Tilting at Windmills.

• Author: PETERS, CHARLES

Marxist Medicine * Bankrupt in Bushland * Permanent Temps * Two Sleepy Pilots * Litigious Jurists

THE TEXAS HOMESTEAD Exemption tells you a lot about George W. Bush. He's for it. And it isn't good. It makes it possible for bankrupts to cheat their creditors by putting all their money into a house. Even if it's worth millions. Most states have a limit on the amount bankrupts can squirrel away in the form of a luxury home. But not Texas. Indeed, nowhere in Bushland. The only other big state that offers millionaires this escape hatch is Florida, where George W.'s brother Jeb occupies the state house.

FEDERAL JUDGES THOUGHT they were being underpaid. What did they do? Exactly what most Americans do when they have a grievance. They sued.

Where did they sue? In federal court. Hmmm. Doesn't that raise just a tiny bit of a conflict of interest issue? Well, if it does, it didn't bother U.S. District Judge John Garrett Penn who ruled resoundingly this summer in favor of his brethren on the bench: "This Court concludes that history, precedent, and the law can lead to only one result"--pay raises for us all.

THE WASHINGTON TIMES IS A very conservative paper that seldom acknowledges even the possibility of something good resulting from a federal expenditure. So I was delighted by a story by Kristan Trugman of the Times that attributes a rise in drunken driving arrests to an increase in federal funding. It seems that an increase in federal funds has permitted police departments to provide overtime pay for officers conducting roadblocks and other procedures designed to catch drunken drivers. The federal funds for this purpose rose from $165 million in 1997 to $226 million in 1998. The result was that the number of drunken driving arrests jumped from 14,890 in 1997 to 17,572 in 1998. I hope the editors of the Times and other conservatives will ponder those facts. Automatic opposition to federal expenditures really doesn't make much sense.

IF YOU, LIKE US, favor a national health care plan similar to the Canadian system, you will be pleased by the concluding paragraph of a recent article about HMOs in the Journal of the American Medical Association. After declaring the "experiment with market medicine ... a failure," it continues:

"The drive for profit is compromising the quality of care, the number of uninsured persons is increasing, those with insurance are increasingly dissatisfied, bureaucracy is proliferating, and costs are again rapidly escalating. We believe national health insurance deserves a second look"

Long ago--in fact in a 1973 article by James Fallows--this magazine's position was proclaimed in the headline "Better Red Than Dead" But we never expected that the AMA would agree that the market is not good medicine.

IF YOU HAVE RESERVATIONS ON Delta Airlines, don't count on their being honored. In the first three months of this year, Delta bumped 8,144 passengers. The next worst airline bumped only 1,938.

SPEAKING OF THE AIRLINES, did you see the stead Associated Press report about sleeping on American Airlines? a lot We're not talking about George passengers peacefully dozing. We're talking about pilots. "When I woke up, I looked over at the captain. He was sound asleep," one copilot wrote in a report to his union. The next time you're flying at night say a silent prayer for the automatic pilot. He may be your only hope.

ANOTHER FLAW IN OUR SYSTEM of health care was revealed in a recent report by June Brown, the Inspector General of HHS. It finds "major deficiencies" in our current system of hospital oversight. These deficiencies are not just matters of careless paperwork. They involve negligence that results in injury or death for patients. In just one state--New York--in just one year--1984--hospital negligence was found by Harvard researchers to have caused 6,895 deaths and 27,179 injuries.

Eighty percent of U.S. hospitals are overseen by the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO). This group is funded by...