The Courier-News from Bridgewater, New Jersey • Page 9

THE COURIER-NEWSWdntday. May 12. 1982 A-9 Keep baseball sacred Britain's experiment Private health care's comeback By BOB GREENE By RUDOLF KLEIN AnalysisOpinion LONDON Britain has pioneered socialized medicine, which furnishes free treatment to all its citizens. But, paradoxically, the British are currently turning in droves to private health care. Medical insurance companies are fiercely competing for customers with television and newspaper advertising campaigns, and doctors are banding together to construct their own private clinics.

About 20 such hospitals are now being built throughout the country, three of them by American firms with keen noses for profit. This would all be taken for granted in the United States. Here in Britain, however, it seems to strike a discordant note. For the National Health Service, started at the end of World War II, was designed to make it unnecessary for anyone to pay for medical care. It is a tax-financed institution that offers everyone treatment without charge.

On the surface, then, it would appear that socialized medicine has been a failure. Or so argue its critics, who have long contended that a government-run system would sooner or later become either inadequate or profligate. But that conclusion is not supported by the evidence. For despite its expansion within recent years, the private medical sector still remains relatively small. And, in my opinion, it is not likely to take over.

Spending on private treatment represents less than 5 percent of the total expenditure on health care in Britain. Only one out of every 16 British citizens is covered by a private medical plan, and private hospital beds are outnumbered by those in public hospitals by a ratio of 14 to one. In reality, private health care supplements rather than rivals socialized medicine. It offers minor treatment rapidly, but it cannot match the National Health Service for sophisticated high technology- Thus socialized medicine has been outstandingly successful in its ability to contain costs. The British devote less expensive and prolonged treatment.

Under the National Health Service, moreover, doctors are permitted to take on private patients. So they can add to their incomes, and that relieves the burden on the government to pay them extravagant wages. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government has evidently reached the conclusion that private and socialized medicine can coexist fruitfully- Initially committed to rolling back the welfare state, she sent civil servants abroad to study alternative methods of financing health care. But she has retreated from her original pledge to change. She and her cabinet now stress the interdependence of the private and socialized medical systems, and there is no longer any talk of cutting the National Health Service budget.

Accordingly, the popularity of private health care in Britain is in no way a repudiation of socialized medicine. It serves, rather, as a reminder that the two are quite compatible in a mixed economy that fulfills both consumer needs and desires. Rudolf Klein is professor of social policy studies at the University of Bath. than 6 percent of their national income on health care, in contrast to the United States, where the figure is approaching 10 percent. This predicated on the fundamental philosophy of the National Health Service: Instead of catering to consumer demands, it strives to meet their needs as defined by professionals.

The service, therefore, is quick and efficient in handling the acutely ill. There is no waiting when it comes to a heart attack. But it tends to neglect its treatment of patients whose lives are not in danger. A person seeking orthopedic or plastic surgery, for example, can wait four or five months for an operation. National Health Service doctors work on salary, and they have no need to maximize their operations which is, incidentally, probably safer for their patients.

The principal appeal of private care, on the other hand, is to those to whom time represents money. It also attracts those who want to choose their own physician and hospital, neither of which they can do under the National Health Service. The irony in all this, however, is that private and socialized medicine rely on each other. Private medical care is commercially viable only because the socialized sector takes the responsibility for A terrible thing is happening to the boys of America. It concerns baseball gloves.

Two new models of baseball gloves are being manufactured by a firm called Mizuno. The gloves will be tested on the college level this year and assuming they work out, will be manufactured in large numbers in the near future. The first glove features polarized see-through webbing to shield glare from the sun. The idea is that, if a boy is chasing a fly ball on a bright afternoon, he can hold the glove up, sight the ball through the polarized portion (which looks like a tainted windshield), and make the catch. The second glove is a catcher's mitt that has an electronic device built into it.

The catcher decides what kind of pitch he wants the pitcher to deliver. Then he presses a button. The signal is electronically transmitted to the pitcher's glove; the pitcher looks down at his glove, and his own electronic device tells him what to throw. Now progress is progress, but some things are sacred. And few things are more sacred than a boy's relationship with his first baseball glove.

In a very real sense, when a boy slips his first baseball glove onto his hand, it is the official notification to the world that he is a baby no more. When he trots to the outfield even though he is only on his neighborhood playground he does so with the imaginary sound of a major league crowd in his ears. He knows that when he hears the crack of the bat and sees that white ball lofting toward him, there is perhaps for the first time in his life no one to help him. No mom, no dad. He is alone out there with that baseball glove, and if he does not circle beneath the ball and catch it, his team will be in trouble.

