Frank Bartel

Group Health Northwest of Spokane has become a player to be reckoned with in efforts to craft a national managed-care "Consumer Bill of Rights" as outlined in President Clinton's State of the Union address. A commission appointed by the president set forth a series of standards that would be legally binding on the managed care industry. Group Health Northwest has joined Seattle-based Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound, its parent, and Kaiser Permanente, in backing a national consumer-protection push.

Miller

Is the American Association of Retired Persons effectively addressing the foremost issues facing older Americans? Is the 32-million-member special interest group doing a good job of informing and communicating with its membership? With the media? The American people? Politicians?

Robert Witter

Under cloak of the Republican revolution, big business is lobbying for a number of regulatory reforms which would serve no purpose other than to line the pockets of large corporations. Among the most treacherous, pension watchdogs warn, is one which would enable large employers to siphon off retirement fund surpluses. Proceeds could then be spent on anything management pleases - from a chauffeured limousine for the boss to a corporate takeover of the competition. It's been done before.

In the entry to a business next to the Spokane Transit Authority's new downtown transfer center, a loiterer snoozed on the sidwalk as security guards strolled past. The business operators complain they had to go to higher-ups in the transit system to get action. Employees of the business are not happy with the job the STA's security guards are doing.

People are getting as fed up with giant corporations as they are big government. Multimillionaire executives and attorneys for tobacco conglomerates have the arrogance to swear before Congress that nicotine is not addictive. Pick up a paper or click on TV, and some chief executive who makes umpteen million dollars a minute and just axed thousands of workers starts whining about how tough it is to run a business these days.

It's gratifying how many readers would willingly pay 25 cents or even a buck more for a burger, if that would wipe out the need for welfare supplements to the working poor. "I've always thought Big Macs were too cheap anyhow," declared one caller in response to a recent column on raising minimum pay to a living wage. The idea is to make it possible for everyone who works for a living to make a living at it.