The Tennessean from Nashville, Tennessee • Page 14

Hie TENNESSEAN SILLIMAN EVANS SR. (Publisher, 1937 1955) SILLIMAN EVANS JR. (Publisher. 19551961) AMON C. EVANS.

President and Chief Administrative Officer JOHN SEIGENTHALER. Publisher LLOYD ARMOUR. Executive Editor A Good rs WARD To A UEUOVA UttiMft Lose! ALLEN PETTUS Vice President JOHN BIBB Sports Editor WAYNE WHITT Managing Editor RALPH SAUNDERS Treasurer EUGENE WYATT Associate Editor RUTH BENNETT Secretary Page 14 Thursday, December 1, 1977 Korea 'Manipulation Plan' Nauseous Effort At Best WITHDRAWAL- I Price Competition Not Cure competition (quality and thoroughness of diagnostic evaluations, use of the latest therapeutic technology) our problems; more doctors would not result in lower doctors' fees or lower medical costs in general. Doctors' fees are relatively "inelastic," along with many other kinds of economic expenditure. Inelasticity means that supply of an item or service "has little direct effect on the price charged for it.

This subject has been well studied by WITHIN reasonable limits, countries that are friends of the United States ought to be able to try to influence public opinion favorably toward themselves. The U.S. has laws which permit that as long as it is above board. But the Korean Central Intelligence Agency planned to go far beyond the outer limits of the laws in a bid to infiltrate the White House, Congress, the Pentagon, State Department and the media, according to a document made public by a House investigations subcommittee. According to Rep.

Donald Fraser, chairman of the subcommittee, the KCIA plan was to create support for President Park among a variety of groups of American citizens and try to get them to exert influence on Congress and the government. Some of the goals of the purported Korean document were: implanting an intelligence network in the White House; hiring paid collaborators in the office of the speaker of the House and within the Senate leadership; establishing an intelligence network within the State Department and strengthening intelligence cooperation with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Outside government circles, the document recommended clandestine efforts to influence the news media as well as academic and religious organizations. Apparently, the plan never got off the ground because newspaper reports of alleged South Korean influence peddling on Capitol Hill began surfacing soon after the plan was formulated.

At that point, according to Mr. Sohn Ho Young, a former KCIA agent who defected, the spy agency was ordered to keep a low profile. Although Mr. Sohn has vouched that the spy document is authentic and had been approved by the KCIA headquarters, there is still a question if any part of it was tried. President Park's regime has been increasingly concerned for sorrje time about the possibility of withdrawal of U.S.

forces and a continuing reduction of military aid to South Korea. It is clear enough that political contributions were given to members of Congress by South Koreans who may, or may not, have been authorized to do so by the Park regime. It is also clear that KCIA agents and officers have systematically harassed and intimidated Korean opponents of the Park regime in Japan, Europe and the United States. And it is a matter of record that a good many influential people in the U.S. have been extended invitations to visit Korea for one reason or another honorary degrees, fact-finding missions, etc.

So, it does not take much of a step to suppose that the KCIA did intend to step up its efforts to manipulate public opinion in the U.S. even to the point of subverting public officials. If so, all of this has backfired on the Park regime whose internal repression is repugnant in the first place and, if true, whose plans to infiltrate the highest levels of U.S. government are nauseous. He has made it extremely difficult for the Congress to act pragmatically on issues affecting the security of South Koreans whose misfortune is to have President Park as a dictator.

By RODNEY BRYANT, M.D. (Dr. Bryant is a physician at Woodbury, Tenn.) YOUR articles on doctors lately have been simplistic at best and demagogic at worst. In the Sunday editorial "The Doctor Shortage," you damn with faint praise the American Medical Association's call for more federal money for venereal disease control, migrant and Indian healthcare, family planning, immunization programs, and prevention of mental disorders and alcoholism. You say it sounds "funny" for the AMA to call for federal money for these programs when it is "always opposing" federal programs like National Health Insurance.

Furthermore, you say that the big problem is that there are not enough doctors out there to receive these federal monies for preventive health care and disease control, programs the AMA advocates. Now it is your turn to sound "funny." The programs you list can all be carried out by health care personnel other than doctors, and usually have been. The AMA knows this and is not recommending a change. It is in areas of preventive health care that nurses, social workers, psychologists, and others are maximally effective. It doesn't take a doctor or a corps of doctors to conduct an immun Actually, you are wrong about the AMA's position.

