Battalion
Serving the Universily community
College Station, Texas
Wednesday, June 22, 1983
Errors found in insurance
claims of System employees
by Angel Stokes
Battalion Staff
The insurance claims investigation
rogram — initiated in mid-February
y the Office of Insurance and Risk
Management at Texas A&M — has
uncovered $21,600 worth of dis-
crepencies in insurance claims filed
by Texas A&M System employees as
of May 31, the assistant director for
the insurance and retirement prog
ram said Tuesday.
The program began as a trial proc
edure for cost containment after in
surance premiums increased in the
fall for System employees covered by
the employees’ group insurance plan,
assistant director Mary Jo Hurley
said. She said the investigations have
involved not only employees in Bryan
and College Station, but also em
ployees working anywhere in the Uni
versity System.
The claims investigator, Bernadet
te Mayer, is a registered nurse and has
a masters in business administration,
Hurley said. She said that Mayer is
very qualified to find mistakes that
could slip by most people.
“The insurance claims program is
coming along so well,” Hurley said,
“that we’re thinking of expanding it.”
The biggest aim of the program is
to inform employees to check medical
bills because doctors and hospitals
aren’t infallible, she said.
Some of the discovered over
charges occurred when a patient was
billed twice for a room or was billed
for hospital services or drugs that
were never received, she said.
If we can come up with documenta
tion that the services were never re
ceived or that duplicate billing occur
red, the hospital will write off the
charges, she said.
Most of the errors found were cler
ical, she said, and resulted from com
munication problems within the hos
pital.
If a doctor’s fees are higher than
the usual rates charged by doctors in
the same area, a letter informing both
the doctor and the employee of the
usual fees for certain services in that
area is written. Hurley said. She said
this is a typical practice of insurance
companies.
It isn’t done to tell the doctor what
his fee should be, but just to let both
parties know the rates acknowledged
as typical by the insurance company,
she said.
staff photo by Barry Papke
It went that way
Keith Skaar, left, advises Samantha Conole, a seventh
iSargeaMgrader at Allen Academy, who is practicing her golf
< in a technique Tuesday. Conole is a participant in Jackie
Sherrill’s All Sports Camp, a two week summer camp
is longtajjr youth. The camp features 13 activities including
genccnfi" horseback riding and football. Skaar is a petroleum
he explaBQiogy sen i or from Humble,
posing up
lipinlollif|
id sabota;i|
1 u lals sal ^^
Siexas defense
i-Castro oiB
Arthur •
‘‘■nding set
ss,
Special
to begin
session
today
United Press International
gSHINGTON — The U.S.
[approved a $7 billion approp-
fns bill Tuesday for military con-
lan that makes Texas second in
nation for funding.
Bie outlay for Texas totals
0l9 million, up $8.9 million from
||ai tment of Defense request of
'V ,,S ‘ b million. That ranked behind
[Ornia, which received $484.5
if the popt
in . iIS j e „ U ] lion out of $495 million contained
iked, i. l- • • i
; ne origin! request.
S P° e R 339-square-mile Army base at
ipHood got the lion’s share of the
,ii[|’s appropriations, with projects
rnent .,. (j Mg $77.1 million. Heading the
of 4 major construction projects
fought M c
on Hood were multi-purpose air-
aintenance shops at $13.2 mil
lion and $11.4 million, and equip
ment shops worth $8.4 million and
$8.2 million.
The biggest single construction
project in the state was at Fort Bliss,
the air defense center near El Paso,
where a multi-purpose training range
worth $18.5 million was funded.
The bill contained big outlays for
troop quarters at three Texas Air
Force bases. Sheppard AFB near
Wichita Falls topped the list with $7.2
million for bachelor enlisted housing,
and $5.2 million for visiting officer
housing.
Fort Hood, the Army’s largest base,
supports 42,000 soldiers assigned to
two armored divisions and a helicop
ter brigade under the auspices of III
Corps Headquarters.
United Press International
AUSTIN — A compromise on
brucellosis control, an agreement to
keep human rights out of the purview
of the state employment agency and
$15.5 million available for college
construction should ease the tasks of
Texas legislators beginning a special
session today.
After less than a month’s hiatus,
lawmakers were called back to the
State Capitol by Gov. Mark White to
resolve disputes remaining from the
140-day regular session that ended
May 30. The agenda for the special
session, which is expected to last one
week, includes bills to extend the life
of the Texas Employment Commis
sion, set up a state brucellosis control
program and fund a library and gym
nasium at Texas Southern University
to help with a federal desegregation
order.
