Reported by Star-Bulletin staff & wire
Wednesday, June 25, 1997
Queen's Health Systems has completed its purchase of Pacific Group Medical Association, the local health-care insurer seized by the state in March. Queen's completes
purchase of PGMAQueen's, which bid $2.3 million for PGMA in May, completed the transaction on June 10 and has renamed the carrier Queen's Preferred Plan. Existing PGMA contracts and group premiums will continue without interruption, Queen's said.
Last month, a state judge approved Queen's bid for PGMA, which was seized by state Insurance Commissioner Rey Graulty. Graulty seized the company after he received complaints that the insurer delayed payments of medical claims.
Polynesian Airways has resumed its cargo flights to Lanai and Molokai. Polynesian Airways
restarts cargo serviceThe airline's flights had been grounded by the Federal Aviation Administration while the agency reviewed the cargo carrier's records.
The airline came under FAA investigation earlier this year after one of its Beech 18 aircraft crashed while taking off from Honolulu Airport.
Owner Bob Whittinghill said the airline is back to its two daily flights to the Lanai, Molokai and Kalaupapa airports.
Polynesian has contracts to deliver mail and newspapers to those islands. It contracted with another carrier to handle the contracts while it was grounded.
WASHINGTON -- U.S. factory orders for big-ticket goods unexpectedly fell 0.6 percent in May, giving Federal Reserve policymakers further reason not to raise interest rates when they meet next week, government figures showed today. Reports: Factory orders fall,
home sales riseMay's decline in orders was the second in three months and adds to evidence that the U.S. economy is slowing, Bloomberg News reported. At the same time, another report from the National Association of Realtors showed there's little danger of growth grinding to a halt as existing home sales rose 4.4 percent in May to an annual rate of 4.240 million, the third highest level on record.
"We're limping along" in the second quarter after blockbuster growth in the first three months of the year, said Leonard Katz, who helps manage $300 million in bonds at Fixed Income Management Group in Garden City, N.Y.
WASHINGTON -- Seeking to restore public faith in the tax system, a congressional panel today recommended the biggest reforms at the IRS in more than 40 years, including a new outside board of directors for the IRS that's strongly opposed by the White House. Congressional panel
pushes IRS reformsA central recommendation by the National Commission on Restructuring the Internal Revenue Service is to create a new seven-member outside board of directors, including private business executives, to oversee the IRS.
The commission plans to draft legislation, to be introduced next month, to implement many of its proposals. One idea calls for extending the April 15 tax filing deadline to June 15 for people filing taxes electronically as an incentive to eliminate paper tax forms. The report proposes a new May 15 deadline for paper filers to help the IRS better manage its work flow.
WASHINGTON -- Public health groups today attacked a tobacco settlement reached with the industry, calling its restrictions on future government control over nicotine unacceptable. Health groups
attack tobacco settlementThe FDA provisions would reverse current law that gives the agency authority to take any steps needed to control nicotine, the critics said. They are part of a coalition led by former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop and former Food and Drug Administration chief David Kessler that began its first formal scrutiny of the proposed $368 billion tobacco deal.
The law on FDA powers was upheld recently by a North Carolina judge, the health groups said.
"It is absolutely unacceptable" to limit FDA's authority, said Dudley Haffner of the American Heart Association.
The Koop-Kessler group is writing recommendations that President Clinton will use in deciding whether to back the tobacco deal or -- as expected -- offer changes.