4A - The Michigan Daily - Thursday, October 12, 1995 % UEbe friigrn aig -20 Maynard Street MICHAEL ROSENBERG 'Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Editor in Chief dited and managed by JULIE BECKER ' students at the JAMES M. NASH %tniversity of Michigan Editorial Page Editors U ess otherwise noted, unsigned editorials reflect the opinion of a majority of the Daily's editorial board. All other articles, letters, and cartoons do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Michigan Daily. JuDITH KAFKA Tit FmNEPiuw 300,000 square feet ofsafety for domes&ic vioence survivors Makngthe area SF ounty residents address domestic violence ee months ago, apublicly funded shel- tax money, people in surrounding commun er for battered women, complete with ties will notice that domestic violence is n( 306drooms and children's center, opened something that can be tolerated on any leve in ?Washtenaw County. This SAFE House, The public is beginning to recognize th fu ed by a millage passed in 1992, gives domestic violence is a real and serious prof women a place to stay while ending an abu- lem. Consequently, communities are begi si relationship. County officials have taken ning to take serious steps to address tb thi.-rucial step toward curbing domestic problem at its source. violence and should be commended for it. The people of Washtenaw County haN $n a time when politicians engage in fierce set a valuable precedent that other commun debates on budget cuts, when tax complaints ties all over the nation should follow. B anong voters are the norm, it is highly sig- taking matters into their own hands, actin nit ant that the residents of Washtenaw citizens have shown that this problem cant C~nty pushed for the development of the stemmed at a local level. ne $3.5 million SAFE House. The govern- The addition of more SAFE houses w merit alone did not undertake this project. further aid survivors of domestic violence. Rap1er, it was the strength of a community Washtenaw County's initiative is followe taking the initiative to spend money to aid the success of SAFE house will be mirror survivors of domestic violence. across the state. In time, the federal goveri Battery by a spouse or partner is the lead- ment will be forced to take notice. Currentl ing cause of injury to women each year. The financial support from Washington to fig maority of women murdered in this country domestic violence is sparse. With the bu are victims of an abusive spouse or lover. At get-crunching mania, only a concerted effo legst half the time, this abuse carries over to from all corners of the country will give ti the woman's children. Perhaps most striking prevention of domestic violence the priori is that more than 70 percent of the violence it deserves in the federal budget. As Deni: occurs after the woman has left her tormen- Brown - sister of the late battered wi tor. These appalling statistics stress the need Nicole Brown Simpson -pointed out in h to protect women even after an abusive rela- visit this past weekend, federal educati tionship has ended. programs are badly needed in this fight. With a publicly supported place to stay, Domestic violence will not go awayt not only do abused women feel more com- itself. Citizens should be proud th fortable about seeking help, but public aware- Washtenaw County has taken the leadi ness of the problem increases greatly. When addressing this issue and actively workir a community pumps out nearly $4 million in toward the prevention of violence. ii- rat el. at ,b- in- he ve 1i- y ve be ,ill If d ' ed :n- ly, ht d- :rt he ity ise ife ier on by iat in ng have to admit, I was pleased to see all the media hounding the keynote speaker for the dedication of Washtenaw County's new SAFE House last Sunday. While part of me just wished they'd leave Denise Brown alone, the rest of me was glad that Nicole Brown Simpson's sis- ter was drawing so much attention. Literally hundreds of people showed up for the dedi- cation ceremony, and while it is difficult to say how many were there strictly to see the sister of the country's most famous abused wife, they all heard a poignant plea for action from someone touched by domestic violence and working to prevent more trag- edies from happening in the future. The backdrop to Denise Brown's heart- felt speech, in which she stressed the impor- tance ofeducation and awareness in fighting domestic violence, was proof of what can happen if people take the problem seriously and act to help fight it. The new SAFE House facility, funded by a voter-approved tax increase and believed to be the first publicly funded shelter in the country, stood as a symbol of hope even as the enormity of its mission became appar- ent. The old SAFE House, a converted home that provided overnight shelter for abused women and their children at an undisclosed location, could not adequately accommo- date the more than 1,200 women and chil- dren who use SAFE House for shelter, coun- seling or support each year. So in 1992 the voters of Washtenaw County agreed to put up the money to build a new one. The 30- bedroom, 50-bed, 300,000-square-foot building - no longer hidden, ("It's time for the batterer to hide in shame and thebattered women to be protected by the community," stated SAFE House's executive director) - stands as testimony to a growing public awareness and intolerance of domestic vio- lence. Yet amid the pride ofa