White also has been urged to allow
lawmakers to debate a state water
plan, injury insurance for farm work
ers, a human rights commission and
several other issues. His official list of
session topics was expected later to
day. Committee hearings were sche
duled for this afternoon on brucello
sis and the TEC and for Saturday on
TSU construction funding.
Comptroller Bob Bullock said
Tuesday the state had $15.5 million
available to spend during the special
session. A motion to continue the
operation of the TEC failed on the
final day of the regular session when
the House refused to accept a Senate
amendment that would have placed a
state human rights commission within
the agency.
A spokesman for Sen. Lloyd Dog-
gett, D-Austin, said the senator had
backed off his plan to try to place a
human rights agency within the TEC
and instead was considering bills to
put such a body in the Department of
Labor and Standards or set it up as a
separate state agency.
“The TEC is definitely the third
choice and that basically is not under
serious consideration now,” aide Dan
Brody said Tuesday.
The agency that administers feder
al unemployment benefits and helps
jobless Texans find work is scheduled
to be disbanded Sept. 1 under the
state’s “sunset” provisions.
' Cattlemen and senators who
opposed a brucellosis bill during the
regular session apparently were
reaching a compromise that should
allow quick action on a bill to bring
state regulations on control of the in
fectious cattle disease into compliance
with federal guidelines.
“The governor is working towards
a fair, equitable solution and towards
legislation that would be acceptable
and economical,” cattleman and for
mer Gov. Dolph Briscoe, one of the
most vocal opponents of state brucel
losis control, said Tuesday.
“We’re discussing a vaccination
program instead of the current test
and slaughter program, which is very
expensive,” Briscoe said, adding he
was unsure whether federal officials
would accept a vaccination program.
Boy,
am
staff photo by Barry Pap*
stuffed!
Wendy Durbin found a unique job this summer. She is
working as a taxidermist in Bryan. Tuesday she was
putting finishing touches on a‘ Cape Buffalo. Durbin is
a second year veterinary student from Mansfield.
t) years of N
, this naW
thepopfj
for the [
>daw, St.
Krakow-
'Me operates space medicine machine in shuttle
ie may t
United Press International
E CANAVERAL — Sally Ride,
Iway through her milestone shut-
Itnission, ran an experimental
E medicine machine Tuesday
urging® 11 ® at developing a “break-
meeting »'| u gh” drug to treat a hormone de-
solni ien 7'
the bat® 16 Challenger’s biological refin-
Dn wen [oiif®(periment, expected to lead to
here and®crcial drug production in space
1987, was a seven-hour job for the
tear-old astrophysicist who once
dust between the stars.
■de, Robert Crippen, Frederick
lies
Hauck, John Fabian and Norman
Thagard were in their fourth day of
flight and seemed to be enjoying ev
ery minute of it. They already have
logged more than 1 million miles in
orbit.
Ride reported turning on the 6-
foot-tall drug machine at 4 a.m. and
45 minutes later demonstrated how it
worked in a television show from
space as Challenger circled Earth for
the 47th time.
“Isn’t science wonderful?” she said,
floating next to the unit mounted on
the wall of the lower level of Challen
ger’s cabin, next to the main hatch.
She explained that an electric field
separates materials as a biological
solution flows through the machine.
Much higher concentrations and
greater purity can be obtained in
weightlessness than on Earth. “The
point, of course, is to separate out the
protein material we’re interested in,”
Ride said. The machine’s developers
are particularly interested in hor
mones.
The happy-go-lucky astronauts be
gan their day at 1 a.m. when mission
control radioed up the reveille bugle
call followed by “When You’re
Smiling.”
The crew responded by radioing
back a few strains of “Tequila Sun
rise.”
“You know why we’re such a happy
crew,” cracked Fabian.
The astronauts’ workday schedule
is moving earlier daily to prepare
them for Friday’s dawn landing at the
Kennedy Space Center. President
Reagan will be among those on hand
to watch the first return of a spaceship
to its landing base.
A band of thunderstorms swept
across the oceanside spaceport before
dawn today, but an astronaut in mis
sion control said that was a good
omen “we’ll have good weather on
Friday.”
“Sounds good to me,” said Fabian.
The astronauts got some good
news early today when mission con
trol reported the Indonesian com
munications satellite they launched
Sunday had performed its final rock
et maneuver to go into a stationary
orbit 22,300 miles high. The crew
gathered some more scientific infor
mation today from some of the ex
periments mounted on the West Ger
man satellite still anchored in the
ship’s open cargo bay. The satellite
was shut down at 4:30 a.m. to allow a
computer to cool.
