Letter from Washington

The Capitol Hill health lobby has opened an of fensive designed to break up HEW before Secretary David Mathews becomes sufficiently entrenched to block the effort. Representative Paul Rogers (D., Fla.) has reintroduced—and this time intends to push—legislation creating a separate Department of Health. And in the Senate, Edward Kennedy has mounted a strong drive to create a Drugs and Devices Administration, which would effectively remove the FDA from direct HEW control. So far, Mathews has been mum on both moves, mainly, say some of his unkinder critics, because he doesn’t quite understand them. The consensus seems to be that Mathews is an amiable and intelligent man, a good academic administrator, but not up to running a monster like HEW. “I feel like you sold me a car without a steering wheel,” he told the President after his first forty days in office. “I’ve got all these people telling me to turn right, turn left, speed up, slow down . . .” According to HEW staffers, that’s still the problem. Mathews just can’t seem to find that steering wheel, much less the brakes.

Senator Henry Jackson, startling many supporters, has belatedly leapt aboard the health-care bandwagon. He has announced support for Representative Rogers’ proposed Department of Health and enthusiastically endorsed the Kennedy-Corman sperm-to-worm program of National Health Insurance. Reason for Jackson’s sudden leap: the Florida primary, which is the now-or-never test of his candidacy. Washington oddsmakers are betting that Jack-son will run a poor third, behind Wallace and Carter, in that order. If so, Scoop is sunk. As usual, he is failing to stir voter interest, and his advisors believe it essential to find new issues. Hence, Kennedy-Corman. Florida is Mecca for middle-income retirees. Most of them are eligible for Medicare, but Medicare requires an initial fee for hospitalization and will pay only up to certain limits for hospital services, drugs, and doctors. Kennedy-Corman would pay for it all, with no cutoffs. As to the argument that we just can’t afford it—an argument recently advanced in one form or another by Gerald Ford, the Washington Post, and much of the Democratic leadership— well, Jackson answers it with the sort of unfortunate statement that helps explain why he has trouble igniting voters: “We must act today for it would be too expensive to delay.”

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The Capitol Hill health lobby has opened an of fensive designed to break up HEW before Secretary David Mathews becomes sufficiently entrenched to block the effort. Representative Paul Rogers (D., Fla.) has reintroduced—and this time intends to push—legislation creating a separate Department of Health. And in the Senate, Edward Kennedy has mounted a strong drive to create a Drugs and Devices Administration, which would effectively remove the FDA from direct HEW control. So far, Mathews has been mum on both moves, mainly, say some of his unkinder critics, because he doesn’t quite understand them. The consensus seems to be that Mathews is an amiable and intelligent man, a good academic administrator, but not up to running a monster like HEW. “I feel like you sold me a car without a steering wheel,” he told the President after his first forty days in office. “I’ve got all these people telling me to turn right, turn left, speed up, slow down . . .” According to HEW staffers, that’s still the problem. Mathews just can’t seem to find that steering wheel, much less the brakes.

Senator Henry Jackson, startling many supporters, has belatedly leapt aboard the health-care bandwagon. He has announced support for Representative Rogers’ proposed Department of Health and enthusiastically endorsed the Kennedy-Corman sperm-to-worm program of National Health Insurance. Reason for Jackson’s sudden leap: the Florida primary, which is the now-or-never test of his candidacy. Washington oddsmakers are betting that Jack-son will run a poor third, behind Wallace and Carter, in that order. If so, Scoop is sunk. As usual, he is failing to stir voter interest, and his advisors believe it essential to find new issues. Hence, Kennedy-Corman. Florida is Mecca for middle-income retirees. Most of them are eligible for Medicare, but Medicare requires an initial fee for hospitalization and will pay only up to certain limits for hospital services, drugs, and doctors. Kennedy-Corman would pay for it all, with no cutoffs. As to the argument that we just can’t afford it—an argument recently advanced in one form or another by Gerald Ford, the Washington Post, and much of the Democratic leadership— well, Jackson answers it with the sort of unfortunate statement that helps explain why he has trouble igniting voters: “We must act today for it would be too expensive to delay.”