LEGISLATIVE FAILURE LIVES ON

The period following adjournment of an annual session of the Missouri General Assembly should probably be designated as Political Posture Week. During this period in question, there is more political posturing occurring than at any other time of the year. It need not be pointed out that this posturing has made its traditional appearance this year, following the recent legislative adjournment.

Thus, Missourians have been assured by no less a personage than Gov. Mel Carnahan that they would now be enjoying the benefits of a greatly improved health-care system were it not for the selfish interests of insurance companies. The assembly's minority leadership has claimed credit for stopping the excesses of the majority, while the latter has claimed that what was often called mediocre has somehow become historic.

Urban lawmakers have voiced the mantra that they achieved much of their program despite the unforgivable intolerance of their outstate peers, while those from rural areas were happy with whatever crumbs they were able to garner during the past four and one-half months.

There is never general agreement on the results of an annual session, except in one area. All of the parties involved and all of the parties assessing the statehouse achievements agree that "more could have been done." If any session were so adept and skillful that it could, in one year, solve every problem that existed in Missouri, there would still be those insisting that "more could have been done."

Posturing for and against a session's results is traditional, but not necessarily helpful. It provides political cover for the vulnerable, but sheds very little light on the subject for the governed, whose continuing problems go beyond political posturing, excuses and propagandizing.

Gov. Carnahan made it clear at the start of this year's session that the principal goal of his administration was the enactment of a health-care program designed to meet the needs of the uninsured and underinsured. He promised a full-fledged reform of Missouri's care delivery system and programs designed to meet every medical need of families. In a word, he promised too much, reminding many of us of his fellow Democrat in the White House, who is virtually a terminal patient of the disease of overpromise.

A program as broadly envisioned as the administration's health-care bill, HB 1622, needs all of the advantages it can gather to assure final consensus and passage. It needs to be broadly based, which the Carnahan plan was not, and it needs to be simple enough that average citizens can comprehend at least a majority of its provisions, and again the governor's bill was lacking. Proponents can rail all they want against the insurance lobby, but the truth is these folks would have been simpletons had they stood by idly while watching their companies become the whipping boys for skyrocketing insurance premiums and the snafus of a bureaucratic-dictated system.

In the view of some observers, including this one, the governor would have been wiser to have proposed a state plan that addressed the problem of uninsured Missourians, seeking special financing and instituting the single-payer system for this specific program. Besides, there are growing doubts that a national health-care program will continue Washington's current tolerance for comprehensive state plans. Thus Missouri would not be placed in the awkward position of having to dismantle a statewide initiative. To continue to insist on such a broadly based plan in light of its defeat this year and the possible federal intrusion threat seems sheer folly.

Missourians seemed to want their lawmakers to focus on the problems attached to a soaring crime rate than on any other single subject, and few would suggest that this desire was fully realized. Lawmakers did enact longer sentences for older felons, who commit a relatively small percentage of the vicious crimes that outrage our society today, but strangely avoided dealing in any meaningful way with those who commit by far the greater number of these crimes: criminals from the ages of 12 to 25.

Legislators did not protect society from the most vicious among us in part because of the short-sighted insistence that the right to carry concealed weapons was an anti-crime remedy. Allowing citizens of all ages to carry a weapon in their neighborhoods, at their places of employment and in areas where large numbers of people are gathered is not a deterrent to crime. If it were, then we should simply deputize the entire citizenry, return to the days of Wyatt Earp and feature High Noon encounters anywhere in our state. Crimes are committed for the most part against the aged and the weak, and arming these groups will not stop their plight but only serve to worsen it. We require long hours of training for police officers to handle weapons and learn when and how to use them, and brief training periods for thousands of untrained men and women will not add to our general safety.

Lawmakers decided to give the public an opportunity to build more prisons, which we undoubtedly need, but interestingly made no provision for adding extra police officers to protect our homes and communities. Today's society is frightened to death by crime but insufficiently motivated to vote added taxes to add enforcement officers. We pretend that changing the wording of a statute will deter offenses against the public, and this practice is known in psychiatric circles as self-delusion. It is shared equally by the public and its servants in Jefferson City.

This session enacted what was called a welfare reform bill, and given the tender mercies we seldom grant to the poor and minorities in our land, this is a significant achievement. This particular measure takes a tiny step toward the idea of individual initiative and self-sufficiency, but it will take years under its provisions to reach nirvana. Its critics contend, with unfortunate accuracy, that the present system is the least expensive in terms of money. They forget that in terms of human dignity and progress, it is the most expensive to the recipients. No one can be certain that Missouri will ever travel the long, difficult road to true reform.

The 1994 session is over. Its failures live on.