Additional Benefits

Interest groups ranging from patients to insurance companies yesterday picked away at a bare bones health benefits plan that could become the standard for small businesses across Maryland next year.During a daylong public hearing in Baltimore, many praised the benefits package as a strong effort to make health insurance more accessible to workers in small businesses. Most, however, found at least something to criticize.Hospitals opposed the $50 co-payment for some emergency room visits. Women complained about the lack of coverage for contraceptives.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs announced Friday a plan to immediately evaluate and pay the oldest disability claims, a move that advocates expect will bring relief to Maryland servicemen and women who face one of the largest backlogs in the country. The agency will make provisional decisions on claims that are at least a year old and have not been acted upon. Based on a rating of the severity of the veteran's disability, benefits will range from about $125 to $3,000 a month, or more if a veteran requires extraordinary care.

The Clinton administration approved yesterday a pilot program in which some Maryland welfare recipients will be denied benefits unless they agree to look for work.The program, passed by the legislature earlier this year, is scheduled to start in Anne Arundel County, Prince George's County and Baltimore in April.The administration also approved Maryland's plan to require teen-age mothers to live at home and to stop paying additional cash benefits for children conceived while their parents are on welfare.

Cinema Sundays at the Charles continues this weekend with the showing of a film from China, set in the 1920s and replete with a bartered bride, outlaws, a courageous servant and unrequited and requited love.The Charles is contractually obligated not to release the name of the films it shows during the Cinema Sundays program.The film will be introduced by Eddie Cockrell, a programmer with the American Film Institute in Washington, who currently runs a Sunday morning cinema club for the Smithsonian Associates.

Cinema Sundays at the Charles will continue this weekend with the showing of the film from Russia that recently won the Academy Award for best foreign film.The Charles is contractually obligated not to release the name of the films it shows during the Cinema Sundays program.The film will be introduced by Scott Shane, The Sun's reporter stationed in Moscow during the breakup of the Soviet Union and author of the recently published book, "Dismantling Utopia, How Information Ended the Soviet Union."

Your future is in your hands. I grew up in a time when workers proudly discussed their pensions as the light at the end of the tunnel. When I became a journalist, pensions were often the No. 1 topic of comments by retirees at company annual meetings. Now, companies mostly describe pensions as bottomless pits. Giants such as International Business Machines Corp., Verizon Communications Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. have moved to freeze their pensions. A freeze halts the buildup of additional benefits for some or all employees and saves a company money by erasing part of the debt owed to future retirees.

Cinema Sundays at the Charles continues this weekend with the showing of an award-winning English film adapted from aplay about a crime that took place in a provincial town in France in the 1930s involving sisters, maids and a matron's murder.The Charles is contractually obligated not to release the name of the films it shows during the Cinema Sundays program.The film will be introduced by David Bergman, a Towson State University professor of English and a published poet, editor and critic.

DRINK A LOT of coffee? Good job. It might make Americans jittery or feisty, but they get more antioxidants - those good-health nutritional nuggets - from drinking coffee than from eating or drinking anything else. Of course, that's because most folks drink a lot of coffee and don't eat the stuff that's really packed with antioxidants - prunes, cranberries, spinach, broccoli, whole grains and so on. But at least they're getting the good stuff from somewhere. Recent research suggests additional benefits.

After an automobile accident that fractured my sternum and ribs and resulted in a herniated disk, I searched diligently for pain relief. Conventional over-the-counter pain relievers all had side effects. Then I discovered that evening primrose oil provided the pain relief I needed, with no bad reactions. Additional benefits include stopping hair loss. Since then I have found that my two cats will stop eating to have their daily dose of evening primrose oil. Their fur is very beautiful, and they don't shed nearly as much as they did before.

I work for a private company that links merit raises to attendance. I feel my employer unfairly penalized me for a three-month leave I took to recover from a serious illness. I went out under the Family and Medical Leave Act, and the company maintained my benefits and my job. But I lost a substantial portion of a merit raise for 2005, and I'm wondering if the company made a mistake. I thought that between the FMLA and my stellar record, I would get the full merit raise. Am I right? I don't think so. Timing is key. If you had earned the full merit raise before your time off under the Family and Medical Leave Act, the company couldn't have legally reduced it simply because you didn't have perfect attendance.