National Health Council studies long-term-care financing.

Governor Gloom's still at it. Former Colorado Governor Richard Lamm (D), now a professor at Denver University, held forth during the National Health Council forum in Philadelphia March 28-29. He boiled down the message previously recounted here. In a debate with Robert Butler, Chairman, Department of Geriatrics and Adult Development, Mt. Sinai Medical Center, New York City, he opposed a major new federal program of long-term care. He maintained that we should not aid people just because of age if they do not need help; after all, the elderly are better off than other age groups. In any case, we should not commit scarce resources to such hopeless cases as maintaining the biological lives of terminally-ill elderly; there are younger people who should be given priority. Those are parts of his program to rein in health-care costs, which have continued to escalate at an alarming rate far exceeding economic growth. It envisions the possibility of slower economic growth than in previous American history, and acknowledges other clamoring priorities.

Lamm's views resonated through the two-day forum, though as minority sentiments. Some speakers directly attacked him; most wanted to pull the healthcare system in the opposite direction.

Butler decried Lamm's economy-of-scarcity thesis. He favored a comprehensive program of longterm care financed by assorted taxes on wealth. Panelist Robert H. Binstock, Henry Luce Professor of Aging, Case Western University, denounced Lamm's view that the health-care system was at the end of its rope, contending that it was not finite. In another program, Joshua Wiener of the Brookings Institution went all the way. He called for a comprehensive national health insurance program including long-term-care, and financed by payroll taxation.

Wiener's presentation was of ...