Before it was turned off, however,
controllers said some good data were
obtained, including ground observa
tions from an Earth resources
ounseling center teaches good study habits
orthgate
TI0NS
ms andenj
business c }
other ser'j
tions.
tor’s note: This is the second
y in a three-part series on the
as A&M Student Counseling
vice.
by Robert McGlohon
Battalion Staff
alking to yourself can be dan-
bus to your grades, says Dr. Betty
burn, a counseling psychologist
the Texas A&M Student Coun-
gng Service, even if you don’t
wer back.
elping students learn to control
ative self-talk is one of many
gs Milburn does for students
It academic troubles. Milburn,
it of 14 counselors for the Student
nseling Service, specializes in
idemic counseling.
J“I find that there is a lot of self-
Slkthat the students are doing that
ontributes to academic problems,”
"burn said. “In other words, they
lave assignments that are due and
tey say ‘Oh, I’ll do it later’ or ‘I’m
jjhgry now’ or ‘I’m not interested’
ir'This is boring.’ That ends up in
ley’re not doing the studying until
t’s too late.”
^elf-talk is a contributing factor to
I-
what Milburn sees as the most fre
quent problem that students have —
not studying enough.
“I would say that the typical
(problem) we find is lack of adequ
ate study time and lack of use of
some very easy (study) techniques,”
Milburn said.
An important factor in learning
to study more is habit, Milburn said.
Students need to unlearn bad
habits, she said, and to develop good
ones.
Keeping that in mind, Milburn
said she concentrates on three areas
when counseling students: setting
the academic stage, learning how to
study, and improving testmanship.
The first of those three is the most
important, she said, explaining that
in order for study techniques or test
skills to help students, they first
must sit down to study.
And where they sit down to study
can be important, she said. “It’s real
ly a matter of establishing habit,” she
said. “The key thing is to have a
place and to have a time set aside,
rather than leaving it to chance.”
It doesn’t really matter where a
student’s study hole is, she said,
adding that some students use the
library, whereas other students say
there is too much distracting activity
there. What is important, she said, is
to use the same place everytime, un
til it becomes a habit. That studying
place should mean “study” to the
student, she said, just as the bed
means “sleep” and the table means
“food.”
“The bottom line is do what works
for you, but be honest about it,” she
said. “Then you don’t have to spend
30 minutes gearing up.”
Once a student has established a
study habit, Milburn said, the next
thing to do is learn how to study,
something she says many students
don’t know.
One important study technique
she teaches is how to review notes,
she said. Notes are not something
that one takes and forgets until just
before the exam, she said, but
should be reviewed on a regular,
preferably daily, basis.
Milburn also has advice on how to
take notes, how to read textbooks
and how to ask questions in class.
Another area Milburn covers in
the academic counseling clinics or
private consultation is testmanship.
Some people, she said, just don’t
know how to take tests.
There are several techniques stu
dents can use to perform better on
tests, she said. These include: work
ing the easiest problems first; writ
ing down formulas, equations and
rules at the start of the test; and
reviewing the answers.
There are three basic ways in
which students can learn about test
manship, study techniques and
study conducive environments, she
said. They are the academic skills
clinic, individual counseling and the
peer advisor program.
The academic skills clinic is a
program in lecture format in which
students learn how to study more
effectively, Milburn said. “Basically
that’s a one-shot program where we
overview academic skills,” she said.
The clinics are held frequently
throughout the year, with up to teq
students attending each clinic.
However, one drawback to the cli
nic, she said, is that, because of the
class size and time restraints, there’s
not much time for student feedback.
For that a student must seek indi
vidual counseling.
Students are often referred to a
counselor after attending an acade
mic skills clinic, she said, because
more can be accomplished in a one-
on-one situation.
Another program offered by the
Student Counseling Service is the
peer counseling program.
In that program a student volun
teer from the junior honor society
meets with the student in need of
help for study hints.
“It’s not counseling per se,” Mil
burn said, “It’s peers sharing with
(students) the study techniques that
seem to work for them. That seems
to be really helpful for students.”
For more information about the
academic counseling programs, stu
dents can drop by the Student
Counseling Service office on the
first floor of the Academic Building
or phone 845-1651.
The office will be relocated to the
third floor of the YMC A Building in
October.
inside
Classified 4
Local 3
Opinions 2
Sports 7
State 4
National 5
forecast
Cloudy to partly cloudy and muggy
with a 30 percent chance of show
ers or thundershowers through
Thursday. The high today and
tomorrow near 89. Tonight’s low
near 71.