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Ier It's Thursday November 9. Tonight Unraveling the Mysteries of Medicare reform. North Carolina now. Good evening everyone I'm Robin many at a
parade in the tray has the night off. It's been another cool day for much of North Carolina and tonight temperatures are expected to drop again throughout the state. But for the next half hour we'll keep you warm with a special trip to the North Carolina coast. In our continuing series on North Carolina State Parks will venture out to hammocks beach. And if you've ever wondered what it would be like to fly through the Stars wonder no more. Tonight will meet the nation's first black woman astronaut and find out how she's inspiring hundreds of North Carolina schoolchildren. But first we turn to the Medicare battle in Washington D.C. and what it means to you. Leaders of the U.S. House and Senate are working toward a compromise on a plan to reform the Medicare system. Medicare provides health services for 37 million senior citizens. Congressional leaders want to limit Medicare spending to save 270 billion dollars over the next seven years. President Clinton has promised to veto the Medicare reforms. Tonight Adam Hochberg begins a two part
look at the Medicare proposals and how they'll affect senior citizens in North Carolina. As leaders in Washington worked to change the Medicare system Evelyn Brendel is working in North Carolina to keep senior citizens up to date. Rendell is active in the American Association of Retired Persons and at gatherings of seniors like this one in Raleigh. She hears an earful about the changes Congress wants to make you say I want to have all of us and start poor stop pushing this down my throat. What's gotten these senior citizens so upset is a reform plan that would make the most extensive changes in Medicare since it was founded 30 years ago. I built my life around the promise that Medicare would provide me with my primary health care when I turned 65. And we knew that we would also have to have Medigap or supplemental insurance. Everyone knew this. Now you're changing the rules in midstream.
Perhaps the change seniors will notice most is that the cost of their Medicare premiums will go up. They now pay about forty six dollars a month for so-called Part B Medicare the part that pays for doctor's bills and outpatient services. Under the US House plan that could double to about $92 by the year 2000 into the Senate plan not only raises premiums but also doubles deductibles from one hundred dollars to more than 200. Some seniors say they won't be able to afford that. The whole class. Ok not the poor cliffs because poor means you can afford to or I can't afford to own the pool class. That means completely. Sixty two year old Joe Sanders says he may have to drop his Medicare coverage and risk being uninsured if the price goes up a lot of folks today are not electing to get Point B because they can't afford it right now. And that's a $26 a month. Now what happens when you get to 93. What happens when you just get the $50 a month. That's one little
straw breaks the camel's back. On top of that premium increase some seniors might be forced to pay even more. Individuals who make more than $50000 a year or couples who make more than 75000 could be asked to pay an additional Medicare premium and re Landsberg. Chapel Hill would be affected by that. But he says it's all right with him if the money is spent wisely. When you're young you expect to pay for your children when you're old. You don't have children. You got bad health. So you expect to pay for it if you can. But the system has to be set up so that those who caught it off course get it. And that's what's missing at the moment. The plans being considered by Congress also seek to save the government money by cutting back payments to hospitals doctors and other professionals who treat Medicare patients. Congressional leaders say that's necessary to keep costs under control. But some experts worry that if those payments are cut back some doctors would simply refuse to treat Medicare patients because they wouldn't make as much money doing it.
I think we're already seeing that in a great many places in the country and I recently had a personal experience made it very difficult finding a physician for my mother. So yes I think that the physicians who have an alternative. Really cannot be expected to accept 50 cents on the dollar. We're taking care of Medicare people. It's not a reasonable public request it seems to me. Wilson says that may leave senior citizens struggling to find a doctor who will treat them or force seniors to pay more medical expenses out of their own pockets. Congress is about to teach the American people a very painful lesson. You cannot purchase health insurance with political ideology. You can't pay the doctor in the hospital. The specter of the economic Syria and this is what is being proposed and this is what the Congress has currently enacted. Wilson says while wealthier seniors can afford private insurance to supplement their Medicare benefits less affluent people may be forced to rely on state run welfare programs to pay for medical care or they may have to do without it.
