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Bush announces prescription drug plan
by Karen Guillo
Associated Press
ALLENTOWN, Pa. -Calling Medicare “too vi
tal to be neglected,” George W. Bush announced
a $158 billion plan to help seniors pay for pre
scription drugs and to improve benefits in the health
program that ensures millions of elderly Ameri
cans.
“By history and by choice, our nation makes
a promise: We will honor our fathers and our moth
ers by providing quality health insurance for every
senior,” Bush said Tuesday. The Republican pres
idential nominees’ plan would pay at least one
fourth of the cost of prescription drug coverage,
whether seniors choose the optional new Medicare
benefit Bush proposes or a private plan. The el
derly poor would get drug plans for free.
Democratic nominee A1 Gore, who wants a
more expansive prescription plan added to Medicare,
said Bush’s plan wouldn’t do enough for millions
of middle-class seniors.
“Nearly half of all of those who don’t have
coverage today would not get coverage under the
plan that he’s announcing today,” Gore said dur
ing a campaign stop in Columbus, Ohio. He also
chaiged that the plan would push seniors into man
aged care plans and said Bush wouldn’t be able to
pay for it because of his tax ciits.
“The biggest problem is there’s no money to
pay for it if you give away all of the surplus in the
form of a giant tax cut to the wealthy at the ex
pense of the middle class,” Gore said. But a Bush
spokeswoman said the proposal fit with the gov
ernor’s balanced budget plan.
Under Bush’s proposal, health plans that par
ticipate in Medicare would be required to provide
a prescription drug benefit, which most of them
do already. Traditional Medicare plans adminis
tered by the government currently offer no pre
scription coverage.
The Texas governor said his effort would “mod
ernize” Medicare, and criticized Vice President
Gore for failing to do so. “For eight years the cur
rent administration has had this opportunity and
has squandered it,” Bush said during his speech at
a senior center.
Bush’s plan will sharpen the debate over health
care. Gore has proposed spending an estimated
$253 billion over 10 years to add a prescription
drug benefit to Medicare, the federal program for
elderly and disabled Americans. The Bush cam
paign has characterized Gore’s plan as an expen
sive, big government program.
Bush spokeswoman Karen Hughes said he would
let seniors choose the best health plan and help
them pay for it, whether it’s private or under
Medicare, “unlike A1 Gore’s plan, which locks you
into a one-size-fits-all government plan.”
In Washington, Health and Human Services
Secretary Donna Shalala said Bush’s plan would
vary from state to state and “leads down a path that
changes the Medicare plan.”
“What they do is they privatize and start in
come-testing for the first time a benefit, and the
question is which one is next,” Shalala said.
As Bush was promoting his Medicare plan, the
Democratic National Committee unveiled a new
TV ad to run this week in nine key states, criti
cizing Bush’s health care record. The ad focuses
on another program — Medicaid — and accuses
the Texas governor of failing to extend the state
federal health insurance program to enough of
his state’s poor children. The Bush campaign called
the ad a distortion.
About 25 million people in the Medicare pro
gram have prescription drug coverage of some sort;
12 million people on Medicare have none.
Bush is proposing to spend $110 billion over
10 years to modernize Medicare and give $48
billion to states over the next four years to help se
niors pay for drugs in the short term.
Bush also wants to restore $40 billion worth of
Medicare cuts made under the balanced budget act
of 1997.
“Medicare is a vital program, too vital to be
neglected,” Bush said. “It needs preventive health
care now.”
Bush wants the “Immediate Helping Plan”
money for states to flow as soon as 2001 if he’s
elected. It would cover all costs of prescription
drugs for seniors earning up to $ 11,300 (135 per
cent of the poverty level), and a part of the cost
for seniors earning more.
The longer-range $110 billion plan would:
• Guarantee that every senior shall remain
entitled to current Medicare benefits.
• Give Medicare recipients a choice of mod
ern health plans, including coverage for prescrip
tion drugs.
• Cover the foil cost of Medicare premiums for
seniors with incomes at or below 135 percent of
poverty, and subsidize the cost of prescription drug
coverage for seniors with incomes between 135
percent and 175 percent of poverty.
