FILLED MARS
ON
9/17/74
Big Red rampage
The KU volleyball team fell to Nebraska last night in its Big Eight season opener. Nebraska was last year's Big Eight champions and now is ranked third nationally.
Contract to learn
Story, page 11
Students who need tutors to help them with classwork sign a contract with Supportive Educational Services and commit themselves to learning.
Wets side story
Story, page 6
The damp weather should continue today with a 30-percent chance of thunderstorms. The high will be near 80, and partly cloudy skies should continue tonight.
Details, page 3
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Vol. 97, No. 18 (USPS 650-640)
Published since 1889 by the students of the University of Kansas
Wednesday September 17,1986
Torch ignites fire in S. Africa mine, 170 workers dead
The Associated Press
EVANDER, South Africa — Fire ignited by a welding accident erupted in a gold mine yesterday, killing at least 170 miners and leaving 14 missing, officials said.
A dozen rescue teams worked through the night, searching for survivors despite constantly diminishing hope that anyone could be found alive in the 1$_{1/2}$-mile-deep mine.
A mine spokesman told reporters early today that at least 170 miners were confirmed dead and that 14 remained missing. The death toll had stood at 44 at midnight.
Dawie de Beer, a spokesman for Gencor, owners of Kinross mine, told state-run radio that 235 injured miners — 180 of them black — were hospitalized for injuries suffered in the accident.
Kobus Olivier, manager of the mine, said there was only a slight chance that the missing miners survived.
About 2,000 miners escaped or were pulled out by rescue teams yesterday.
Spotlights illuminated the two towers as search operations continued through the night. Ambulances and police cars were standing by.
Guards checked vehicles at the gate, but no relatives gathered to
await word about the fate of the missing men. Many black miners live in company hostels and cannot be joined by their families who remain in the black homelands or neighboring countries.
Olivier said 128 black workers and 55 whites were hospitalized in Evander, which is on the edge of the mine. Most suffered from smoke inhalation. Five were reported in serious condition while the others were listed as satisfactory.
At least 13 of the dead miners were known to be blacks, but no information was available on the others.
Harry Hill, another company spokesman, said an alarm was sounded to evacuate the No.2 shaft at the mine, 62 miles east of Johannesburg, when the fire broke out.
Mine officials said an explosion in an acetylene welding torch or gas cylinder started the fire. The flames spread through electric cables and other material in a horizontal passage at the 15th level between the mine's two vertical shafts, they said.
Hill said the fumes "spread through the working areas of the No. 2 shaft," and he believed the fatal gases were carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide
Miners normally do not wear gas masks underground, and Hill said he did not know if masks were available
See MINERS, p. 5, col. 1
Computer customizes advising for freshmen
Staff writer
By ATLE BJORGE
This doesn't mean that human advisers have been replaced by microchips, said Robert Adams, associate dean of the college.
A computer advised freshmen in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences on what classes to take this semester.
But the old paper folders are being replaced by computer printouts wit some added features as a part of t new Academic Record Track, Sg System.
Based on the student's high school courses, ACT scores and interests, Adams said, the computer suggests a class schedule that can be a starting point for an adviser.
Joe vanZandt, coordinator of advising, said advisers who had used ARTS found it extremely useful although they didn't always stick to the computer's suggestions.
Robert Lineberry, dean of the college, said the ARTS computer was linked with the enrollment computers so that students were advised
to take classes that were open.
The electronic folder is also useful because students sometimes dropped in for advising without bringing their records, vanZandt said. Now the records will be only the press of a key away, he said.
Adams said this would be a more accurate and up-to-date method to check on a student's progress toward a degree. The updating of the 10,000 paper folders usually lagged a semester behind because checking educational requirements was time-consuming and subject to error, he said.
The ARTS form also lists the required and miscellaneous hours completed, the hours remaining to graduate and the grades received.
The system was first used for about 4,000 students this summer.
Over the next four years, four classes of incoming freshmen will be entered on the ARTS. Students already enrolled in the college will keep the paper folders because the
See FOLDERS, p. 5
David Brandt/Special to the Kansan
Tunnel tunes
The music of Judah Williams and George Abrams echoes through the tunnel of the Kansas Union. Williams, a Lawrence resident, played the flute for a contented listener, his one-year-old son Carlos. Williams and Abrams, also a Lawrence resident, were practicing Monday. The two are members of Common Ground, a local reggae band.
Health costs out of reach for 581,000 Kansans
Bv COLLEEN SIEBES
Staff writer.