Congressional leaders help medical costs will be controlled by opening the Medicare marketplace to more competition and expanding the role of managed care. We'll have more on that tomorrow night. And later in the show we'll meet an extraordinary astronaut who's teaching North Carolina's children to reach for the stars. Then we'll come back to Earth for a trip to hammocks beach. But first Michel Louis is at the news desk with all of today's statewide headlines. Thanks Robin. Good evening everyone. More than 300 people turned out for a meeting in Keenan's Vale last night to speak out about hog waste. However many of those speaking say they would rather live with the farm smell than live with poverty that result from regulating hog farms. Last night's debate centered primarily on the swine farm regulations that are scheduled to take effect in 1907. Many hog farmers say they think the proposed rules are adequate even though some of their neighbors are pushing for stronger restrictions on a tour of several hog farms earlier in the day. The cochairman of the
blue ribbon commission on agricultural waste says he believes a solution can be found that will satisfy both groups. I believe that we have the wit and wisdom to find a way to address the problems that exist in connection with all forms of waste agricultural and a moment waste is certainly one of the in my judgment main culprits. Duplin County is the largest hog growing county in the nation. In related news attorney general Mike Easley took action today to shut down a Henderson County dairy operation easily Sensex than dairy farms and its owners have repeatedly discharged animal waste into the Mud Creek. In court documents easily says the dairy operation must obtain a state regulated waste management plan and take steps to prevent any further discharges into the creek and its tributaries. Medical Savings Accounts are just one type of health reform North Carolinians may soon see a
scaled down state health care reform commission has decided to focus on three issues during its study of the state's health care. The study will include what to do about the increasing cost of health care. How to provide care to the uninsured and why roll residents face difficulty in getting care. State Representative Xeno Edwards of Beaufort says he hopes some serious legislation comes from the panel a meeting of tobacco researchers and Durham ended today with some promising ideas concerning new uses for nicotine over the past couple of days the researchers explored ways nicotine can be adapted to treat some health problems. The researchers say nicotine may be useful in treating also armors disease as well as people with attention deficit disorder. However two prominent researchers pulled out of the conference early this week after finding out that the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company helped fund the meeting. Former first lady Barbara Bush paid a visit to Riley's Wake Medical Center today in an effort to raise money for emergency care for children. Bush toured the hospital's pediatric intensive care unit an intensive care nursery.
Tonight she's giving a speech at a dinner in Raleigh. All of the proceeds from tonight's event will go toward developing a pediatric emergency center at the hospital. Bush says she puts a high priority on children and their care. A group in Forsyth County says it's time to get tough on North Carolinians who abuse animals. Jennifer Tierney with the animal adoption and Rescue Foundation says animal cruelty isn't taken seriously enough in North Carolina. The group plans to start tracking animal abuse cases through the court system. Journey says they want the crimes prosecuted and the judges to hand out the maximum sentences for the violations. Now let's take a look at tomorrow's weather. High temperatures are expected to range from the mid 50s in the western part of the state to the mid 60s for the southern beaches. Conditions will vary across the state. The West can expect cloudy conditions whereas partly cloudy to sunny skies are predicted for the Piedmont and coastal regions. In business news more than 200 IBM employees in the Raleigh Durham area began receiving pink slips today. And all the
company has notified about twelve hundred employees nationwide that they will no longer have jobs. This latest job cut is part of a company wide restructuring plan. This is the first cut the computer giant has made since it completed downsizing last year. Tyson Foods is lost a multimillion dollar court battle over back wages with the Teamsters Local Union 391 in Greensborough Tyson and the Teamsters have been fighting for seven years over restoring back wages to employees whose jobs and benefits were cut after Tyson bought Wilkesboro based Holly farms in 1909. More than 6000 workers could benefit from the lawsuit. The stock market rallied to yet another record high today. The Dow Jones industrial average climbed 11 and a half points to close at forty eight sixty four point twenty three about three hundred seventy nine million shares traded hands the Standard Poor's 500 index was up one and a half points while the Nasdaq composite index soared 15 and a half points. And now for some stocks of North Carolina interest.
Dr. Mae Jemison the nation's first female African-American astronaut made a trek to the Tarheel State today to promote a new hands on science program called Lab net. Producer Erika stark and reporter Michel Louis caught up with Dr. Jamison in Smithfield to find out more about lab net and her historic spaceflight.