• Cover catastrophic Medicare costs in ex
cess of $6,000 annually for all seniors.
• Pay 25 percent of premium costs for pre
scription drug coverage for all seniors above 175
percent of poverty.
Native Americans help fight Western fires
by Shannon Dininny
Associated Press
HAMILTON, Mont. - Drawing on their knowledge
of the land and the behavior of wildfires, thousands of
American Indians are helping battle the blazes burn
ing across the West.
Firefighting has become a much-needed source
of revenue for tribes across the country. And at a
time when blazes across the Wfest are stretching man
power thin, the native firefighters play an important
role.
“They can carry their weight,” said Mike LeBrun,
assistant fire management officer for the U.S. Bureau
of Indian Affairs Rocky Mountain regional office in
Billings.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs estimates that Mon
tana, South Dakota, North Dakota and northeastern
Nebraska alone have contributed 2,400 Indian fire
fighters this summer.
Indian crews are well-represented among the hun
dreds of firefighters in Montana’s Bitterroot Valley,
which is facing one of the West’s biggest fires. Black
feet Indians are here. So are the Gros Ventre, Assini
boine, Chippewa Cree, Kiowa and Choctaw.
Fire has been an integral part of Indian culture,
making Indian firefighters particularly well-suited for
the jobs, said crew boss Dondi Tonasket, 36, a Colville
Indian with his hair in braids.
“We used to set our own bums just to cleanse the
forest in the past,” he said. “Now, our fire knowledge,
the way we move through the mountains, is an ad
vantage. We are more aware of the type of situations
we could get into, and we’re better at remembering
ground. It seems to come natural with our crews.”
Tonasket, who has been fighting fires for 13 years,
keeps his crew in a tight circle of tents — a Circle of
Life. “It’s the way I treat my crew,” said Tonasket,
who learned the celebration-of-life tradition from his
elders. “We stay in the circle, we treat each other as
family.”
“I guess you could say we’re well-adapted to this,”
said 33-year-old Leonard Foreman, a Kiowa from
Carnegie, Okla. “Wfe can adapt to things better because
we’ve had to survive.”
Foreman has been fighting fires for the past six years
and is on his fifth fire this season. This year, his 29-year
old brother also joined his crew.
“Most of us are related by blood or by mar
riage,” Foreman said. *We learned how to handle pres
sure a long time ago and work well together because
of it.”
It is more than culture and it is more than family.
Lloyd Reevis, 68, started fighting fires in the 1950s and
returned to camp this year from Montana’s Blackfeet
Reservation to make some money.
On Indian reservations where unemployment of
ten is staggering, the seasonal work of firefighting for
the federal government has become an economic an
chor. The salary for firefighters starts at more than
$10.60 an hour, and rises to as much as $ 13.30 an hour
for crew bosses.
This year, Reevis’ daughter also turned to fire
fighting, and his wife watches their grandchildren while
their daughter is on the fire line.
Tonasket, who works as a road engineer for the
Colville Tribes during the winter, said his firefighting
money serves as more of a bonus for his family of six.
To members of his crew, it is much more.
“Their salary, wages, here is probably a third of
their wages for the year,” Tonasket said. “Firefight
ing is a big part of our employment on the reserva
tions.”
While no one is cheering, the busy fire season has
been a boon for the Indian fire crews after two rela
tively quiet years that hurt reservation income.
The huge fires in the Bitterroot Valley are waning,
blunted by cool, rainy weather over the Labor Day
weekend. Fires continued to bum on more than 400,000
acres in and around the valley Tuesday, and hundreds
of firefighters worked to contain them.
Tonasket’s crew of 19 men and one woman re
ceived word it is pulling out for a couple of days of rest.
“We made a good reputation for ourselves here,”
he said.
Hormones
from page 5
lesser-known long-term effects.
“Ultimately, it’s up to the patient to decide if
this is the direction they want to go,” said Bieber.
So what are the facts?
