Steel-based coins clear House vote

WASHINGTON — The House voted for cheaper change Thursday, the kind that would make pennies and nickels worth more than they cost to make and save the country $100 million a year.

The unanimous vote advanced the legislation to the Senate, but its prospects are muddled by objections from the Bush administration and some lawmakers.

The bill would require the U.S. Mint to switch from a zinc and copper penny, which costs 1.26 cents to make, to a copper-plated steel penny, which would cost 0.7 cents to make, according to statistics from the Mint and Rep. Zack Space, D-Ohio, one of the measure's sponsors.

It also would require nickels, made of copper and nickel and costing 7.7 cents to make, to be made primarily of steel, which would drop the cost to below its 5-cent face value.

Advocates said the changes would save taxpayers about $1 billion over a decade.

But Mint Director Ed Moy said the 270 days the legislation grants to convert the nation to a steel penny is too short for the metal industry to weigh in and could incur additional costs. In addition, steel may be vulnerable to surging costs just as the metals now used.

Medicare takes aim at marketing abuses

Medicare proposed new rules Thursday to curb marketing abuses that have cropped up as the role of private insurance plans has grown in the giant health-care program for the elderly and disabled.

Critics called the rules an improvement but questioned whether the federal government could enforce them.

The new rules would cover the Medicare prescription-drug plans that began offering benefits in 2006 and private medical-insurance plans that operate under the program's umbrella.

Enrollment in such plans has spurted in recent years.

The proposed rules would ban door-to-door peddling of plans and cold-calling beneficiaries. Meetings with a sales agent would have to be initiated by the Medicare recipient and could cover only the specific subject that particular person wanted to discuss. Sales agents would be prohibited from using face-to-face meetings to sell another product, such as life insurance.

Insurance companies would be required to change the way they pay commissions so as to diminish financial incentives for agents to sell particular plans that paid higher commissions. Companies also would be required to use state-licensed agents.

Investigation of Utah mine collapse urged

Federal prosecutors should open a criminal investigation into the deaths of nine people in a Utah mine collapse last year, a key House Democrat said Thursday.

Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, said he made a criminal referral to the Justice Department on the August 2007 collapse of the Crandall Canyon Mine.

He accused the company of concealing the extent of an earlier collapse that involved the same high-risk technique, retreat mining, that was being used when the disaster began.

Miller said that if federal mine officials had known the extent of that earlier collapse, they would not have allowed the company to continue using the method, in which miners remove coal from the pillars that hold up the tunnels.

The Mine Safety and Health Administration is investigating the two cave-ins that killed six miners and three would-be rescuers.

Kevin Anderson, a representative of the mining company, said, "There is no credible basis for Mr. Miller's reckless allegations."

Also

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday postponed consideration of a bill that would continue funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as a bloc of conservative Democrats balked at the high cost of including several of Pelosi's favored domestic-spending programs, including a new education benefit for post- 9/11 military-service veterans.

Seattle Times news services