Doctor thanks for joining us. First of all what brings you to North Carolina. Well today I have the pleasure of being here with Bear corporation who sponsored a program called Making science makes sense and it's a national program the beer is sponsoring to do with science literacy in science education and I've been working with them to help bring science literacy more in the forefront. So today we're actually at Smithville Middle School here in North Carolina looking at what do we do with kids how do we maintain their enthusiasm for science and exploring creativity. Why is science education so important that the lower grade levels. Well this is talk about science education period and where it is. If we don't have some idea about science and technology I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you because when you have a television and when have the airplanes that allowed me to come here in a
small amount of time I would have the television cameras any of that so we wouldn't be here involved and that's what science is about. Science seems to be so intimidating. What can parents as well as teachers do to help improve science education with their youngsters. The only reason it's intimidating is because we've been told that it's separate from the rest of our world. You think about it little kids love science. Some people might say maybe maybe not. When children come out of the world they're walking they're trying to figure out what's going on so they go over and pick up a bug and this was this. They ask why is the sky blue How come I'm breathing. All of those questions are science questions and then you see them experiment into right. So they'll try to do something they watch it fall over and 20 times they'll bang the cabinet door to hear what kind of sound it makes what about if I close it slowly. All those kind of things is what science is about it's about creativity. It's about trying to understand how the world works so each one of us has a natural scientist inside of us what happens us older folks is
that it was beat out of us by the time we get through school. So all of a sudden all our experiments and gathering techniques were told to leave alone because now the teacher wants you to memorize the periodic table. Right. And that's deadly boring work. Being the first African-American woman to go into space as the space shuttle Endeavor lifted off what was going through your mind. I was smiling. I was I was very excited. I mean it wasn't one of those oh I'm making history. I'm smiling because we launch to the second on time the day we were supposed to launch So I'm hitting the guy next to me. He had me on my leg. We're smiling because we're happy going into space for me was a very personal experience and there was a public side of it the personal side of it is that I would have gone into space if there had been a hundred thousand people of every description and gone up and on the other side of that I would have gone up if no one had ever been up and they had never tested the rocket I had my hand up
saying I'll go. So there's a very personal side of it that is something I wanted to do so it was a feeling some personal. Reasons I have then there is a public side of it which says finally in this country we're starting to utilize the range of people that we have for their skills and talents and abilities and perhaps we're starting to learn a little bit more and opening up opportunities. And additionally we can present some different images about who does science what a scientist is what that's all about so then we're able to use a full range of our abilities and our resources. Besides this program you seem to be a very busy lady. What other projects are you working on. Well I'm very interested as you can tell about how science and society interact. And my background is one that was very strong in the technical fields and also in the social sciences. So right now I have a company in Houston and we look at various
ways of using advanced technologies in developing countries. One of the areas that we're looking at is solar power use. As well as tele medicine using satellite based telecommunications for health care delivery in West Africa to facilitate it. And we also put together international science camp that looks at science literacy which is why there is such a good match between the work that we're doing with Bear corporation both here in North Carolina on the web and around the United States because we're interested in putting together different types of science curriculum that maintains and utilizing the enthusiasm and motivation students have. And I also am a professor in environmental studies at Dartmouth College. I understand that you have your own school of sorts. Tell me about that. There's a school named after me in Detroit called the Macy Jamison Academy and it's a magnet school or special school that looks at science from very early on it started with a pretty pretty kindergarten kindergarten first and second
graders and now they want to add it on to third and fourth grade and each year they'll add on additional grades. What it is is looking at how do we build in the science base in students early on and Detroit made a commitment to. Various schools that build in those kinds of bases which they're called academies now do you see yourself as a role model to perhaps help minorities or women to become more involved in space travel. Well I'm not really sure how I'm going to connect here about being involved with nath and whether or not how I change and my role model business. I don't think the public figures are role models. I think role models are those people who you learn to pattern your behavior after so those are the folks that were around most often those the folks we learn how to deal with success or failure how to persevere what food to eat all of those are the people who are role models what public figures can be or images and those are the kind of people who sort of help us see what are the
range of possibilities. So certainly I hope that I can continue to be one of those images that says that there is a positive range. Our very large range of possibilities who would you consider to be role models or role models have to be those adults that we're around they can sometimes be folks that. Or even our own age. But there are folks that you're around very frequently so you learn how they respond to challenges so they have to be your parents and they have to be teachers and principals and folks that you're around very frequently. Now the problem is people say role model they assume it's a positive thing. It just means how you learn to play your role. What advice would you give to someone who's interested in pursuing a career in science or maybe even becoming an astronaut. Well I think first of all it's just a matter of making up your mind that this is what you're going to do and you do it. It's real simple. It's not necessarily easy but it's simple. You go ahead and you have the courage and the nerve to perhaps be