Naturally occurring estrogen keeps brain cells
healthy, benefits the heart by helping keep choles
terol at healthy levels, helps bones maintain cal
cium and remain strong and helps keep breast tis
sue firm and the vaginal lining moist.
The facts get murky, however, when the
question is whether supplements of synthetic es
trogen can step into the breach and do all those pos
itive things when levels of the natural hormone
drop.
Synthetic estrogen is approved only to treat
bone-thinning osteoporosis and vasomotor symp
toms such as hot flashes, night sweats and vaginal
dryness. Though many women say hormones help
them with menopausal moodiness, depression and
forgetfulness, drug references advise against taking
them for those conditions.
Some research has suggested that women tak
ing hormone supplements are less likely to get
Alzheimer’s disease, but a study earlier this year
found no estrogen benefit in women who already
have the memory-robbing disease.
Because of the drop in estrogen, women’s risk
of heart disease increases after menopause, and doc
tors have thought that synthetic estrogen helps the
heart by improving cholesterol levels. But recent
research suggests that, at least in patients who al
ready have heart disease, estrogen doesn’t pre
vent heart attacks.
Estrogen also promotes cell-growth and has
been linked to cancerous breast tumors, but re
searchers disagree on the degree of risk. It’s also
been linked to uterine cancer, but taking it with
progestin has long been thought to alleviate that
risk. Recent studies, however, suggest progestin can
also increase risk for breast cancer.
There are many reasons for the seemingly con
tradictory findings, including differing study meth
ods and differences in patient populations.
In the past, women who decided to take hor
mones tended to be health-conscious and healthi
er and therefore started out at low risk for things
like heart disease, Stefanick said.
Now, with some 20 million women nationwide
on hormones — a number expected to rise as ba
by boomers reach menopause — users come
from a broader group and evaluating hormones’ ef
fect on health is trickier, she says.
Donna Bender, a career planning instructor at
San Jose State University, has read the negative re
ports but swears by hormone supplements.
For months, she suffered severe hot flashes,
night sweats and memory loss. She lost shopping
lists, misplaced her wallet twice in one week and
cried when the grocery store was out of her brand
of tuna.
Eating “the natural stuff,” like tofu, sweet pota
toes and other foods containing estrogen, didn’t
work.
“My life was miserable,” said Bender, 51. “I
went from having this really smart, great memory
to just feeling stupid.”
That all changed when she began treatment
three years ago.
“I would do without my cats and my husband
but not my estrogen,” she said. “There is a possi
bility this is not a good thing for me, but I have to
weigh both sides for me, and so maybe live a short
er but a better life.”
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Fox pledges to fight
corruption in Mexico
by Julie Watson
Associated Press
MEXICO CITY - Soldiers open fire
on thousands of peaceful demonstra
tors. A presidential candidate is gunned
down on a campaign stop. The gov
ernment spends $100 billion to buy
overvalued bad loans, some from its
own supporters.
Mexico has a lot of dirty laundry.
During the 71 years that Mexico
in effect had one-party rule, the se
crets lay buried. But now the Institu
tional Revolutionary Party is out of
office, and the new president, Vicente
Fox, is pledged to eradicate the cor
ruption that pervades Mexican soci
ety.
He says that one of the first things
he will do after he is sworn in Dec. 1
is have Mexico’s Congress set up a
“Transparency Commission” to
start digging into the dirt.
“Tliis is essential for Mexico’s new
democracy,” said Adolfo Aguilar Zinser,
a senator and key member of Fox’s
transition team. “But this is a very dif
ficult task.”
It will also be the sternest test of
Fox’s credentials as a reformer.
Among the cases Congress could
consider:
• A banking scandal in which loans
to ruling party supporters were never
repaid and then were absorbed by
the government as part of a $ 100 bil
lion, taxpayer-funded bank bailout.
• Lingering suspicions that shad
owy, still-unidentified figures might
have played a part in several high-pro
file murders, including that of ruling
party presidential candidate Luis Don
aldo Colosio, who was gunned down
at a campaign stop in Tijuana in March
1994, and that of Roman Catholic Car
dinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo, who
died in a fusillade of bullets at Guadala
jara’s airport in 1993.
