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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (July 16, 1973)
_ .OREGON _ _ daily emerald World News & Sports Supplement Vol. 75 No. 9 Monday, July 16, 1973 |*ny m‘ HHw mirk Mobile health fair comes to poor people in Oregon Bv PATRICIA McCORMACK NEW YORK (UPI) — Today millions of parents did the automatic thing they do every day for their offspring. They put out their vitamin pills. Sometime before school starts, they’ll take them to the doctor for their annual physical. To the dentist for their annual checkup. To the eye doctor for a vision examination. If at some point around the calendar one of the children starts to limp, complains of muscle cramps, runs a fever or displays any abnormal physiological or psychological thing, they’ll call for help. Lots «_r places within these United States, however, families are too poor to call a doctor or see a dentist. Maybe no expert is near. The family doesn’t have a car or a way to get to a doctor far away. The family cannot afford the automatic health maintenance things either — vitamin pills, annual exams of eyes, teeth, entire body and all its vital systems. In extreme cases such neglect can be responsible for tiny teeth rotted to the gumline. It can be linked to preventable blindness. Tragic extreme cases occur in places where there’s little or no dental and medical action. Poor, out of the way towns and hamlets. The Rev. Williams Miller, director of Voluntary Services of the United Presbyterian Church, back in 1966 was touched by the high price of such neglect. He came up with the idea of mobile health fairs, manned by volunteers, for visits to the neglected communities. Five health fair teams will be roaming from small place to small place this summer. The major areas to be covered are in New Mexico-Colorado, Oklahoma-Arkansas, Ohio, New York State, and Oregon. The health fairs will be stopping at remote places such as Detroit, Ore.; Canjilon, N. Mex.; Gamer-Walsenburg, Colo,; Hartford, Ark., and a lot of other places you never knew existed. (Detroit is 52 miles southeast of Salem on Route 22.) The health education messages carried by the health fair teams are delivered in modem day medical Show style. There is a carnival atmosphere, maybe a per formance by a guitar-strumming gospel quartet or local country music combo. The event that draws the people always is planned with the help of leaders in the local community. Sometimes it is a covered-dish supper. There are balloons and other goodies for the children. According to Rev. Miller, a makeshift dental chair is set up under a shade tree or down by the railroad tracks, if that hap pens to be handiest. An eye exam is given in a church basement. The teams give out free literature — either from the established voluntary health associations or adapted for the remote-place audience by the church’s health volunteers. Rev. Miller said an offshoot of this (Continued on Page 6) Price, wage controls may shift this week By GENE CARLSON WASHINGTON (UPI) — It’s farewell to the price freeze this week, but a bigger economic issue remains unresolved: Will Americans be living with wage-price controls indefinitely or, as administration officials have hinted, will the nation’s latest experiment with economic stabilization be over by year’s end? Barring some last-minute complication, such as a worsening of President Nixon’s illness, the Phase IV economic program will be announced about mid-week. Nixon approved some parts of the program from his hospital bed Saturday and will make more decisions Monday, according to White House aides. The actual announcement probably will be made by Nixon’s chief economic ad visers: Treasury Secretary George Shultz, Cost of Living Council, Director John Dunlop, and Herbert Stein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. It’s conceivable that the freeze could remain in force on some parts of the economy and be lifted on others. Technically, the freeze can run until Aug. 13, a full 60 days. In either case, within a matter of days, consumers, businessmen and wage earners will have a new set of economic rules to learn. Therein-lies one of the biggest problems for the Nixon economic strategists. Should the rules be simple or complex? A price freeze is easy to understand and thus popular with consumers. Prices can’t go up. The COLC has allowed a handful of hardship exemptions in the past month - including price increases for a dog food and a potato chip company - but most firms have been stuck with the prices they 1 Inside this issue WORLD NEWS — The bicentennial of the union will be celebrated. — The strength of the Union is to be demonstrated by the diversity of celebrations of the bicentennial (page 4). — Major TV stations were rated by an outgoing FCC official according to programming and employment practices (page 3). — Americans migrating to Australia sometimes find it’s as easy to get into a rut there as it is anywhere (page 9). — In Lame Deer, Montana, the federal government tries to strike a delicate balance between interests of coal mining, ecological conservation, and Indians’ rights (page 5). — The headquarters of Special Watergate Investigator Cox are rigged along the lines of a James Bond parody (page 7). SPORTS — The college recruiting game has the NCAA busy investigating violations (page 12). — Secretariat won the Triple Crown and will go down in history as one of the greatest (page 11). were charging on June 13, no matter now much their costs have increased in the meantime. In Phase IV, however, prices will be allowed to rise by an amount yet un determined. Companies might be allowed to pass through their cost increases, or a fraction of that amount, in the form of higher prices. Or the administration c6uld set a flat guideline, such as the 2.5 per cent that existed during 1972 under Phase II. Wages, not covered under the current freeze, also will be restricted during Phase IV, probably to the 6.2 per cent anntial increase allowed during Phase II for wages and fringe benefits. But “cost pass throughs,” “profit margins” and “base periods,” all part of the current stabilization jargon, are confusing to the average consumer. Ar nold Weber, the first COLC director, has argued that a set of simple rules, highly publicized, is the best way to win popular support for the controls, a commodity that polls indicate now is sadly lacking. But many administration officials, especially Dunlop, are dead set against a single set of price and pay standards. So is organized labor. Dunlop argues that guidelines inhibit collective bargaining and encourages the press to grade every contract “pass” or “fail,” depending on whether it meets the wage standard, while ignoring other important issues. The duration of Phase IV is another unanswered question. It is generally conceded that replacing Phase II last January, when the demand for goods was strong, was chiefly responsible for the giant surge of inflation between January and May. The price freeze was Nixon’s attempt to halt this price boom while figuring out another type of controls. But economic conditions are even higher now than at thg first of the year. Many industries are running at capacity, con sumer demand remains high. Rampant inflation overseas plus two devaluations have made American goods more at tractive abroad, thus adding to demand pressures. In short, the situation is ripe for another price breakaway unless Phase IV can keep the lid on inflation. Nixon has said Phase IV will be tough, especially in the areas of food and gasoline. At the same time, however, there are increasing hints that Phase IV won't last long. The 10-member Labor Management Advisory Committee, an outside group that carries great weight in the ad ministration, said last week that “all wage and price controls should be eliminated as soon as possible this year.” Shultz, Nixon’s chief economic adviser, is a longtime foe of controls. So there will be great pressure within the administration in the next several months to move toward a control-free economy, even though polls continue to show “in flation” as the No. 1 worry of the American consumer.
