WASHINGTON — Adding pressure to fix the administration’s problem-plagued health care program, former President Bill Clinton says President Barack Obama should find a way to let people keep their health coverage, even if it means changing the law. Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton says Obama should keep pledge
to let Americans
keep health coverage
WASHINGTON — Adding pressure to fix the administration’s problem-plagued health care program, former President Bill Clinton says President Barack Obama should find a way to let people keep their health coverage, even if it means changing the law.
Clinton says Obama should “honor the commitment that the federal government made to those people and let them keep what they got.”
The former president, a Democrat who has helped Obama promote the 3-year-old health law, becomes the latest in Obama’s party to urge the president to live up to a promise he made repeatedly, declaring that the if Americans liked their health care coverage, they would be able to keep it under the new law.
Instead, millions of Americans have started receiving insurance cancellation letters. That, coupled with the troubled launch of the health care law’s enrollment website, has prompted Republican critics and frustrated Democrats to seek corrections in the law.
House Republicans have drafted legislation to give consumers the opportunity to keep their coverage. Ten Senate Democrats are pushing for an unspecified extension of the sign-up period and in a private White House meeting last week several pressed Obama to do so. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., has proposed legislation that would require insurance companies to reinstate the canceled policies.
Expert committee declares new World Trade Center tower the tallest building in US
CHICAGO — The new World Trade Center tower in New York will replace Chicago’s Willis Tower as the nation’s tallest building when it is completed next year, an international panel of architects announced Tuesday.
The Height Committee of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat said that because the needle atop the New York skyscraper is a permanent spire and not an antenna it can be counted when measuring the structure’s height.
The needle, measuring 408 feet tall, was more than enough to confirm Chicago is the Second City when it comes to tall buildings.
With the needle, 1 World Trade Center is a symbolically important 1,776 feet tall. Without it, the building would have been only 1,368 feet tall — well short of the 1,451-foot Willis Tower.
At stake was more than just the pride of two cities that feast on superlatives and the tourist dollars that might follow: 1 World Trade Center, with its beacon on top will stand as a monument to those killed in the 9/11 attacks, and its architects had sought to capture the echo of America’s founding year in the structure’s height.
Justice Dept. reaches agreement to allow merger of US Airways and American Airlines
DALLAS — American Airlines and US Airways reached a deal with the government that lets the two form the world’s biggest airline and opens up more room at key U.S. airports for low-cost carriers.
The settlement announced Tuesday — if approved by a federal judge — would end a fight with the U.S. Justice Department and head off a courtroom showdown later this month.
It preserves hub airports in Phoenix, Philadelphia, Charlotte and four other cities for at least three years. And it caps a series of mergers that have already eliminated four big U.S. airlines and stoked fear about higher travel prices.
For American, the nation’s third-biggest airline, the deal lets parent AMR Corp. exit bankruptcy protection, repay creditors and reward shareholders.
At US Airways, the No. 5 U.S. carrier, shareholders will own 28 percent of the new company, employees stand to get more pay, and top executives will realize their dreams of running an airline even bigger than United or Delta.
By wire sources