community dedi- cated to the reduction of domestic violence was the reality of how much further we have to go. An estimated 3 to 4 million women in the United States are battered each year by their husbands or partners; domestic abuse is the single leading cause of injury to women; 52 percent of female homicide victims are killed by their male partners or former male part- ners. Most women do not seek help in shelters, but those who do usually report repeated and severe abuse. The majority have children with them. Now our current Congress wants to make seeking help all the more difficult to do. The Legal Services Corporation, a federally funded agency that provides free legal ser- vice for those who can't afford it, is sched- uled for vast budget cuts and restrictions. For battered women with no income, the corporation is often the only means of seek- ing legal protection and/or custody of their children if they leave their homes. Without legal aid, women who flee will be almost worse off by leaving, having no recourse to protect themselves or their children. Furthermore, legislators also want to cut federal funds for education on domestic vio- lence. Perhaps they don't realize that, unlike many of the other social problems they're trying to ignore, domestic violence knows no socioeconomic or racial boundaries. It happens in every type of home, to all kinds of sisters, mothers and daughters - prob- ably even to some of theirs. That's what Denise Brown was getting at this past weekend, and the message that she's spreading with her new foundation created to aid battered women: Domestic violence happens everywhere and providing education and resources is an important step in fighting it. If the cause receives more attention be- cause she is Nicole Brown Simpson's sister, so much the better. What a man holding a banner calling for an "O.J. boycott" didn't seem to understand, though, is that the SAFE House dedication was not about O.J. Simpson, and it wasn't really about Nicole either. It was about all the women still getting hit, slapped, punched, strangled,;,thrown around and beaten by their partners. It was about the children who witness this abuse, and are perhaps victims of it themselves. It was about a community's willingness to help and the result of their action. One of the speakers at Sunday's cer- emony said that when SAFE House's lease runs out in 50 years, they plan to make the facility into a museum; they're hoping that by then domestic violence will be but a thing of the past. People like Denise Brown and the voters of Washtenaw County are helping to make that goal come true, but it's going to take a" larger movement, on a national level, to really reduce, and eventually eliminate do- mestic violence. -Judith Kafka can be reached over e-mail atjkafka@umich.edu. Prime adjustments Congress needs to rethink inflation measures MATT WIMSATT .MooE'S DILEMMA *"Ve COMJ l NOABLE QUOTABLE "People don't understand that young women die." -Kathy Hagenian, assistant director of SAFE House P oliticians in Washington have suddenly discovered what many economists have been saying for years: The consumer price index (CPI), the government's most impor- tait inflation measure, overstates the cost of living. The impact of this realization is ex- traordinary - as Congress debates which programs should bear the brunt of budget cuts, a proper adjustment in how CPI is nasured could save billions. During a recent Senate Finance Commit- te meeting, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (I ;=N.Y.) suggestedthatthegovernmentcould sie$281 billion over the next seven years if tl :;iost-of-living adjustment (COLA) were bded on the CPI minus 1 percentage point. Ceantly, the COLA formula is the same as tle PI: A CPI that increases by 3 percent, fa:example, automatically boosts by the she percentage such federal expenditures a ocial Security payments, government p ions and earned-income tax credits. Trse increases, amounting to billions of d Iars a year, might be fair and reasonable if t dex accurately reflected the cost-of- li increases. Until CPI is adjusted prop- e smillions of dollars in entitlement in- c ewill continue to be allocated improp- e - while the entitlements themselves f cuts. L~e CPI is an imperfect measure ofinfla- tii which the Bureau of Labor Statistics cilates by keeping track ofconsumerprices r so-called basket of 364 categories of g s and services. Those prices are com- p " with what was charged for the same itm in a 1982-84 base period. The problem the CPI has to do with its failure to c ge as quickly as consumer buying hab- it :any people, for example, buy pork or TO CONTACT THEM poultry if beef becomes too expensive, but this shift is not immediately reflected in the index. Additionally, the mix in the CPI's basket of goods is updated approximately every 10 years, though consumers' buying habits change much faster than that. The end result is a cost of living index that is far removed from fiscal reality. The index, according to Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, "overestimates the true cost of living." By correcting this bias, the government could save billions, he calculates. Greenspan's conclusion is sup- ported by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). If this bias were corrected, the CBO claims, $634 billion would be wiped off the projected federal debt over the next 10 years. There is bipartisan