Word: progressive
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...America in 1988 a mature product? That is: Has it reached certain stations of progress to which dreamy visions are simply inapplicable? I am far from suggesting that the country has arrived at perfection, only that its most serious problems have attained stages of growth where no single comprehensive view may intelligently embrace them. Vision these days may be the modern equivalent of the prairie; it is what an empire looks for when it wishes to recall the thrill of expansion, and yet has no place to expand...
...natural limits as well. Incidents such as the Howard Beach killing in New York City serve to remind us that race hatred is ready to bubble up anywhere, but the fact that the nation almost universally responded to Howard Beach as a disgrace and an outrage suggests how much progress, not how little, the ideal of equality has made. Thanks to the ardor of three administrations, the necessary civil rights laws are in place and enforceable, and the nonlegalistic thinking about social justice has advanced immeasurably. Any Jew, Hispanic or Asian American looking back uncomfortably to life in the 1950s...
Some U.S. experts believe such confidence is premature, yet they are following the Soviets' progress with interest. Only five years ago, two cosmonauts returned from 211 days in space suffering from dizziness, high pulse rates and heart palpitations. They were unable to walk for a week, and a month later they were still undergoing therapy to strengthen atrophied muscles and weakened hearts. Without gravity to work against, muscles -- including the heart muscle -- begin to waste away, and calcium, for reasons that are poorly understood, leaches out of the bones...
This encouraging progress was undermined, however, as people began turning from hospitals to neighborhood clinics and doctors' offices. Since those providers of health care were not constrained by the same cost controls that had been imposed on hospitals, they were in many cases able to charge higher fees. Patients did not mind, because generally they were paying at most 20% of the cost...
...help corporations hold down medical costs, a whole new industry of medical efficiency experts has sprung up to track employee health care. Cost Care, based in Huntington Beach, Calif., monitors medical treatment for 4,000 U.S. companies. The doctors and registered nurses who work for the firm follow the progress of hospitalized patients and sometimes give advice on appropriate treatment. Cost Care boasts that it can cut corporate health costs as much...