Letters

...And for a magazine claiming to champion the cause of truth and peace, publication of such a piece is inexcusable...

...The ideal in writing is to express highly sophisticated and complex ideas in simple terms...

...So, as long as we may entertain a degree of reverence for the sanctity of human life, let it, by all means, include the lives of the victims...

...Soon the multinationals will be operating in Grenada and clear-cutting the magnificent rain forest, just as they are doing to impoverish many other Third World countries...

...it was America's studied neglect of Maurice Bishop, which contributed to his murder...

...Cambridge, Massachusetts Sunset in the East Milton Mayer's "Sunset in the East" (February issue) did not tell the whole story...

...Hermosa Beach, California The Politics of Gender Peace is, indeed, a women's issue, as Jean Bethke Elshtain notes in "The Politics of Gender" (February issue...

...When my wife and I were in the Soviet Union some years back, she spoke to workers and housewives and ordinary people in their native language, and our impression was much different...

...To deal with this income cap, HMOs place physicians on salary, eliminating costly fee-for-service reimbursement that encourages overuse of medical procedures...

...The Progressive would do well to fight short-term fixes to health-care cost increases that harm heavy users and the poor, like the Reagan approach of restricting Medicaid eligibility, Medicaid/Medicare coverage and reimbursement levels, and increasing these programs' out-of-pocket expense for individuals...

...Constitution, and their contempt for the press...

...Our country does not need Utopian thinking now...

...Townsend L. Walker Sr...

...What about the family deprived of a husband, father, or son by some greedy creep looking for money without working for it...

...I have been a subscriber now for over two decades, and each month I look forward eagerly to my copy of The Progressive...

...The bleeding hearts who wring their hands at the fate of a murderer justly condemned to execution ought to give a little thought to the victims...

...except in the movies...

...We certainly do not have it now...

...Yes, Medicare's diagnosis-related group (DRG) approach is bad news for Medicare patients and everyone else (except the wealthy who can afford health care, no matter what), for DRGs signal the next rage in the cost-effective approach—a further escalation in the madness and irrationality that characterize the nonsystem that is American health care today...

...Perhaps that was the moral of your assertion that Reagan's story about the "Negro sailor" and black "progress" "never happened...

...The absurdly militarized and underdeveloped state of Honduras sits between these countries...

...HMOs provide total health-care insurance for a fixed sum...

...I strongly believe we must work to turn the Reaganites out of office...

...But Miller did, indeed, use one of the Arizona's machine guns to down four Japanese planes, although he had never received any training with the weapon...

...Marisa Wohl Brooklyn, New York Yes, cost containment at the expense of health care "is this year's rage in the health industry," as your January Comment points out...

...The Dumbing of America Istrongly agree with Nat HentofFs comments on "The Dumbing of America" (February issue) and his assertion that "textbook publishers must accept at least some of the blame for the mediocrity of the classroom...

...Like many feminists, she holds no illusions about the prospect of reforming the two patriarchal, corporate-dominated major political parties...

...Black men could not serve in the Navy above the rank of messman until 1943...

...One issue Elshtain did not touch on is the role of alternative parties in highlighting women's concerns...

...All letters may be edited for clarity and conciseness...

...Finally, the nature of HMOs encourages them to emphasize cost-efFective preventive care, of which The Progressive and I would like to see more...

...I am certain his contacts were among English-speaking intellectuals, not among the working people who make up the bulk of the East European population...

...If rape and murder are allowed to go unpunished, or punished with a mere slap on the wrist, there will be no anthropologists or historians to cluck at our inhumanity in the third millennium...

...Paul E. Killinger Boulder, Colorado Reagan Was Right t's ironic that your dismissal of Ronald Reagan's account of the heroic deeds of a "Negro sailor" at Pearl Harbor appeared in the Editor's Memo of the February issue...

...Grenada revealed the jingoism of millions of Americans, their indifference to treaties and the U.S...

...Richard Barnet ("The Empire Strikes Back," January issue) ought to call off his requiem for a great power and consider instead how America might more effectively defend and promote enlightened values, and in effectively promoting them become truly a great power...

...But it always saddens me when I reflect that the best political magazine in America has to struggle so desperately for survival...

...By the same token, The Progressive should support efforts to make positive, structural changes that stem health-care cost inflation and improve the quality of health care for all Americans...

...Not only do HMOs have great cost-containment potential, but they also can improve health-care quality...

...Or the little girl, crying for mercy as she is brutally raped and then tortured to death by some sex-obsessed ghoul...

...Or to what courts may their cases be appealed...

...The question is, how can America become great, and can it...

...The Progressive believes current concern over healthcare costs obscures concerns over access and quality...

...This gave the U.S...

...The troubles in that country can be clearly traced to a repressive and criminal government...

