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"Letters to the 00/00
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Clinton plan could shuffle student health options
By Alan Phelps
Senior Reporter
President Clinton’s prescrip
tion for the nation’s health
care system, which he pre
sents tonight to Congress, would pro
foundly change students’ insurance
options, a UNL professor said.
Keith Mueller, director of the Ne
braska Center for Rural Health Re
search, said many students fall below
the poverty line, working for small
employers who can’t afford employ
ee health plans — just the type of
person Clinton’s proposal aims to help.
“They’ll have the same kind of
health insurance coverage as I do,
working for-a large employer,” said
Mueller, a political science professor
who teaches classes about health care
systems.
However, Mueller said there was a
flip side. Students not covered by
their parents’ insurance would be
forced to help pay for health plans, he
said.
While employers and the govern
ment would pick up most of the tab,
Mueller said, students and other citi
zens without health insurance still
would pay about 20 percent of the
annual $1,800 single-person health
plan cost — about $360.
“They would have to buy health
insurance,” Mueller said. “For col
lege students who think themselves
invulnerable, this would be an added
expense.”
For their money, Mueller said, stu
dents and others buying into the stan
dard plan would receive a minimum
set of health benefits. That would
include coverage for hospital stays,
visits to doctors, mental health care,
free preventive care and low-cost pre
scription drugs, Mueller said.
The cheapest plan most students
now qualify for is through the Univer
sity Health Center. For about $420 a
year, students can buy coverage for
accidents, illnesses and hospitaliza
tion.
UnderClinton’sproposal, Mueller
said, students would be able to choose
from several competing plans offered
by partnerships between other clinics,
hospitals and insurance companies.
All the choices would have to include
about the same services for about the
same price, which Mueller said was a
good deal.
“You wouldn’t get anywhere near
that for $1,800 in the open market,”
he said.
However, once citizens chose a v'
certain partnership, they would have
to use that health care provider. In the
See HEALTH on 3
X appeal ' ■
* ' Stad McKee/DN
Sideshow band members Paul Tisdale, front, Bemie McGinn, left, and Rich Higgins often sleep in their van,
Phoebe, while on tour. The three friends classify themselves as members of Generation X.
Lincoln’s Sideshow
won’t argue with
slacker stereotype
By Amy Hopfensperger
Staff Reporter
At 25, Paul Tisdale is homeless. He’s
jobless. He’s a college drop-out.
Paul Tisdale is a slacker—just ask
him.
Tisdale, drummer for the Lincoln-based
band Sideshow, agrees that he is the epitome
of the slacker stereotype that has been tacked
on young men and women of the ’90s who
belong to Generation X.
In fact, he said, he accepts the role.
Other band members, singer/bassist
Bemie McGinn, 23, and
?uitarist Rich Higgins,
6, make up a trio that
*t seem to mind
being labeled as having
Generation X mind-set
—a way of thinking that
is a far cry from the age
)ld American dream.
Buying a home in sub
Dy a white-picket fence is
not exactly Higgins’ life-long goal.
“I think having a great job and a great
house is wonderful,” Higgins said. “But that
is my parents saying, ‘Finish school, get a
job, and get a house.*
“That is success for them, but I don’t see
it happening to me.”
Tisdale said achieving personal and cre
ative success appealed more to him.
“If I am doing what makes me happy,
why should I struggle for what people call
success?” he said. ^But does that mean I lack
ambition?”
Such ideas of success have led to failure
in social and political arenas of the past, he
said.
“Our parents gave up,” Tisdale said. “They
didn’t distribute the wealth, they neglected
the needs of minorities, and they bought into
the entire ‘me’ generation.
“And look what that left us.”
See BAND on 2
Students nearly
lost lives helping
hungry Bosnians
By Jeff Zeleny
Senior Editor
On July 20 Abbas Ali made a promise
to himself and to many Bosnians as he
left a prison camp in Chapl ina, Bosnia:
No matter what happened, he would not forget
them.
It was a promise Ali almost died trying to
keep.
Ali, a chemical engineering major at the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln, was arrested
for transporting food and medicine into Bosnia
and was held in a detention center for 20 days
in July. The night Ali was summoned from his
, cell, he said, his fellow prisoners told him the
| end of his life was near.
“They said, ‘If you get killed, we 11 all be
killed. If not, spread the word,’” Ali said.
That is exactly what Ali, 25, is doing. Even
though the Bosnian region is far from the
United States, he said, Americans have the
power and opportunity to make changes.
Ali and UNL graduate student Suleman
Ahmer began their relief mission to the war
tom Bosnian region in October 1992. For nine
months, the two traveled by truck from Croatia
into Bosnia bringing food and humanitarian
relief.
On June 30, their efforts were halted.
Ali and Ahmer, both of Pakistan, were
stopped at a military checkpoint inside the
Bosnia-Croatia border. They were searched,
beaten and taken to jail, Ali said.
About 5,000 prisoners were held in the large
Croatian-controlled detention center, Ali said.
Ahmer and Ali were taken quickly to a small
room with28 other prisoners who were accused
of being spies.
“They (Croatian guards) started interview
ing us and thought we were spies," he said.
“They were planning to kill us the same night.
They were all ready; the guns were all loaded."
But a sick prisoner occupied all the guards’
time, Ali said, and they were never again
threatened with death. After the sick prisoner
died, Ali and Ahmer saw much more death.
“In front of me they killed many prisoners,”
Ali said. “Not by gun, but by smashing heads
against the wall.”
While in the prison, the two students saw
Bosnians of all ages suffer and get beaten. But
Ali said the Bosnians’ spirits remained high and
their energy was never lost.
See BOSNIA on 6
Time passes, but pain persists for slain student’s family
By Dionne Searcey
Senior Reporter
For Candice Harms’ father, time
heals no wounds.
One year ago today his
daughter was abducted. Her body was
found 12 weeks later.
“I guess we’re getting by,” Stan
Harms said. “We don’t cry as much,
but it still hurts just as bad every time
we think of her, which is 24 hours a
day.”
Candice Harms had faith in God,
he said, and that has been a great
comfort to Harms and his wife, Pat.
“We know that she’s with God,” he
said. “In some ways we’re envious of
her because we know that she’s there,
and we’ve got a long way to go. A very
Ions way, unfortunately.”
The pain continues, Harms said, as
he follows the resultsofhearings lead
ing up to the first-degree murder trial
ofKoger Bjorklund, who was charged
in the slaying.
“It hurts to see criminals have the
laws protecting them so much, and
the victim didn’t have any rights at
all,” Harms said. “We just pray that
justice will prevail.”
Harms said he had tried to find
good in the tragic situation.
“To me, if society wakes up and
deals with criminals the way they are
supposed to, that’s going to be good in
the long run because it’s going to help
society,” he said.
More good has come, Harms said,
because the disappearance of his
daughter prompted students to take
their own safety seriously.
“The awareness itself of what hap
pened has made people more cau
tious, which is good in a way, and it’s
sadina way that people have tobe that
cautious,” he said.
Sgt. Ann Heermann of the Lincoln
Police Department said the publicity
and media attention given to the case
made many Lincolnites think about
-44- .
In some ways we’re envious of her because we
know that she’s there, and we’ve got a long way
to go. A very long way, unfortunately.
— Harms
fathar nf ala in I INI atiuiant
their own safety.
“This is a case that got so much
attention that people thought about
their daughters, they thought about
their sisters," Heermann said.
“It's really heightened the fear the
community had for being a random
¥ ¥
victim,” she said.
Such fear, Heermann said, can be
healthy.
“It can be good if it keeps people <•
on their toes and makes them more
See HARMS on 3