• The stunning assault on a peace
ful democracy protest Oct. 2, 1968,
in Tlatelolco Plaza in Mexico City that
killed hundreds. The exact number of
dead remains unknown, and it is un
clear who ordered a security battalion
to open fire on the unarmed crowd of
mostly university students.
Other unhealed wounds include
the disappearance of hundreds of left
ists during an army crackdown on guer
rilla bands in the 1970s, the unsolved
killings of hundreds of opposition par
ty activists over the past 12 years, and
the work of domestic intelligence agen
cies that opposition parties have long
accused of political spying.
The hope is that a war on big
corruption will set an example that
will stamp out the petty corruption
which people tend to take as a harm
less fact of everyday life.
Motorists avoid a traffic ticket by
forking over a few dollars to the cop
as casually as they would tip a wait
er.
Bar owners slip an official a few
hundred dollars for a liquor license
rather than take on the bureaucracy.
Some journalists support them
selves with the money they receive
for writing favorable articles, and gov
ernment purchasers pocket up to 10
percent of any contract.
Delal Baer, a Mexico specialist
at the Center for Strategic and Inter
national Studies in Washington, sees a
risky balancing act ahead, lest the
housecleaning become “a witch hunt”
that could bring the whole house down.
“Mexico is in a bind,” she said.
“You need to be careful not to destroy
your entire establishment because
much of tliat establishment is also good.
But by the same token you need to
meet people’s expectations that rule
of law is not an empty promise.”
The risk is that such a commission
under the control of Congress could
get Doggeci down in politics and end
in failure, dragging Fox’s administra
tion down with it.
Mexicans aren’t encouraged by the
Italian example, in which a sweeping
corruption cleanup implicated so many
politicians, businessmen and bureau
crats that the courts were clogged and
accusations were made that the in
vestigation had turned political.
Aguilar Zinser said Mexico’s
cleansing must involve all political
parties — including Fox’s National Ac
tion Party.
There is also the fear that given
Mexico’s record of political violence,
the deeper the investigators dig, the
greater the physical risk to them will
be. “Obviously this is going to be a
dangerous task,” Aguilar Zinser said.
Jesus Zambrano, secretary-gener
al of the leftist Democratic Revolu
tion Party, said an investigation is “ab
solutely necessary and indispensable
in proving that the new government
wants to combat corruption and im
punity.”
Summit
from page 5
liameiu-in-exile. The group denied in
volvement in the attacks.
There were also three separate
bomb threats at the hotel where Khata
mi was staying, but the suspicious pack
ages were found to be harmless, po
lice said.
Following up on his call two years
ago at the United Nations for a “dia
logue among civilizations,” Khatami
on Tuesday launched a yearlong cam
paign to promote global discussion.
The General Assembly has proclaimed
2001 the Year of Dialogue Among Civ
ilizations.
Opening a daylong round-table talk
Tuesday, Annan said the United Na
tions itself was created “in the belief
that dialogue can triumph over dis
cord, that diversity is a universal virtue
and that the peoples of the world are
far more united by their common fate
than they are divided by their separate
identities.”
The reformist president, whose
country has been criticized for its hu
man rights record, uiged Iranian ex
patriates on Monday to embrace their
native land and help it develop eco
nomically.
“Our hearts are beating for the
love of one place, and this place is
Iran,” Khatami told an applauding au
dience that filled a U.N. conference
room.
He did not mention a bill submit
ted to the Iranian parliament Sunday
that would grant amnesty to Iranians
who fled the country, but his speech
clearly signaled his support for an open
door for expatriates.
St. Thomas More Catholic Center
Rev. Tun Lfjewski Mass Schedule Sacrament of Penance
Chaplain Saturday 4:30pm Saturday 3:00pm-4:00pm
Sr. Julienne Guy OSU Sunday 11:00am, 7:30pm or by appointment
Director of Christian . _ . _
. Formation Newman Club Tuesday 7:00pm
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