...That is why those of us who cherish it must do all we can to make sure that it does not die...

...Marines and Rangers arrived to proclaim it...

...Women have always had a disproportionate representation in peace movements, and the latest manifestation of this has been the role of women's peace encampments in England, Italy, and the United States in raising the level of debate about nuclear weapons...

...Johnson recently met with women's peace groups in England, the Soviet Union, West Germany, and Italy to establish a Women's International Alliance for Nuclear Disarmament, which would sign peace treaties between the women of these countries...

...You refer to the "possible U.S...

...Richard D. Erlich Oxford, Ohio Murderers Among Us Iam writing to express my intense disgust with the Comment headed "The Murderers Among Us" (January issue...

...Its survival, despite financial difficulties that killed many other worthy publications, is a tribute to the extraordinary tenacity of its editors and the support of its loyal readers...

...I hope you did not doubt the truth of Dorie Miller's courageous act, especially during Afro-American History Month...

...Sonia Johnson, who recently ran for the presidency of the National Organization for Women, is now seeking the Citizens' Party nomination for President...

...Donald R. Croley Jr...

...Political liberty was dead when the U.S...

...February is Afro-American History Month...

...Bernard Forer Sarasota, Florida Milton Mayer's "Sunset in the East" is one of the most maliciously cynical articles I have ever read...

...The cynicism and weariness Mayer describes are not the general rule...

...To Barnet I say, wake up, dry your eyes...

...The Reagan Administration was certainly trying to destabilize and overthrow the Bishop government, but it also knew he was very popular, so I think the CIA used sophisticated agents provocateurs to infiltrate the Grenadian army...

...As a feminist, she rejects the "lesser of two evils" strategy that leads some mainstream women to support the Democratic Party despite its role in allowing the Equal Rights Amendment to go down to defeat...

...It was America's singular ineptitude which helped create the atmosphere of violence in the first place, in Grenada and throughout Central America...

...The fiction that those countries are neighbors is the work of propagandists who wish to blame Nicaragua unjustly for causing the unrest in El Salvador...

...invasion of Grenada because it was the right thing to do...

...Occupational medicine and preventive health care, as well as crisis health care for those who need it, will remain an unrealized dream in the United States until such time as we concede as a nation the failure of healthcare capitalistically conceived, and until we structure a health delivery system in accordance with the demands of an enlightened social vision...

...The excuse is "seniority...

...Whenever a factory threatens closure or seeks cost saving, the brotherhood is right there to chuck women, blacks, and the Spanish-speaking overboard...

...And Reagan was right about the story of Dorie Miller, although wrong in concluding that deeds such as Miller's rather than demonstrations contributed to "progress" in civil rights...

...This improves quality of care because one knowledgeable individual coordinates use of health-care resources, instead of having several specialists acting without regard to the others' actions...

...Joseph Danison Berkeley, California The simple fact is that Americans supported the U.S...

...State governments have begun to force structural changes in the health-care system...

...Instead of the previous 500 workers, the plant now employs 250...

...While I would consider the article objectionable under any circumstance, it becomes positively dangerous in a world situation in which survival of the human race may depend on understanding and cooperation between the two social systems...

...A. C Martin Halifax, Nova Scotia The outrage in Grenada was not the American use of force...

...It needs sanity, caution, and true concern for mankind's future...

...While the message is clear, the fact is that El Salvador does not have a border with Nicaragua...

...Government its opportunity to shed crocodile tears for Bishop and to "rescue" the Grenadians...

...Miller did not live to benefit from the results of A. Philip Randolph's threatened disruption of the nation's capital that led to President Truman's Executive Order 9981 in 1948 to desegregate the nation's military forces...

...We rescued a people who wanted to be rescued from a group of ruthless opportunists who stole their revolution...

...For his bravery, Miller received the Navy Cross and was promoted to mess attendant first class...

...Minorities and women were hardest hit by the cutback...

...He later died aboard the Liscome Bay, which a Japanese submarine sank on November 24, 1943...

...Miller was a messman on the Arizona when the ship came under attack at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941...

...Time magazine carried many letters gloating over the discomfiture of the press corps...

...It lets all treating physicians see a consumer's ongoing medical history, preventing duplicative use of diagnostic procedures and allowing better practice...

...Where is the silver-tongued attorney to plead their case...

...Judith Enck Arlington, Virginia Bad Neighbor Policy Iwas amused by the Randy Jones cartoon in the Comment section of your February issue, showing President Reagan as a policeman with a huge club at the border of El Salvador and Nicaragua...

...My own idealism has been tempered by thirty-five years of active involvement in American politics...

...Reagan and his crew are dangerous— to civil liberties and certainly to any hope for peace...