Rep. Jessie Branson, D-Lawrence,
said that testimonies presented
before the Interim Committee on
Public Health and Welfare last
month reported that 581,000 Kansans
were medically indigent because
they were uninsured or underinsured
and could not afford health care.
More than half a million Kansans are too poor to pay for needed medical care, and relief may be more than a year away, a state representative said recently.
Millions of dollars were saved, but thousands of Kansans lost health care, said Bill Pagano, health planner for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.
The report said that during the last five years the federal and state governments had cut funds for medical assistance programs and had tightened eligibility requirements.
The interim committee has heard testimony on the issue of medical indigency from organizations, including the Statewide Health Coordinating Council, the Kansas Department on Aging, the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services and the University of Kansas Medical Center.
The council, an advisory board to the Kansas Department of Health and Welfare, provided data for the organizations' testimonies.
The council also suggested several possible solutions to help relieve the situation. Solutions included direct appropriations of state funds, increasing general sales taxes or excise taxes on goods such as alcohol and tobacco, a health service tax and establishment of a tax-deductible trust fund to which people could contribute.
Pagano, a council member, said the council's testimony was only preliminary research and a task force designed to research the issue in depth was needed.
The council testimony recommended that the interim committee advise the U.S. Congress to establish a task force to further investigate the problem. The committee plans to present recommendations to Congress in December.
Branson said she would support increasing state funds to Medicaid and changing the eligibility requirements higher-income residents qualified
She also favors expanding funds for prenatal care to give aid to more single pregnant women, many of whom are poor, she said.
Branson, a member of the Public
Health and Welfare committee, said the committee would begin to discuss possible solutions to the problem when it meets again on Oct. 23 and 24.
The pregnancies of single women are considered to be high risk pregnancies because the women may well or receiving proper medical care.
They also may not be educated about the hazards of smoking and drinking alcohol while pregnant, she said.
The department of health and environment reported that in 1984, 6,000 women in Kansas did not receive adequate prenatal care. In that year, the number of infants that required intensive care increased to 2,425, compared to 1,169 in 1982. Infant mortality rates also increased from 1982 to 1984.
Branson also recommends requiring all hospitals to care for medically indigent patients. Some hospitals have been practicing "patient dumping" in which they send indigents to other hospitals, she said.
The 1985 Institute of Medicine Report on Preventing Low Birthweight estimated that one dollar spent in prenatal care would avert three dollars in treatment costs for high-risk newborns.
Last year the KU Med Center spent $10 million to cover the cost of people who were too poor to pay their bills. And the Kansas Hospital Association reported that revenues to cover uncompensated care in Kansas hospitals last year exceeded $75 million.
"Approximately three out of every five hospitals in Kansas are significantly affected by uncompensated care," the council report indicated.
Many times state-financed hospitals were caring for a disproportionate share of the indigents, Branson said. Hospitals located in poor areas also received a greater number of indigents.
While hospitals in Johnson County are profiting by millions, Branson said, hospitals in poverty-stricken areas are losing money.
The American Hospital Association reported that state hospitals deliver 35 percent of uncompensated care but were reimbursed for only 18 percent of the charges.
Lawrence Memorial Hospital recently decided to allocate $250,000 a year to provide care to those who can't pay for it, Hesley said. The money will come from hospital profits.
Branson said solutions to the problem might be delayed because of controversy over the sources of revenues. The money will have to come from taxes or from the funds of other state-funded organizations. Branson said.
Judith Hesley, Lawrence Memorial Hospital public relations director, said, "Medical care is a right, but I don't think the government is going to do anything about it. People aren't going to stand for taxes."
Lawrence Memorial Hospital already has given $474,480 in services
To solve some of the problems, Pagano is in favor of developing risk sharing pools between insurance companies. Insurance companies would establish a joint fund from which the companies would draw money to insure high-risk individuals, he said, making premiums lower.
Pagano also supports passing a tax because "caring for the indigent is the moral obligation of society."
for uncompensated care since January 1986
Health officials attributed the problem of medical indigence in part to federal and state cuts in programs such as Medicaid and Medicare.
In July 1981, the state eliminated a program that aided people who were malignable for Medicaid The state saved $8 million, but left 2,000 people without medical care.
In November 1981, federal legislation forced cutbacks in Medicaid, eliminating medical assistance to 10,000 people in Kansas.
In April 1983, President Reagan signed amendments to the Social Security acts that eliminated cost-shifting in hospitals.