
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, July 16, 1990                   TAG: 9007160172
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MARILYN GEEWAX
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

AS HEALTH-CARE COST SOARS, SO MAY INSURABILITY THRESHOLD

MOST OF us still regard illness as an unfortunate event. When a co-worker ends up in the hospital with a heart attack, we send flowers, not a we-told-you-so card signed by all the non-smokers in the office.

That may change as the issue of rising health-care costs gets hotter. Already we spend $650 billion annually on health care. That's 11.5 percent of our gross national product, the highest percentage of any industrial country.

Surveys show that just about everybody in corporate America expects health-care costs to soar in the next century as the U.S. population ages.

As the price tag on medical insurance gets more burdensome, companies probably will push harder to reduce demand for health services. Where employers will be able to draw the line may become one of the ugliest political battles in history.

Already Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., is trying to start the fight by saying government should not be funding AIDS research. He argues the money will be "used by the homosexual movement to proselytize their dangerous lifestyle. . . . If they would stop what they're doing, there would not be one additional case of AIDS in the United States."

Coming from the tobacco-stained lips of the country's biggest flack for the Death Industry, this is a pretty darned outrageous statement. In between drags on his cigarettes, Helms vehemently argues for the smoking rights of the 390,000 Americans who die each year as a result of sucking those butts.

In comparison, only about 80,000 Americans have died because of AIDS since 1981. This is not to imply that AIDS is a minor problem. But it is nowhere near as big a killer as smoking.

Moreover, only a minority of the people having unsafe sex will contract AIDS, and even then it's an accident. But all people who smoke absolutely always hurt their health, and they keep on choosing to harm themselves each time they light up.

So to lower medical costs, should companies decide to cut off insurance to employees who smoke? What next? How about workers who are more than 10 percent overweight? What about people who own motorcycles or speed boats? People with cholesterol counts over 200? Those with high blood pressure?

If companies really want to slash costs, they also may want to tell parents that from now on, the company insurance policy will cover only the first two children. People who want bigger families will have to buy their own insurance for baby No. 3.

Will companies eventually demand prenatal testing? What if a woman finds out she is going to give birth to a deformed baby? Can the company insist she get an abortion or bear the medical costs herself?

At this point, no one but a neo-Nazi would say such Draconian measures are acceptable. But the Helms effort to make a disease into a political and moral issue is creating a steep and slippery slope.

Next time you think "Why should I pay for someone who gets AIDS?" you better not be eating a Twinkie.

by CNB