The AMA advocates increasing the supply of doctors, enlarging medical school classes, building new schools. You and the AMA stand together on this issue, ironically. (Another irony here is that people like you who are most critical of doctors for acting like "businessmen" are often the same ones urging advertising and price competition on doctors.) I thought it might be appropriate to mention that I am a doctor in a small Tennessee town, one with a population of around 2,000. This is presumably the sqrt of town that you write about being "nearly impossible" to get doctors to settle in. I practice here in a group off our doctors, two of whom are my brother and my father.

I decided to go to medical school after teaching school for a few years. I worked during college and medi-' cal school to pay expenses, and somehow I never noticed, medicine is the "exclusive club" you say it is. In addition to my brother and father, my sister is a graduate registered nurse (working in our county hospital), my brother-m-law is a nurse anesthetistone sister-in-law is a licensed practical nurse, and my father-in-law is a doctor practicing in a Tennessee community even smaller and more rustic than my own. Our family is well represented in the "health care industry" I read about so often lately, but some of the stereotypes don't fit. I J.

The answer to our national health problems heart disease, hypertension, lung and other cancers, venereal diseases is not more doctors but a change in lifestyle and personal habits. Adding more doctors is like sticking more fingers into the dike. What we need is to lower the rising tide of the "lifestyle diseases" in more fundamental ways. It seems to me, out here in the country, that the problems of health and illness America are more complex than "price competition among doctors. economists and other (You made light of some of their conclusions in another recent editorial.) The main thing that would happen if we added more and more doctors is that more and more total money would go to those doctors.

Demand for doctors' services is nearly inexhaustible. This is one reason the wisdom of flooding the market with doctors has been questioned. This is also one reason your "aw shucks" sort of common sense reasoning is inaccurate here. If you need proof of this, consider the following: The per capita density of doctors metropolitan areas is something we could never hope to achieve for the country as a whole. However, despite competition from legions of other doctors, the average doctor's fees are not lower in the city than in the country they are higher.

In rural areas, where scarcity gives a doctor the "virtual monopoly you wrongly ascribe to all doctors, fees are lower. Doctors in cities do compete sometimes fiercely but this competition seldom takes the form of price competition. Somehow, when one's own health is at stake, people do no tend to shop for the cheapest medical care. Whether or not they should, they just don't. If your price competition model were applicable to medical care, flooding the market with doctors in the cities should be a good preliminary "experiment" to see what would happen if we flooded the country with doctors.

That experiment has been done, and we know the result. It is not lower fees. If anything, increasing the per capita number of doctors in an area results in higher fees, because of the other kind of Checking On Tailgaters ization campaign or to ao tamuy planning and couseling. The AMA suggestions to the government were made in good faith and were not self-serving as you imply. Opposing National Health Insurance and advocating federal funds for immunization, family planning, and Indian health services are not inconsistent as you imply they are.

NIII would make doctors government employees, something I oppose although it would not mean that medical care would cost less, as the government's track record in running other areas of our lives amply illustrates. Finally, more doctors would not solve The system will be tested long enough to find out if it reduces the number of accidents occurring along that stretch of highway. An unusually large percentage of the accidents there are caused by following too closely. It is an ingenious system and it is hoped the warnings will lead to a reduction in accidents. However, state officials will be fortunate if the testing device doesn't end up being tested by the motoring public.

Many curious drivers are likely to try following close enough behind the cars in front of them to set off the warning, and then move in closer to set off the violation light and the horn. People who don't ordinarily drive the; interstate may decide to go out of their way to try their skill on the sensors. This could lead to more "tailgating" accidents unless the stretch of road is patrolled more heavily than usual and some arrests are made. THE STATE Department of Transportation has placed special sensors in the pavement of the interstate near Fesslers Lane to check up on and warn "tailgaters." "It's an experimental system to try to reduce accidents caused by motorists following too closely," said a spokesman for the department. "We're anxious to see how it works." When a car or truck passes through the sensors, if it is less than 1 .25 seconds behind another vehicle the words: "Danger Following Too Close" will flash across a sign above the roadway.

The system is effective regardless of the speed of both vehicles. The critical value is the number of seconds separating the vehicles at the speed they are traveling. If a car or truck is less than seven-tenths of a second behind another car or truck, the word "Violation" will appear on the sign. The system may be arranged so that a horn will blow to get the motorist's attention. 41 Letters to The Editor Zralek Article Complimented; To the Editor: My compliments to Jarnes Zralek for his enlightening statements on 1-440 (Nov.

