November 21, 1986

Dr. Otis R. Bowen, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, today proposed a wide range of new Government programs and tax incentives for individuals and private industry to provide or purchase insurance for catastrophic illnesses. He recommended a sweeping expansion of Medicare to limit out-of-pocket payments by the elderly to $2,000 a year in return for an annual premium of $59. He said this was ''a very modest price to pay for increasing the elderly's peace of mind.'' More than 28 million elderly people are covered by Medicare. Each year about 800,000 of them are personally responsible for costs of acute care exceeding $2,000.

The World Health Organization announced today that it had begun the first coordinated global effort to combat AIDS, a disease it described as ''a health disaster of pandemic proportions.'' The organization is elevating the fight against acquired immune deficiency syndrome to a status equivalent to its programs to combat entire groups of tropical diseases and to promote childhood immunizations, Dr. Halfdan Mahler, head of the W.H.O., said at a news conference here. 'We're Running Scared' He said the organization, an agency of the United Nations that is based in Geneva, was also giving the AIDS effort the kind of backing it gave to the eradication of smallpox. He said the organization hoped to be raising $1.5 billion a year by the 1990's for the fight against AIDS.

The Scandal on Wall Street The financial community criticized the S.E.C. for letting Ivan F. Boesky sell close to half a billion dollars in stock just days before settling his insider trading case. [ Page A1. ] Mr. Boesky personally apologized to limited partners in his investment fund, lawyers who were present said. Meanwhile, the first class-action lawsuit was filed against Mr. Boesky for his illegal trading on takeover stocks. [ D6. ] British authorities have begun gathering information on the trading activities of London-basd investment firms linked to the Wall Street speculator. [ D6. ] Drexel Burnham Lambert has met with the U.S. Attorney's office to ask for a public reassurance it is not under criminal investigation. [ D6. ] Mr. Boesky's political donations have exceeded $110,000 in recent years, with much of the money going to the Republican Party or its candidates. [ D6. ]

In a move that would make Time Inc. a major player in the women's magazine field, the giant magazine publisher has agreed to buy a 50 percent interest in McCall's and two other monthly publications, Working Woman and Working Mother. The purchases would be made in a joint venture with Dale Lang, owner of Working Woman. Under the deal, Time would receive a half interest in Working Woman, a magazine intended to help women advance their careers. In turn, the joint venture has agreed to acquire McCall's and Working Mother from the McCall Publishing Company, privately owned by the Pritzker family of Chicago.

Anthony B. Gliedman, the former City Housing Commissioner, had been in his new job less than three weeks when his new employer, Donald J. Trump, called him into his office on the morning of May 22. Mr. Trump had just read in the newspaper that the Koch administration had decided to start all over in its six-year effort to rebuild the Wollman Memorial Rink in Central Park. The city was proposing to hire an engineering company to draw up plans for a new rink, and if all went well, New Yorkers might be ice skating again in 18 months. ''Donald said he felt that we could do this in four months,'' Mr. Gliedman recalled last week. Thus began one of the bolder feats of civic bravado tried in New York in recent years.