October 8, 1999

House, by surprisingly lopsided vote, passes bill to give patients wide range of rights, including right to sue health insurance plans that cause injury by denying care or providing substandard treatment; vote, 275 to 151, is stunning rebuff to House Republican leaders; 68 Republicans defy their leadership and vote for bill, despite pleas from Speaker J Dennis Hastert, who says he vehemently opposes measure because it could lead to flood of lawsuits against health maintenance orgns; House's version of patients' bill of rights, strongly supported by Pres Clinton, would set uniform national standards for health insurance, which has been regulated mainly by states; bill was drafted by Reps Charlie Norwood, Georgia Republican, and John D Dingell, Michigan Democrat; in July, Senate passed bill providing patients with more limited set of rights; House-Senate conference must now reconcile two versions (M)

American Home Products To Settle Diet-Drug Case American Home Products agreed to pay $3.75 billion to thousands of people who contend they were injured by taking the popular diet pill combination fen-phen.

Venturing where other brave souls have failed, the members of the Flux String Quartet (above) will test their musicianship and stamina tomorrow by attempting to play Morton Feldman's six-hour String Quartet No. 2. The Flux players have yet to get through it in one sitting. But they have been building up to it, performing chunks of 90 minutes and three hours. An article by Anthony Tommasini appears on page 8.

Nike Inc, in significant concession to anti-sweatshop movement on college campuses, becomes first large apparel company to disclose names and sites of dozens of its overseas factories; student groups praise Nike for its disclosures about factories in Bangladesh, China, Guatemala, Thailand and other countries; last spring, students held demonstrations at Harvard, Yale, Princeton and dozens of other colleges and universities, demanding that universities force companies making apparel with school logos to disclose names and addresses of their factories; manufacturers produce $2.5 billion worth of goods each year bearing names of hundreds of colleges; Nike discloses names of 41 overseas factories it uses to make athletic gear for Duke, Georgetown, University of Michigan, University of North Carolina and University of Arizona; disclosures are expected to place considerable pressure on other apparel makers to follow suit (M)

Surface Transportation Policy Project, nonprofit group that promotes mass transit and land-use planning, issues study suggesting that time lost by drivers to construction delays is often not made up when road work is completed; as example, widening Route 29 near Trenton, NJ, is expected to save commuter 25 hours a year, but is causing 80 hours worth of delays; photos; separately, Justice Department reports decline in rate of drunk-driving arrests as US population ages; examples from test for students who want to take test for commercial driver's license (M)