Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 21, 1992 TAG: 9203210280
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A5 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
Wilder said the plight of 120,000 retired miners and dependents - including about 9,000 in Virginia - is another striking example of how the nation's health-care system is in serious trouble.
The federal government's continued failure to address the issues of health-care quality, cost and accessibility "is becoming increasingly hard for Americans to tolerate," Wilder said in a statement.
President Bush said Friday he would veto a $77.5 million Democratic tax bill that included an amendment to transfer excess United Mine Workers union pension funds into the UMW retiree health funds to cover a deficit now estimated at $140 million.
The legislation sponsored by Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., also would establish new retiree funds based on an industrywide levy - 99 cents for each wage hour worked for Eastern coal companies and 15 cents for Western companies.
Rockefeller pledged Friday to continue his push for a measure bailing out the United Mine Workers health funds.
He said he was crafting a strategy for attaching the bailout measure to another bill.
"This approach," Wilder said, "divides our national interest in health care and pits region against region and operator against operator."
The higher tax would put Virginia, the nation's seventh-largest coal producer, at a competitive disadvantage, Wilder said.
The legislation is opposed by the Bush administration and the Private Benefits Alliance, a group of primarily non-union coal companies.
Wilder said he wrote to members of Virginia's congressional delegation urging them to take action to ensure that elderly retirees and dependents - mostly widows - keep their health benefits.
Memo: shorter version ran in the Metro edition.