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GUEST COLUMN
(5/14/2007)
Access to Essential Services, or Just Do-Gooders?
BY CINDY FLAKOLL CONCERNED WOMEN FOR AMERICA SOUTH DAKOTA Twenty-five years ago when I worked in a Midwestern hospital, I recall the welfare-recipient mothers of children with mere colds flocking to the local pediatrician who was willing to admit their children to the hospital for an occasional weekend---simply because the mothers said they “needed a break.” I had been forewarned by co-workers about this situation. Then I started seeing it with my own eyes, and I became a believer, because it was so very obvious that this really was occurring. Along came Diagnosis-related Groupings (DRGs), those controversial regulations that at least did a bit of good by helping to curb needless hospitalizations such as these. DRGs were designed for Medicare as the initial plan for the federal prospective payment system in 1983. Back to that pediatrician - are we seeing even more do-gooder types like that pediatrician as we move along in the 21st century? It appears so to me. Here in South Dakota there appears to be quite a contingent of people who think the government should step into arenas once left to parents and the private sector. They seem to think if a program is good for one family, why shouldn’t the government, and ultimately the taxpayer, implement the same program to benefit all families? Just think of the good to our state and all of society, they say. Universal preschool is their plan—publicly-funded preschool in every public school in South Dakota. This universal program, they say, will benefit not only families, but it will provide jobs by employing people who have already been trained---at taxpayer expense. The program, they say, will fit into the public mold for education that we have now, making it easy for this contingent to supervise. This program must be implemented, they say, or families will flounder; the economy will turn sour, and the sky will fall. This contingent fails to tell us that hard-working, private citizens will be displaced from their jobs when this universal program takes effect. The contingent fails to tell us that private preschool programs already in place will suffer enrollment losses, and many will close their doors. This contingent fails to tell us that we are already paying for a portion of this new program because the contingent has been shuffling funds around for years when we (silly us) thought our dollars were earmarked for something specific, like special needs—but not this new universal program. The contingent says families can have it all if parents will just trust in them to take over their parenting role. We know better than you parents or those you place your trust in now, they say. We will turn your children from ugly ducklings into swans for you, they say. Fear not, for we are big brother and nanny state neatly packaged, they say, and we must kick this can down this aisle, our aisle---not your aisle, they say. Soon parents who fear their children will miss out on opportunities start falling in line. Some private programs jump on board as well, since the contingent sees to it that for now the private entities are funded, too. The hard-working citizens whom the parents had originally trusted with the care of their small children become displaced and fail to live meaningful lives because their life’s work has been snatched from them. They can no longer care for children in their private homes or home-based preschools because they have been regulated out of business or undercut by the government’s free-for-all “preschool industry.” Years later, the sky comes crashing down. The government was receiving thousands of letters of protest from the taxpayers who screamed that their tax burden was out of hand. The economy failed to show the expected gains because the state’s children grew into aggressive and undisciplined adults. Crime was up, not down as predicted. The utopian plan had failed--not because the contingent failed in its mission. The do-gooders had checked off everything in their plan. They had made their lists and checked them twice. They had given jobs to all of their friends and received awards from national organizations for filling their quotas. No, the plan did not fail because the planners hadn’t done their best. It failed because the family, the foundation and bedrock of society, had become transformed beyond repair and even beyond recognition. Parents were left wondering what went wrong. But it was the children who suffered the most. Woes to us---the ugly ducklings have returned—with a vengeance.
Cindy Flakoll is a farm/ranch wife in McPherson County. She is also Legislative Liaison for Concerned Women for America of South Dakota. Concerned Women for America, a women's public policy organization, has more than 500,000 members nationwide.
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