agreement on the need to adjust the CPI. However, because tax brackets, the standard deduction on personal income taxes and personal exemptions for each member of a taxpaying family are in-! dexed to the CPI, changes to it are likely to be seen as a tax increase, although they are clearly not. Faced with the prospect of voter retaliation, neither Congress nor the White House seems willing to go at it alone. "Rea- soned adjustments (in the CPI) should be made," said Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), "but it will only happen if everybody sort of joins hands." With continued cuts to governmental agen- cies and social programs, along with pro- posed changes in Medicare and Medicaid, this suggestion is a common-sense approach toward balancing the budget while correct- ing an inaccurate inflation index. It would be a prudent act of fiscal restraint for Congress to explore correcting the CPI to accurately measure inflation. VIEWPOINT Why students need health care reform By Fiit Walness After the Clinton administra- tion introduced its health care re- form plan in 1992, Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas) demagogued that it would only pass over his "dead body." The past week has seen a similar reaction by some at the University, in response to a student health benefits plan that I have endorsed. The following in- formation should serve as the foundation for a more reasoned dialogue, one based on the premise that students need to work together to best determine their health-care needs. Thus far, most student re- sponse to health care reform has centered on the so-called Beckley Plan - the health care reform plan put forward by Colorado con- sultant Stephen Beckley. It is in- structive, though, to remember that Steve Beckley did not re- ceive the plan at the top of Mt. Sinai. That is, Beckley was not presenting gospel but simply try- ing to provide a structure to launch discussion. Although I agree with many of his recommendations, dealing with the minutiae of his plan is wholly premature. No health care reform plan would be presented to the Michigan Stu- dent Assembly - or to the Uni- versity Board of Regents - be- fore the latter half of second se- mester. In the interim, there will be more than ample time for pub- lic forums, constituent feedback and student suggestions. More- over, any health care reform plan should have students at the helm; one suggestion is to have elected students constitute the majority of the Board of Directors of any new health plan. First, though, it needs to be explained in more detail why the status quo is untenable. A survey conducted at the University indicates that at least 13 percent of graduate students are totally insured. Many more are underinsured, meaning that their deductibles are too high, they have no pre-existing condition coverage, they have no prescrip- tion drug coverage, they have in- complete catastrophic care cov- erage and/or totally inadequate benefits related to hospitalization, physician visits and mental health coverage. In addition, both un- dergraduate and graduate students have routinely indicated to me that their annual insurance rates with, say, my father's ailing 50- year-old assistant, under a stu- dent health benefits plan I would be pooled with other students. Hence my insurance rates would plummet to approximately $500 per year. Some students would right- fully ask: I already have good insurance; what would happen to me under this plan? The answer is a breath of fresh air. Immedi- ately, students opting out of this plan would receive a tuition cut of nearly $70. The reason is simple: We already have a man- datory health plan at the Univer- sity. It's called University Health Services (UHS). Conservatives should consider that UHS is clas- sic socialized medicine. We are all forced to put approximately $100 into abig pot, andthatmoney then goes to pay for preventive care for all of us. My approach is a free market approach, through which you'd only "purchase" UHS-care if you need it. Liberals should be satisfied also. Health care reform would insure universal coverage while simultaneously providing all stu- dents with the ability to choose a cheap, comprehensive health plan tailored to their needs. Again, No longer would some insurance company in Texas or California be determining what sort of ben- efits are valuable to you. Some have argued that we should simply augment or expand the current MSA plan offered to students. Unfortunately, this is an unfeasible alternative. The MSA plan costs little because it does little; essentially, it covers hospitalization for a couple weeks. The insurance agency through which we contract esti- mates that simply including cov- erage for such pre-existing con- ditions as asthma and diabetes in the plan would increase premi- ums threefold. An attorney once quipped that if it doesn't fit, you must acquit. The current University health care options don't fit; a jury of our peers needs to let them go. The issue is simple. We can either continue with the status quo, al- lowing more and more students (particularly students of color) to go without insurance, forcing more and more students to choose between going to school and pay- ing their health bills. Or we can agree that the current system serves the interests of no one, and needs to be fixed. Please join me University Housing Division Alan Levy, associate director a.