osmeticurgery
Over 50 years continuous experience
E. Sabbagh, M.D.
C. Choi, M.D.
R. Rifai, M.D.
W. Sabbagh, M.D.
Before face lift
After face lift
JAMES D. BESSER WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT
I
•Specializing in all facial, nose & body surgery & liposuction
•View hundreds of our before & after photographs
•Obagi Skin Rejuvenation Program
•Accredited Office Surgical Suite (AAAHC)
• Doctors on staff at Straith Hospital (JCAHO accredited)
• Free initial consultation/brochure
Val/ Or next seminar,
After Rhitiopiasty
17100 W. 12 Mile Rd, Southfield, MI 48076
Shredded Safety Net
Affects Fiscal Tightrope
(810) 557-1622
Above photographs are Straith Clinic patients
Announcing our new location in January 1996!
32000 Telegraph Rd., Bingham Farms, MI (at 13 1 2 Mile)
WE ARE GROWING!
AMERIND EYE MITITUTE
Total Family Eye Care
Maitin I. AR*, MD, • Michael Y. Greenlet', M,D, • Amy B. Elton, M,D,
Are Pleased To Announce The Opening
Of Another Location For Complete Eye Care
Commerce Medical Center
8391 Commerce Road #112
Commerce Township, MI 48382
2 Miles East of Huron Valley Hospital
(810-360-7300)
Our Southfield Location
28905 Northwestern Highway, Southfield, MI 48034
(810-358-3937)
Next time you feed your face, think about your head.
Go easy on your heart and start cutting back on foods that are high in saturated
fat and cholesterol. The change'il do you good.
I, American Heart Msociation
WERE FIGHTING FOR YOUR LIFE
n Washington, political dis-
cussions these days rarely get
much beyond Colin Powell's
presidential aspirations and
the apocalyptic battle of the bud-
get taking place on Capitol Hill.
Mr. Powell's candidacy could
fade as the Christian right exer-
cises its veto power in the Re-
publican Party; the fight between
President Bill Clinton and the Re-
publican Congress over funda-
mental questions of government
activism already is producing
consequences that will affect
Americans for years to come.
As the nation approaches this
major crossroads, the overheat-
ed political rhetoric is making it
more difficult by the day to see
the direction signs and hazard
warnings.
' For example, Democrats insist
— not without reason — that Re-
publican plans to trim Medicare
and Medicaid would harm mil-
lions of middle-income seniors,
all in the interests of giving big
tax breaks to the rich.
Republicans cry foul; all they
are doing, they say, is cutting the
growth of Medicare and making
programs more efficient. The re-
sults, they argue, will include bet-
ter medical care, not worse.
Jewish community agencies
are trying to figure out what all
this will mean for their clients —
the elderly, the disabled, children,
ordinary middle-class Jews
whose lives have been turned
around by corporate and govern-
ment "downsizing."
The exact answers are too en-
tangled in political hype to be
clear, too obscured by the fact
that the nation is moving into
wholly uncharted territory.
But the broad factors at play
in this high-stakes debate are
plain for the Jewish agencies that
will face daunting new challenges
in this uncertain new era.
The first factor is the obvious
one: Congress is in a headlong
rush not only to cut the budget,
but to eliminate the very concept
of entitlements — a moral re-
alignment of the nation, not just
a policy shift.
The real legacy of the Great So-
ciety and the War on Poverty is
the idea that our government has
a clear moral obligation to assist
the least fortunate among us.
Medicare and Medicaid are
classic entitlement programs.
Their creation and growth re-
flected a tremendous change in
philosophy for a nation that had,
in the past, relied primarily on
private charity for social welfare
= -aroliarice that consigned hun-
dredg ofthaisands of the- elderly
to substandard nursing homes
and woefully inadequate medical
care.
Those and other entitlement
programs were created in re-
sponse to real and shameful
shortcomings in social policy, not
because of voracious government
bureaucrats seeking to expand
their fiefdoms. Most Jews un-
derstand that the good old days
promised by some Republican
lawmakers were not very good
for most people, and particular-
ly not for minorities and the poor
and the fixed-income elderly.
A second broad factor is the
popular argument that local and
state governments can provide
better and more efficient services,
the official justification for today's
"block grant" approach to budget
cuts.
There is something appealing
about the idea that close-to-home
government is more responsive
than a faceless federal bureau-
cracy; just ask anyone who has
ever faced an Internal Revenue
Most Jews
understand that the
good old days
promised by some
Republican
lawmakers were not
very good for most
people.
Service audit, or tried to track
down a missing Social Security
check. But before the 1960s,
many states provided almost
nothing in the way of social, ed-
ucation and health care services;
there is no evidence that what
they did provide was delivered
with honesty or efficiency.
And some included overt dis-
crimination in their menu of pro-
grams; the rise of federalism
made it harder for places such as
Mississippi to deny entire class-
es of people access to vital ser-
vices.
A third factor is the fact that
the rise of federal programs has
given the Jewish community a
chance to devote a dispropor-
tionate share of its resources to
what we should regard as luau-
, ries — supporting Israel, giving
money to projects promoting con-
tinuity and Jewish education,
helping distressed Jewish pop- -
ulatimis in.otlre, sowtlies._