turned down to fail sometimes but really you go ahead and do it. I would add that lots of times when people think about science and technology careers. That they think of oh I have to get a Ph.D. right to be a scientist to be involved with technology. The folks who put the space the tiles on the space shuttle they're involved in a pretty high tech field when you say they're usually high school graduates who've done other kinds of things who've gone on and done some little bit of additional training. But that's what they do. They're high school graduates. People who work in biotechnology companies who build semiconductors they get those technicians are high school graduates so we have a range of possibilities of what to do and we can be involved in a technology field. Dr. Mae Jemison thank you very much for joining us. You're very welcome. We
continue our look at North Carolina State Parks tonight Audrey Cates Bailey shows us a park where loggerhead turtles begin their life cycle. A chain of barrier islands extends along our coast. It includes private federal and state land and it's one of the most beautiful and unique ecosystems in the world. Now part of the chain is Bear Island contained within hammocks Beach State Park. Unfortunately Bear Island has been rescued from the heavy development of its neighbors. People come here to camp among the dunes and to learn more about the plants and animals unique to the coast. Among them one very special annual visitor one of the frequent visitors to bear on during the summer
months of June July and August. Other than Fort visitors humans is no longer at sea turtle which comes to the shore of a barrel into the female will come ashore so far as Bob was just right and folding the nest where their hind flippers never seeing the nest actually digs it through all the possible around a hundred two hundred fifty ping pong ball sized Bay. After about 60 days 50 to 60 days the hatchlings will emerge and head to the well the hatchings normally always occurs at night and that's an adapter that they have for protection since they can go to the ocean in the cover of darkness or you can always tell that the mast is about the hatch by the Depression in front of the mast and as I started to go out they slowly come out a few at a time and as the whole mass progress is actually like a boil That's the firm used to for a boil as they all come out at one time as they go to the ocean. All of them will fan out but once you have developed and escape the nasty
the main predator is crabs and as a turtle is moving down to the ocean. The ghost crabs are lined up ready to attack and it's from their struggle to get to the ocean. Then a few minutes a night's rest of the scene is
the next morning the nest seems abandoned. But the work of the hatchlings and the Potsdam is not over. After the girls were hatched we do it's called a nesting inventory where we dig into the nasty count the egg shells that did hatch out the eggs that did not develop and also release any live turtles that still might be left in the nest and Romney's number four I will determine that success ratio. When you visit hammocks Beach State Park we can't guarantee that you'll see loggerhead turtles but you can learn about Barrier Islands. The life cycle of a loggerhead and other turtles found off our coast. To access their island you can take a passenger ferry from the park office or paddle your own boat
across the intercoastal waterway. If you'd like more information on hammocks Beach State Park you can contact the park ranger at 1 5 7 2 hammocks Beach Road Swansboro North Carolina to 8 5 8 4. Or you can call 9 1 0 3 2 6 4 8 8 1. Also we have this brochure about North Carolina State Parks If you'd like one. Just send a stealth self-addressed stamped envelope to North Carolina now P.O. Box 1 4 9 0 0 RTP North Carolina 2 7 7 0 9 indicate somewhere on the envelope that you're interested in the state park information. Finally tonight we think congratulations are in order. For nearly 25 years John L. Sanders served as director of U.N. see Chappell's Hill's Institute of Government. Tonight he's receiving a very special
award from the university. Sanders is this year's recipient of the university's award which recognizes illustrious service to higher education in North Carolina. It's the highest honor given by the UN S. Board of Governors. We congratulate Mr. Sanders on this prestigious award. That's it for us tonight you won't want to miss tomorrow night's edition of North Carolina now. We'll have part two of our in-depth series on Medicare reform and how it affects you. Plus tomorrow many people statewide will celebrate Veterans Day and will join them with a look at a very special World War 2 artist and his work. And we'll meet a Greensboro poet who's just published his 14th volume of poetry. Thanks for joining us tonight. Good night. Thank you. Thank you.
Series
North Carolina Now
Episode
North Carolina Now Episode from 11/09/1995
Contributing Organization
UNC-TV (Research Triangle Park, North Carolina)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/129-988gtxdc
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Description
Series Description
North Carolina Now is a news magazine featuring segments about North Carolina current events and communities.
Description
Dr. Mae Jeminson - Astronaut/Scientist; Medicare #1 (Hochberg); State Parks #5 - Hammocks Beach State Park (Bailey)
Created Date
1995-11-09
Asset type
Episode
Genres
News
Magazine
Topics
News
Local Communities
Media type
Moving Image
Duration
00:27:30
Embed Code
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Credits
AAPB Contributor Holdings
UNC-TV
Identifier: NC0460 (unknown)
Format: Betacam: SP
Generation: Master
Duration: 00:26:46;00
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Citations
Chicago: “North Carolina Now; North Carolina Now Episode from 11/09/1995,” 1995-11-09, UNC-TV, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 28, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-129-988gtxdc.
MLA: “North Carolina Now; North Carolina Now Episode from 11/09/1995.” 1995-11-09. UNC-TV, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 28, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-129-988gtxdc>.
APA: North Carolina Now; North Carolina Now Episode from 11/09/1995. Boston, MA: UNC-TV, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-129-988gtxdc