[ OUR OPINION ]

Expanded cruise industry
requires passenger screening

THE ISSUE Hawaii's adjutant general has asked federal officials to expand security screening to include passengers on cruise ships.

UNLIKE the rest of Hawaii's tourism industry, the cruise ship business is soaring, but security measures initiated after the 9/11 attacks have not taken into account the expanded arrival of tourists by sea. Brig. Gen. Robert Lee, Hawaii's adjutant general, has asked for more security officials to screen passengers boarding cruise ships. The federal security system needs to be broadened to address Lee's concern.

Hawaii's cruise ships carried fewer than 100,000 passengers in 1993, but this year's number is projected at 211,000, and that could double or triple in the next two years. Norwegian Cruise Line accounted for 63 percent of the passengers last year and is expected alone to carry up to 450,000 passengers in the islands in 2005.

In a conference telephone call with Reps. Neil Abercrombie of Honolulu and Norm Dicks, D-Wash., Lee said last week he is concerned about "the disparity in the checkout or the security of passengers for cruise lines as opposed to passengers for aircraft." Federal security officials monitor cruise line manifests but don't screen passengers individually before they leave or arrive in the islands, according to Harley Carter of the U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection.

The government has begun an experimental system screening passengers at airports and transporting them to their cruise line's port in Florida. Abercrombie said officials will look into whether the system can be extended to Hawaii.

However, security screeners at Honolulu Airport may become in short supply. Dozens of airport screeners for the Department of Homeland Security's Transportation Security Administration are expected to be laid off later this year, Lee said. Those anticipated layoffs raise the question of whether the federal agency will be able to expand its operation to include screening of airport arrivals on their way to cruise ships.

Meanwhile, security concerns about cargo arriving by sea mount. Eighty percent of Hawaii's goods are imported, and 98.6 percent of those arrive by ship. Although most of those foreign shipments enter the United States on the West Coast, where they undergo Customs and Coast Guard scrutiny, only 2 percent of the freight containers entering the United States are inspected. Hawaii has receive far less than requested in federal funding to upgrade security at its seaports.

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Medicare bills need
work in conference

THE ISSUE The House and Senate have approved bills offering help to senior citizens in the Medicare program in paying for prescription drugs.

BOTH the U.S. House and Senate have approved Medicare changes aimed at helping the elderly pay for prescription drugs. The bipartisan Senate bill stands the best chance of being enacted, but it probably would require changes to eliminate gaps and provide assistance to those in need without creating tax havens for the wealthy, as provided in the House bill. Those and other problems should be worked out in joint conferences due to begin next month.

Nearly half of the Senate's Democrats, including Senators Inouye and Akaka, joined all Republicans in approving that chamber's measure, 71 to 26. The House vote of 216 to 215, was largely along party lines, with most Democrats voting against it. Rep. Ed Case preferred a prescription-drug proposal by the centrist House New Democrat Coalition, of which he is a member, while Abercrombie said the House-approved Republican version was "so full of loopholes that it will be worthless for people in real-life situations."

Both versions contain senseless gaps. If the Senate bill were enacted, Medicare would pay half of the drug costs for beneficiaries until they total $4,500 a year, at which point the beneficiaries would pay all costs until they reach the "catastrophic" level of $5,800. Medicare would pick up 90 percent of costs beyond that. In the House version, the government would pay 80 percent of the cost up to $2,000, then nothing until the costs reach $4,900, and the entire cost after that level is reached. How such systems were concocted is beyond comprehension.

Both bills contain annual deductibles -- $250 in the House, $275 in the Senate -- in addition to $35 monthly premiums. Consequently, beneficiaries buying drugs during the gaps in Medicare assistance would pay more than if there were no system in place at all.

The House bill also would allow people to create special "health savings accounts" exempt from taxes, projected to amount to $174 billion in tax breaks over the next decade. The Senate bill contains no such windfall.

Useful provisions in both bills would increase the availability of lower-priced generic equivalents of brand-name drugs and, if the Department of Health and Human Services agrees, allow U.S.-made drugs to be imported back from Canada, which regulates pharmaceutical prices and negotiates discounts from drug companies.