Actuary

WASHINGTON - Defending itself yesterday against accusations that it isn't meeting its legal obligations for charitable spending, CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield presented insurance regulators in the District of Columbia with an actuarial study concluding that the company's surplus is "reasonable and appropriate." Further, CareFirst argued that its first obligation is not to the public at large, but to its members. The insurer "is not and cannot be a second United Way," Sister Carol Keehan, a member of CareFirst's board who chairs its mission oversight committee, said at a hearing before Lawrence Mirel, the D.C. insurance commissioner.

The deficit in Maryland's prepaid college plan has risen to $75 million, about a 7 percent increase from last year, as the program continues to grapple with escalating tuition, according to preliminary figures. While the deficit raises potential long-term questions about the solvency of the Maryland Prepaid College Trust, people who have invested in it so far have little cause for concern because projected assets are sufficient to cover expected tuition payments at least through 2020, said Joan Marshall, executive director of the group that oversees the trust.

WASHINGTON -- An internal investigation by the Department of Health and Human Services confirms that top Medicare officials intentionally withheld data from Congress showing that Medicare drug benefits would probably cost much more than the White House acknowledged. A report on the investigation, issued yesterday, says that the administrator of Medicare, Thomas A. Scully, threatened to fire the program's chief actuary, Richard S. Foster, if he provided the data to Congress while lawmakers were considering huge changes in the program last year.

John P. Fayolle, an actuary who was founder and president of the pension-planning business Financial Security International, died of kidney failure Wednesday at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. The Towson resident was 77. Mr. Fayolle was born and raised in Montreal and earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Laval University in Quebec in 1948. He moved to Boston in 1959 when he joined Johnson & Higgins, an insurance company. He briefly worked for Manhattan Life Insurance Co. in New York, and took a position in 1964 as chief international actuary for Bristol-Myers.

WASHINGTON - Shifting his ongoing criticism from Iraq to domestic issues, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy took President Bush to task for misleading the American public on everything from Medicare to education. The Massachusetts Democrat called Iraq "George Bush's Vietnam," and said: "This president has now created the largest credibility gap since Richard Nixon. He has broken the basic bond of trust with the American people." With Bush, Kennedy said, "Truth is the first casualty of policy." Terry Holt, a spokesman for the Bush campaign, said Kennedy was a "hatchet man" for John Kerry, his fellow Massachusetts senator and presumptive Democratic nominee for president.

New Positions Comcast names Crooks, Parker vice presidents Comcast Cable Communications appointed Ken Crooks as vice president of operations for the White Marsh-based cable TV and Internet provider in the Maryland/Delaware region and Michael Parker as vice president and general manager for Baltimore operations. Crooks heads various customer services initiatives and oversees competitive strategies. Parker, formerly with Comcast's Greater Detroit region, manages the cable system's daily operations in the city.

WASHINGTON - House Republicans shut down yesterday an inquiry by Democrats into whether the Bush administration acted illegally or inappropriately last year when it withheld from Congress its estimates of the true cost of the Medicare prescription drug bill. At issue are allegations that then-Medicare administrator Thomas A. Scully threatened to fire his top actuary if he gave lawmakers his analyses showing that the costs would be higher than Bush administration officials were saying publicly.

WASHINGTON - If Richard S. Foster were an actor, he'd be typecast as a World War II British wing commander - ramrod straight in bearing and sporting a thick, gray mustache over a stiff upper lip. Foster, who is Medicare's chief actuary, displayed a movie hero's unflappable cool this week as he found himself in the political hot spot between Republicans and Democrats battling over what could be this election year's biggest domestic issue, the future of...

WASHINGTON - Democrats moved swiftly yesterday to try turning Medicare's grim financial forecast to their political advantage, blaming Bush administration initiatives to expand the role of private health insurers in the program and alleged White House efforts last year to hide the costs of its plans from Congress. Medicare's chief actuary, Richard S. Foster, told a House panel that he told White House officials in June that his projected cost of Medicare reform legislation would far exceed lawmakers' assumptions.

WASHINGTON - Senate Democrats, reacting to disclosures that Thomas A. Scully, the former Medicare administrator, had prevented his chief actuary from sharing information with Congress, said yesterday that they believed a federal law had been violated and called on the General Accounting Office to investigate. In a letter signed by 18 senators, including the minority leader, Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota, and Sen. John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, the lawmakers cited a provision in an appropriations measure that bars using federal money to pay the salary of any employee who "prohibits or prevents, or threatens to prohibit or prevent" another employee from communicating with Congress.