to submit himself to the death penalty, a never-ending series of delays and appeals by his "public defenders" continues to thwart his efforts.
Meanwhile, in Singapore, Michael Fay prepares to face his sentence of caning for his defacement of personal property despite on-going attempts from several liberal senators, Barbara Mikulski included, who wish to interfere with Singapore's criminal justice system.
These two instances speak volumes to me as to what is inherently wrong with the criminal justice system in the United States, and why it is so ineffective.
First, John Thanos. I read in The Sun that a Maryland judge had again delayed Thanos' execution so as to provide him time to decide which method of execution he would prefer.
I feel so much better about Thanos' upcoming execution with the knowledge that the judge involved cared enough about his feelings not to plan his execution without first consulting him.
Never mind that Thanos murdered several people, let's not dare hurt his feelings.
Who is running the criminal justice system, anyway? If Thanos had not done everything in his power to pursue the death penalty, I have no doubt that his case and related appeals would go on until the next century.
Why is it that a convicted murderer has to plead for his own death penalty before the criminal justice system will even begin to consider actually carrying it out?
Meanwhile in Singapore, it appears that Michael Fay will be subjected to six strikes of the cane along with four months imprisonment for his crime.
While I would agree that this penalty appears harsh, I would argue that Singapore's criminal justice system is serving its purpose: to protect its law-abiding citizens and their personal belongings from criminal acts.
Should Mr. Fay's sentence be carried out and continue to be enforced throughout Singapore, I feel certain that Mr. Fay will never again think twice about defacing personal property while in Singapore.
Mr. Fay, however, will be able to return to the United States and deface property at will with the only penalty being little more than a slap on the wrist and some community service work.
The bottom line is that Singapore's criminal justice system is carrying out its purpose by imposing penalties which severely deter criminal activity; it thereby protects its law-abiding citizenry.
The criminal justice system in the United States, however, continues to abort its responsibility to its law-abiding citizens by coddling criminals and not having the spine to enforce and carry out tough sentences for heinous crimes.
The resulting victims are the law-abiding citizens of this country. Harsh as it may seem, murderers like John Thanos and the thousands of others on death row throughout the country should have been dead long ago; it's called justice.
Etienne D. Cambon
Annapolis
No Smoking
Crime is rampant, our youth are out of control, teen pregnancy is of serious proportions, and all of the above are tearing our schools asunder.
So, what does our government give us? Cigarette control!
Ain't it grand?
W. Randall Hall
New Freedom, Pa.