Newspaper Page Text
A-Victoria flu type
confirmed in Florida
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Making
comeback
Sen. Barker out
after dishonest
auto mechanics
Paying uncovered med bills
running up cost of insurance
WASHINGTON (AP) — Two major
health insurance plans pay out millions
of dollars for government workers’
medical expenses not covered by their
insurance policies, contributing to
spiraling premiums partly paid by the
taxpayers, a government report says.
An investigation by the General
Accounting Office concluded that loose,
haphazard cost controls and
overpayments by the two govemment-
The Country Parson
by Frank Clark
Ovßr —
“If God thought riches were
important he wouldn’t have
gjvMi them to so few.”
DAliy
Daily Since 1872
John Harris, Rick and Will Young reenact the 1900 glider flight of the Wright Brothers at
Jockey Ridge, N.C. The feat will be part of a forthcoming National Aeronautics and Space
Administration film, “Flight: Look To the Sky.” (AP)
wide health insurers co; ibuted to a35
per cent increase in premium charges
in the government programs last year.
The two companies probed by
government auditors are Blue Cross-
Blue Shield and Aetna Life & Casualty,
which together insure more than six
million of the 9.3 million federal
employes and their dependents who
have health insurance.
“Prices may continue skyward if the
Civil Service Commission and the
insurance carriers do not strictly
control insurance costs,” said the
report, signed by U.S. Comptroller
General Elmer B. Staats, chief of the
congressional watchdog agency.
Blue Cross-Blue Shield called the
report “exaggerated and misleading”
and said it is based on often erroneous
assumptions.
Aetna said it appreciated an
opportunity to study the findings and
agreed to make several changes aimed
at tightening controls.
The government and its employes
share almost equally the premium
costs, estimated at $2.9 billion in the
fiscal year ending Sept. 30.
The payment practices criticized by
the GAO generally benefit employes
GRIFFIN
Griffin, Ga., 30223, Friday Afternoon, February 4,1977
ATLANTA (AP) — Everybody’s
heard plenty of stories about car repair
fraud, says state Sen. Ed Barker.
“You go to a gas station restroom,
then come back and the guy is standing
there saying, ‘Sir, did you know you had
a hole in your tire?’
“You’ve got a hole all right, but he
put it there,” Barker said Thursday.
Then there’s the one about the S3OO
bill for repair of an auto air conditioner
that only needed a new fuse, he said.
Emphasizing that he doesn’t want to
tar honest auto mechanics with the
brush he’s aiming at cheaters, the
Warner Robins legislator introduced
the “Motorist Protection Act of 1977"
Thursday, laying ground rules for car
repairs in Georgia.
The Senate’s Consumer Affairs
Committee quickly set a public hearing
for Monday on the bill, which would
prohibit giving false information on
which repairs are needed and which
have been performed.
The bill also would require
mechanics to give estimates of repair
who incur medical expenses and use
their health insurance, although all
employes pay in the end through the
increased premiums.
The loser is the taxpayer who, in the
final analysis, pays the government’s
share of the costs and gets none of the
benefits.
The investigation only applied to the
government employes’ plans. The
study did not attempt to determine
whether similar practices occur in pri
vate group health plans sold by Blue
Cross-Blue Shield and Aetna.
Cost controls are a central issue in
the debate over national health
insurance, which President Carter has
promised to implement during his
administration. The two government
health plans now operating — Medicare
for the elderly and Medicaid for the
poor — are regularly criticized for their
ever increasing costs.
Based on a poll of 373 employes, the
investigators said Blue Shield may
have paid more than $8 million to
doctors and hospitals for routine physi
cal examinations and Pap smears for
cervical cancer, neither of which is
supposed to be covered by the Blue
Cross-Blue Shield policy.
NEWS
ATLANTA (AP) — An outbreak of A-
Victoria influenza has been confirmed
in a nursing home in Dade County, Fla.,
the national Center for Disease Control
reported today.
The outbreak began Jan. 26, and
affected 35 of 176 residents of the home,
the CDC said.
There have been scattered laboratory
isolations of Influenza A in several
other states, but this is the first out
break of that strain of flu in the nation,
the CDC said.
Influenza-like illness has been
reported in more than a score of states,
with Influenza B identified in at least 10
of them.
Influenza B usually attacks children
and young adults and is similar to the
B-Hong Kong virus which was
prevalent in 1972.
The mortality rate of Influenza B is
lower than Influenza A, which changes
its molecular structure more often and
tends to attack older adults.
The CDC says an outbreak is
considered when there is a marked
increase in the number of patients in a
given population.
In the A-Victoria outbreak in Florida,
epidemiologists said the typical clinical
illness was fairly mild with fever and
cough the predominate symptoms.
costs—when requested by customers—
and then keep their charges within 10
per cent of those estimates.
“I’m sure we’ll hear some opposition
at the public hearing, but I don’t think
the bill is overbearing on anybody,”
Barker said.
“There are no new regulatory boards
or required registration,” he said. “It
won’t cost honest mechanics any
money at all.”
