March 29, 1992

A rapidly growing number of victims of cancer, AIDS and other serious illnesses are discovering that under recent court interpretations of a law that was originally intended to protect employees' benefits, their insurance coverage can evaporate when they need it most. The recent Federal court rulings have given employers that now act as their own insurers wide leeway to cut back on existing coverage -- or to skimp on coverage in the first place. These "self-insured" employers, a large majority of companies from giant corporations to an increasing number of smaller businesses, have been exempted from state insurance laws governing what ailments insurance companies must cover. For example, many states require coverage for alcoholism, mental health problems and intensive care for infants with birth defects.

VERA BAILEY walked up the steps of a three-family house in Hartford. With no names over the doorbells, she decided to press every one. When no one answerd, she shouted up at the windows, "Alexis, come on now, you come down here." "People get mad when I go ringing all the doorbells, but I have to get to my clients," Ms. Bailey said. "However I get them is fine by me. This is what you call outreach work."

Four years ago, Novell Inc. was little more than a pesky fly on the rump of a giant computer software elephant named Microsoft. Novell, a small, obscure company situated here in the shadow of Utah's Wasatch Range, produced software to hook desktop computers together so they could share peripheral devices, such things as printers and hard disks. The Microsoft Corporation, in Redmond, Wash., was large, rich and famous for its MS-DOS operating system, which had become the standard operating system software installed in millions of personal computers.

WHITE-COLLAR crime in New Jersey hospitals has become so efficient that it is eluding standard in-house auditing, law-enforcement and hospital officials say. New Jersey's top Federal prosecutor says a "widespread laxness" in some hospitals' administrative controls has contributed to hospitals' becoming cash registers of corruption the way some savings and loan institutions were in the 1980's. Fake invoicing, double billing and outright theft are being carried out by hospital purchasing agents and other employees in collusion with medical supply companies, law-enforcement officials say.

George Bush, Jim Baker and Pat Buchanan are in a rowboat that sinks. Who gets saved? The answer to the joke, now making the rounds in Washington, is: Israel.