...This comes as no surprise, of course, since unions are reluctant to implement practical affirmative action...

...Perhaps a great power could export political liberty, but the quality of power America wields in its foreign policy is incapable even of nurturing whatever native growth there may be in the oppressive conditions of Third World countries, where totalitarian politics seems to thrive...

...Certainly, all is not perfect in the Eastern bloc...

...George E. Delaney Framingham, Massachusetts The editors welcome correspondence from readers on all topics, but prefer to publish letters that comment directly on material previously published in The Progressive...

...Still, I've done some academic editing of late and have this much to say in defense of the editors of college textbooks: On some occasions academic writing should be simplified, not because we must "write down" to students or teachers but because the sentences are simply overly complex and the diction unconscionably esoteric...

...An illuminating corollary is that in this country we have never had a healthcare policy aimed at insuring health care for those who need it—not even in the late 1930s and during the Truman years, when there was a movement in that direction that never jelled, thanks to the paranoid opposition of the American Medical Association...

...However, despite their many difficulties, the socialist countries are helping the bulk of their peoples by abolishing unemployment, evictions, illiteracy, and the poverty which is the cancer of capitalism...

...If human life—or any life at all—survives the nuclear holocaust the world's paranoid leadership is determined to bring upon us, it will be a savage, bestial society in which the scholars who might contemplate our cruel contempt for human life will not flourish...

...HMOs manage an individual's health care by channeling its usage through a primary-care physician...

...Robert L. Harris Jr...

...And John Chancellor's mail, after his excellent commentary lamenting the absence of the press during the invasion, ran ten-to-one against his position...

...And yes, the highly touted health maintenance organizations (HMOs) also skirt the issue of providing quality health care on the basis of need...

...Charles K. Carlson Minneapolis, Minnesota Fan Mail Congratulations to The Progressive on its seventy-fifth anniversary...

...If women can negotiate a peace treaty, why can't male leaders like Yuri Andropov and Ronald Reagan...

...George N. Heflick Ocala, Florida Tomorrow the World As one who has a longstanding interest in Grenada, I appreciated your excellent December Comment, "Tomorrow the World," and your good January articles...

...Only one moot point remains for historians and political analysts to feed upon: Could the identical result have been accomplished by diplomatic finesse...

...Talk of building the "Left" within the Democratic Party is Utopian...

...Besides striving to have a woman taken seriously as a Presidential candidate (instead of asking permission from men to be allowed to run for Vice President), Johnson feels it is possible to use third-party electoral politics to inject such issues as women's rights and nuclear disarmament into the political mainstream...

...Even an HMO's centralized record-keeping improves quality of care and reduces cost...

...covert involvement" in the coup and the murder of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and several of his ministers...

...None of us need do any soul-searching or attach any profound national significance to the action, as your authors, Richard Bar-net, William Steif, and Stephen Zunes, would have us do...

...Without them, we will continue spending more on health care without resolving major problems that drive up costs and reduce quality, such as the imperative of expensive new medical technology of questionable benefit...

...Paul Ramos Dartmouth, Massachusetts ARNOLD ROTH Wear It in Good Health As a health-care planner and health maintenance organization (HMO) user, I, unlike The Progressive, consider HMOs a creative approach to concerns over health care costs and quality ("Wear It in Good Health," Comment, January issue...

...To lament an America that has never been is just an exercise in self-pity...

...So far as the pursuit of internationalist goals is concerned, America has proved less effective than its enemy, the Soviet Union...

...However, government health-care planning, with an eye to cost-containment, gets directly to issues of quality, by looking for ways to spend health-care dollars more effectively, and it addresses issues of access, because state and local governments operate Medicaid and other health programs for the medically indigent...

...Often in academic writing we get overly complex expression of unsophisticated, simplistic ideas: "If you can't dazzle 'em with your brilliance, baffle 'em with your bullshit...

...What judge is there to set their sentence aside...

...Our only alternative is to elect a Democrat to the White House...

...While Mayer throws a few barbs at capitalism in an attempt to establish his objectivity, his obvious purpose is to vent his rancor on socialism and the socialist nations...

...Huntsville, Alabama Electoral Politics In further comment on your series of articles (November issue) and letters (January issue) on the theme, "Which Way in '84...

...Not everyone can afford the HMO and those who can stand to be shortchanged...

...Donald Kahn Minneapolis, Minnesota A Union that Works In their Dateline, "A Union that Works" (January issue), Mona Hochberg and Ed Feigen omitted an important aftermath of the thirteen-week strike at Morse Cutting Tools, New Bedford, Massachusetts...

...The Progressive is not only better than ever, but, after witnessing the unnecessary, illegal, and immoral invasion of Grenada, it is needed more than ever...

...We just might get a little more sanity that way...

...I think not—not by the United States...