28). I am in favor of a reasonable alternative, and believe one can be found that will preserve neighborhoods, preserve the quality of life, and provide for crosstown transportation; i.e., a four-lane road; Any kind of interstate in the 1-440 corridor would be unacceptable because of excess, noise, traffic, pollution: and the decreased usability; and livability of homes close to I-440. M.E. BROWN 2215 30th S. 37212 Judge Johnson Bows Out Darter: Unjust Cause Victim To the Editor: Many people of Tennessee were disappointed that President Carter vetoed funding for the Clinch River breeder-reactor demonstration plant.

Carter, a former nuclear physicist, is concerned about the by-product, plutonium, that the breeder-reactor would produce. Plutonium is one of the deadliest substances known and this man-made radioactive fuel can be converted for use in atomic weapons. Atomic weapons proliferate the arms race leading to war, destruction, and genocide. Now many people in Tennessee are pleased that the U.S. Supreme Court is going to review the Tellico Dam-snail darter dispute.

Should the court rule in favor of the snail darter, I wonder what the cry of the people will be. winter approaching, Tellico will be able to provide enough electricity to neat 20,000 valley with the breeder-reactor there will be jobs and monies funnelled into the economy." Let us not be deceived. My point is this: Is not life the more important thing even if it is the life of helpless fish? grounds, and both black and white people were present. A diversity of professional and non-professional people participated. The spirited group was orderly and neatly dressed On the arena floor 1000 folding chairs were set up.

All aisles were filled with people. Some left the arena because there was no standing room. Fifty chartered buses went from Tennessee with 13 going from Nashville. The women from Nashville rode buses for two straight nights and traveled approximately 1,556 miles. At the arena some enthusiast carried signs with phrases such as, "Abortion? No.

Adoption? Yes." or "God made Adam for Eve not for Steve." After an invocation, reciting the pledge of allegiance and singing our national anthem, we were welcomed to Houston by a former mayor. A vote on four resolutions to be presented to Congress was taken. Five men and five women of outstanding reputation spoke on important topics. We were only five miles away from the IWY convention to voice our support for life, family and NANCY TACKITT 720 Reeves Road Antioch 37013 Victory then to the environmentalists as they take up the cry of the tiny darter. As a pro-lifer, let me unite my voice with theirs, and invite all to join me before the court too, with the cry of the aborted, the cry of the purged, the cry of the battlefield dead and all those who suffer for unjust cause.

MRS. H. PAT BENTRUP 107 Lauderdale Road 37205 IWY Coverage Disappointment To the Editor: I am one of about 15,000 people who assembled at the Astro Arena in Houston, Texas Nov. 19 for the common cause in protest to the ERA movement, and I'm one of many Nashvillians who were disappointed with the newspaper coverage of the rally that took place there. Enlightened and concerned women travelled from all directions of the country representing 98 of the states.

They were from different religious and ethnic back- U.S. DISTRICT Judge Frank M. Johnson has withdrawn as the nominee for FBI director, which is regrettable, but is probably a wise decision. Judge Johnson was a good choice. His credentials are excellent and his reputation as a fair-minded protector of justice and law is well known.

But shortly after he was nominated to head the FBI, Judge Johnson went for a medical check up and it was discovered that he had an aneurism in the main abdominal artery. He went to Houston for surgery. However, his recovery from the operation has been slow and it appeared that he would not be able to undergo the confirmation hearings and that there would be a considerable delay. According to Attorney General Griffin Bell, Judge Johnson did not think that would be fair to the FBI and to himself to delay, and on his own decision withdrew. Attorney General Bell said he will let the "dust settle" for about two weeks before deciding how to go about choosing the administration's next nominee to be FBI director.

One of the things that should go into the selection process has been suggested by Judge Johnson himself. He said he believes that medical examinations shou'd be mandatory for all presidential nominees. His own experience makes that rather plain. A award will be made tor a well written letter, designated by three stars, and does not Indicate agreement or disagreement with the writer's point of view. Letters should be addressed "Letters to the Editor." and must be signed and bear the address of the writer, which will be printed.

Anonymous letters will not be considered tor publication. Letters will be edited II necessary lor space limitations..