A weekly look at noteworthy addresses...

A weekly look at noteworthy addresses in the Southland. Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop spoke Tuesday night at the Miramar Sheraton Hotel in Santa Monica. His speech was sponsored by the Flora L. Thornton Community Health Education Lecture Series in cooperation with St. John’s Community Education Department. Koop was U.S. surgeon general in the Reagan Administration from 1981 to 1989. From his address: Medical-Industrial Complex “ . . . Warning: The American health care system could be dangerous to your health! . . . There is no system to the way that Americans scramble for health care. Sometimes, looking back on what President Eisenhower said when he left office, I wonder if we should update those remarks and say something like this: Beware of the unwarranted influence of the medical-industrial complex.

“First of all, we have high expectations for medicine and health. We have put a great deal of faith into new pharmaceuticals, new surgical procedures, new technologies of all sorts, and we continue to have faith in what I like to call ‘the magic of medicine.’ We routinely expect miracles to happen even though in actual life we are not always able to deliver. The debate we have is . . . about our aspirations versus our resources. For too many Americans the health non-care system is a tyranny and at times it is more of a curse than a blessing.”

The Uninsured and the Uninsurable “Twelve to 15% of your fellow Americans, 33 to 37 million people, are uninsured, under-insured or seasonally insured; they are not old enough for Medicare and they are not poor enough for Medicaid. . . . While some are unemployed, most of them are the working poor; people whose incomes are too low to live on, but too high to qualify for Medicaid.

“What does our health care system do for these uninsured people? The answer is--absolutely nothing. And they are suffering the consequences. . . . the uninsured die three times more frequently in hospitals than the insured.”

Looking Ahead Saturday: Margaret Thatcher, former British prime minister, will address the Los Angeles World Affairs Council at 7 p.m. at the Biltmore Hotel. For more information, call (213) 628-2333.

Monday: Yitzhak Shamir, Israeli prime minister, will address the Los Angeles World Affairs Council at noon at the the Regent Beverly Wilshire. For more information, call (213) 628-2333.

Announcements concerning prominent speakers in Los Angeles should be sent to Speaking Up, c/o Times researcher Michael Meyers, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053