Policy Documents  If It Itches, Scratch It!  Conrad F. Meier –
February 1, 1998  My Uncle Herman, a German emigre, taught me
valuable lessons about life and liberty while I worked on his
farm during the summers of my youth. He told me itching skin was
a sign of something bugging you. If it crawls on you, smack it;
if you can't see it, scratch it, he counseled.  In 1988,
something happened to our Medicare system that bugged me then as
it does today: the federal government started taking control of
senior citizens' health care. Since I lacked the means (though
not the desire) to smack Congress, I started scratching . . . I
began writing about health care issues. Letters to my
congressmen became letters to the editor, and then full-fledged
policy analyses.  The 1988 event that prompted all this
scratching was passage of the Catastrophic Health Care Reform
Act, an odious piece of legislation that would have shifted a
significant portion of the Medicare premium expense onto senior
citizens. Though the federal gove