Barker said a study by the federal
government and the University of
Georgia indicates that nearly one-third
of the $1 billion in auto repair work in
Georgia each year “is unnecessary or
improperly completed.”
What the bill aims to do, Barker said,
is allow the state Office of Consumer
Affairs “ to zero in on the fraudulent
kind of places.”
That office already has some en
forcement powers under the state’s
Fair Business Practices Act, but
Barker said, “If you expect your repair
to cost SSO and it costs S2OO, under the
present law there isn’t much you can
People
••• and things
Man in lift truck drawing crowd of
spectators at Hill and Taylor streets.
Carter members of the Utility Club,
organized in 1927, taking bows during
Follies intermission.
Businessman shucking sweater as
temperature climbed.
Gilmore T shirts kick up storm
AMHERST, Mass. (AP) — “Let’s Do It” reads the T
shirt — the last words of executed murderer Gary
Gilmore. And 23-year-old entrepreneur James K. Bozony
says he can’t keep up with demand for the $5.95 shirts,
also emblazoned with a bullseye target over the heart.
“The fact that the execution became an event is a
reflection of our taste as a culture. That’s what is really
absurd, not the shirts,” said Bozony, a University of
Massachusetts graduate student and writer who says he
specializes in black humor.
“Some call it sick, some say I’m disgusting for ex
ploiting Gilmore,” he said. “I don’t think those people are
as healthy psychologically as the people who buy them, or
at least stop to talk about them.
Bozony said he has sold 50 of his shirts at the University
of Massachusetts student center here since last week and
now plans “big-time production and marketing,” in
cluding advertisements in publications like National
Lampoon magazine.
But Bozony also said he faces possible legal problems
with Lawrence Schiller, the freelance journalist who
Vol. 105 No. 29
Bl
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Fewer people
seeking jobs
WASHINGTON (AP) - The nation’s
unemployment rate declined sharply in
January to 7.3 per cent, down from 7.8
per cent in December, with the im
provement largely attributed to an
unexplained decline in the labor force,
the government said today.
Labor Department analysts said the
severe winter weather across much of
do.”
The requirement of cost estimates
would give Consumer Affairs Director
Tim Ryles “something to lock in on,”
he said.
Violators of the proposed law would
be given an opportunity for making
good any overcharges or shoddy work,
Barker said. But if they failed to do so,
they could be liable for misdemeanor
convictions or civil fines of $2,000 for
each offense.
The bill also provides for the
possibility of court injunctions against
mechanics or their employers and for
fines of $25,000 for violation of those in
junctions.
The consumer affairs office receives
hundreds of complaints by irate car
owners, Barker said, but action against
repair fraud has been difficult without
the specifics the proposed law would
provide.
He said chances appear good for
passage of the bill this session.
Postage hikes cancelled
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Postal
Service is going to cancel its plans to
increase mail rates this year because of
improvement in the agency’s financial
picture, postal sources say.
The sources said Thursday the Postal
Service is preparing to announce within
a few days that it operated in the black
during the last three months of 1976.
That will mark the second successive
John Cook (r) who stands a little less than four feet tall is making it as a bank
employee in Barnesville. Here he talks with Joe Bostwick, assistant vice
president. Photo essay on page 7 today.
signed contracts giving him rights to Gilmore’s life story.
“He claims he can sue. We say baloney to that. We’re
willing to agree to terms that give monies to the families
of Gilmore’s victims only, but I don’t think Schiller
deserves a cent of it,” Bozony said Thursday in a
telephone interview.
Schiller controlled nearly all access to Gilmore before
last month’s execution by a Utah State Prison firing
squad. Gilmore, the first person executed in the United
States in nearly a decade, was convicted of murdering a
man during a robbery and accused of a murder during a
second robbery.
Bozony describes the shirt design as a work of pop art.
“It’s ridiculous to conceive of a Gary Gilmore T-shirt in
the first place,” he said. “The only thing more ridiculous
is buying it.”
Some who pass by Bozony’s sales table conclude he is
against capital punishment, but he said he favors it in.
some cases — including Gilmore’s.
“If ever a man deserved to die, it was Gary Gilmore,”
he said. “I’m afraid he lost his value as a human being a
long time ago.”
Weather
ESTIMATED HIGH TODAY 60, low
today 31, high yesterday 57, low
yesterday 28, high tomorrow in mid 40s,
low tonight in upper 20s.
FORECAST: Partly cloudy tonight.
Windy and turning colder Saturday.
He’s making it
the nation may be partially responsible
for the decline in the labor force. But
they said the full impact of the weather
on the nation’s job markets probably
won’t show up until the job figures for
February are compiled.
Government estimates of the number
of Americans forced out of work by the
weather range as high as 1.5 million,
but nobody knows for sure.
cJI I?
quarter with a surplus after a deficits
for every quarter since 1972.
Before the improvement in the
agency’s finances, Postal Service of
ficials had plans to raise rates by the
fall of this year from 13 cents to 16 or 17
cents for a first-class letter.
But sources say the unexpected cash
surpluses mean a rate increase will not
be sought this year.
