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

DATE: THURSDAY, September 23, 1993                   TAG: 9309230253
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-13   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Compiled by Carolyn Click, Steve Foster and Todd Jackson
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

HEALTH, JOB DETERMINE REACTIONS

Johnny Angell, Franklin County tobacco farmer, on a proposed tax increase on cigarettes to pay for health care reform: "It's unfair to target one segment of the American people, smokers, just because they smoke. Why not have an annual weigh-in of people and tax them for every pound of extra flab they have?

"A high federal tax on tobacco will put me out of business. It will definitely have a devastating impact on farmers. If the tax is passed, I won't have a farm, but I'll have health insurance and no place to live." (Angell's family does not have health insurance.)

Christine Brady, of Martinsville, mother of a 10-week-old baby who needs expensive surgery to repair nerves torn at birth. Family has no insurance, and Medicaid will not pay for the surgery: "In a way [the proposal] will allow us to get group rates at a reasonable rate. The coverage would be affordable to us. But unfortunately, the way it is now, we are a family of five, and there is no way we could afford it."

Rep. L.F. Payne, D-Nelson County: "The president did a good job of laying out a platform for health care reform in this county; and I believe Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, are interested in working together on this."

Dr. Steven Miles, University of Minnesota biomedical ethics professor and member of the Clinton health care task force, in Roanoke for a conference on medical futility: "We've got a winable political environment. . . . This is basically a problem of middle-class Americans taking care of their families."

Sen. John Warner, R-Va.: "My main concern with the administration's approach is that it makes promises and commitments which the president may not be able to keep. It guarantees benefits before we have identified or realized savings or additional revenues to pay for those benefits."

Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke: ` Clinton must make the process as open as possible. "If he doesn't, we will not have good results. If he opens it up, then I think we can achieve some kind of health care reform."

Dr. Newell Falkinburg, president-elect of the Roanoke Valley Academy of Medicine: "It is very clear to me that there is a big sentiment to do something about it. . . . If the paperwork is reduced, and the patients can go where they want, and the inherent competition that is in the system is allowed to work, then it will work out."

Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon: "The tobacco tax is a narrow tax on a narrow geographical region." He wonders if "managed competition, as a model, will be effective in restraining health care costs in rural areas that are already underserved."

Tim Lawson, of Roanoke County, whose 18-month-old son needs a $250,000 bone marrow transplant that Blue Cross and Blue Shield will not pay for: "As far as our situation, I don't see how it can help us. I think down the road the government might step in and say, `Look, this is an effective treatment. Let's not consider this experimental.' Until this time, Jonathan and others have to depend on donations of the community."

Archie Cromer Jr., chairman of the board of directors of Carilion Health System: "Somehow, I'm hard put to see how it can get more competitive, but I think it will."

Sen. Charles Robb, D-Va: "It'll take until the end of the century before all of whatever Congress is able to come up with is fully in place."

Dr. John Presley, director of the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Salem, on competition among the region's hospitals: "I think we are going to see some strange bedfellows before it is all over."

by CNB