Health Care Costs

WASHINGTON - Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski of Maryland is a prime target of a last-ditch bid to win Senate approval for oil drilling in the Alaska wildlife refuge, with supporters offering in return to help pay health care costs of steel-industry retirees. Supporters hope to secure the backing of a half-dozen or so steel-state Democrats, including Mikulski, before the Senate votes on the highly contentious proposal to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The vote is expected late next week.

CHICAGO - Union workers at General Motors Corp. may be resigned to digging deeper into their own pockets for health care, but they say they'll fight to protect retirees from taking the same hit. The issue is one of the sticking points in continuing negotiations between the automaker and the United Auto Workers union as the company tries to shift more health care costs to the employees to reduce its $5.6 billion medical bill. "If we're going to survive, we know it's going to come with a price," said Mike Sheridan, president of UAW Local 95 in Janesville, Wis. "But if they try to mess with our retirees, they're asking for war. We don't want a war, but we would fight that."

WASHINGTON -- At the headquarters of the Internal Revenue Service on Constitution Avenue, your tax dollars are at work keeping bureaucrats strong at a health club where employees work out for free. Annual cost to the public: $525,000.The cost was on the verge of growing higher this year when the IRS set out to buy private health club memberships for 125 employees based six blocks away. The half-mile trip to the headquarters gym was too inconvenient, the agency said. But when the plan piqued the interest of a congressman and the General Accounting Office, the IRS dropped the idea during the past two weeks.

It is more than unfortunate that Anne Arundel County Executive John Leopold continues to imply that funding our school system is like throwing money into a bottomless abyss with absolutely no return on investment ("School funding mandate hurts counties," Jan. 19). There are certainly flaws with the state's maintenance of effort law, but the bigger problem in our county is Mr. Leopold's ongoing disparaging comments and his desire to control our school system in a dictatorial fashion.

The Senate Finance Committee holds a hearing in Annapolis today on one of the most contentious health care bills before the General Assembly. Yet the treatment of this bill will provide a glaring example of the problems created by the Senate's lackadaisical approach to conflicts of interests. It will showcase the folly of giving a legislator power over bills that could affect his own interests.The legislator in question is Baltimore Sen. Larry Young, who chairs the panel's health-care subcommittee.

HERSHEY, Penn. - President Bush railed against medical malpractice lawsuits yesterday and met with a top religious leader in attempts to make inroads in this Democratic-leaning and heavily Catholic state. On a campaign swing that included politically divided Philadelphia suburbs and Republican strongholds in the Susquehanna River Valley, the president criticized Sen. John Kerry for proposing an expensive government-oriented health care plan. In a state where doctors have protested against high malpractice insurance premiums, Bush slammed his opponent for voting against limits on medical lawsuit awards.

MARYLAND IS going drug shopping with West Virginia and Louisiana. More precisely, the three states are pooling their purchasing power to negotiate a lower price from pharmaceutical manufacturers for their Medicaid beneficiaries. The resulting discounts are projected to lower drug expenses only about 3 percent to 4 percent below cost-saving measures already in place. But in Maryland, that reduction will total about $20 million a year - money that will more than come in handy to a health care program for the poor and disabled that gobbles a whopping 25 percent of the state budget.

If you thought your paycheck was buying less than it did before, you may be right on the mark. Wages and benefits for civilian employees rose last year at less than the rate of inflation for the first time in almost a decade, according to figures released by the Labor Department yesterday. Total compensation paid to civilian employees jumped 3.1 percent last year, while the costs of goods and services grew at 3.4 percent, according to the Labor Department. When inflation is considered, worker compensation fell 0.3 percent, marking the first decline since 1996.

When you need a doctor, you won't want to lie in your sickbed without having one. So as you save for retirement, don't forget to factor in the doctor, the hospital and your prescription drugs. And brace yourself for what they will cost you. Although many Americans think Medicare covers all medical costs for retirees, the reality is much different. You are probably going to have to pick up more than 20 percent of your costs. For the average 65-year-old couple retiring today, health care expenses during the next 20 years are likely to total about $215,000, according to a recent estimate by Fidelity Investments.

At the same time Mayor Martin O'Malley is actively courting organized labor's support for his re-election, he has been embroiled in contract negotiations with two city workers unions and declared an impasse in the talks yesterday. The impasse declaration is the city's first in more than 20 years with the unions and underscores the two sides' inability to agree on a main contract issue - what city workers should pay for health care. An impasse procedure imposes a third-party mediator in the stalled negotiations but does not offer any binding resolution, just a recommendation for an agreement.