For the rest of his life he will be dealing with the idea of responsibility, and this is his initiation into what that feels like. For generations, the baseball gloves that have been a part of this process have changed little. They have been oddly shaped hunks of leather mitts and their major function has been to protect the boy's bare hand. They are stiff and unwieldly when first purchased; but through use and loving care, they mold themselves to the hand, and eventually become as form-fitting and supple as a favorite pair of jeans. There are few feelings in this world more satisfying than getting up from the bench when your team's turn at bat is over, moving toward the field, and pulling your glove onto your hand.

And now, this. A glove with a built-in glare shield. A catcher's mitt with an electronic transmitter attached. This is unnatural. This is wrong.

When a boy is chasing down a fly ball on a July afternoon, he is not supposed to have a glare shield to help him. If he's lucky, his baseball cap will help to block the sun: if the cap won't do it, then he can use his hands to keep the sun away until the last moment. When a catcher has a message for his pitcher, he is not supposed to send it via electronic impulses. He flashes a few fingers down near the dirt behind home plate, and the pitcher squinting as he stares the distance from the mound reads those fingers and knows what to do. That is how it has always been, and that is how it was meant to be.

Baseball for boys is not about sophisticated equipment; it is about self-reliance and learning how to fend for oneself. I remember, when I was first learning to play baseball, I came home one day after an unsuccessful afternoon in the field; I told my father that some of the other boys had fancier, more expensive gloves than mine, and that I needed one of those gloves in order to compete with them. His answer: "A poor workman blames his tools." A mite rough, it seemed at the time. But in retrospect it was precisely the correct answer; a man cannot go through life blaming outside elements for his lack of success; if you're going to be any good at something, it's going to be because of Fprfl Prescriptions fMl OPEN DULY. 9 PM SATURDAY 9 AM-8 PM SUNDAY 9 AM-6 PM ll Vtfl 111 I II L.

rU "-L. 4 II what you bring to the endeavor from within yourself, not because of some way you figure to make that endeavor easier. I'm sure the trend here will go against the point of this little essay; undoubtedly, in years to come, America's playground will be filled with boys wearing gloves with sun shields, and gloves with electronic signal transmitters, and who knows maybe even gloves with computers that lead the wearer to precisely the spot in the outfield where the ball is going to drop. The boys are children of an age when technological advancement is being used to make virtually every human endeavor easier and more foolproof; in all areas of life, it is possible to purchase goods that make effortless that which once was challenging. Or so it seems.

It is hard to blame the boys; they are growing up in a time when every message they get from society tells them that life can be easy for the asking. But I feel sorry for those boys; if life is going to be made easier for them at such a young and important age, then they're going to be missing some very important lessons that would help them later on. There are no glare shields in the real world, and only poor workmen blame their tools, and if they aren't allowed to figure that out now, it will surely come back to haunt them later. Bob Greene is a syndicated columnist. till IIS Hit II Jjjj 11 gJ WITH TUFTED CUSHIONS Today in history highlight in Today's history: Capets WM Point Prppt'rvll CAflPET A NO UG DIVISION DA it ON GEORGIA 30720 MOLD FOR 1 fiS ROUHD REDWOOD fWXT 40 LB.

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Pheasant I On May 12, 1975, the U.S. government announced that a Cambodian naval ship had seized the U.S. merchant ship "May-aguez" in the international waters off the Cambodian coast. In 1536, several alleged paramours of Queen Anne Boleyn went on trial for treason in England. In 1774, the Boston Committee of Correspondence proposed that all American colonies suspend trade with Britian.

In 1938, Germany recognized the emperor of Manchukuo; on the same day, Japanese warships captured the Chinese island of Amoy. And in 1961, the United States of the Congo was founded, with Leopoldville as the capital. Ten years ago: a British ship collided with a Liberian tanker off Argentina, killing 83 people. Five years ago: a pipeline rupture and fire at a Saudi Arabian oilfield temporarily cut off more than half of the nation's petroleum production. Today's brithdays: Baseball hall-of-famer Yogi Berra is 57 years old.

Songwriter Bert Bacharach is 53. And Comedian George Carlin is 44. Thought for today: Goodness is the only investment that never fails. Henry David Thoreau, U.S. writer (1817-1862).

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