WASHINGTON – House Democrats are looking at big health care changes, including federal aid to help families earning up to $88,000 pay for insurance and a requirement that all must carry coverage.

A document obtained by The Associated Press shows the plan being developed by the House Energy and Commerce Committee would also require employers to offer coverage to their full-time workers, or pay a percentage of their payroll to the government.

The committee summary is a first look at where House Democrats are headed as leaders try to meet an ambitious goal of passing a health care overhaul by the end of July. Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., is expected to play a leading role in crafting the plan and steering it through negotiations with the Senate later in the year.

The three-page summary broadly tracks with the type of plan President Barack Obama outlined during the political campaign. The summary does not include any cost estimates, but independent experts have put the price tag for such a plan at $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion over 10 years, with some estimates ranging as high as $1.7 trillion.

Obama has said the final legislation must rein in costs, guarantee choice of health plans and medical providers, and ensure that all Americans have access to affordable coverage. The president has proposed a downpayment of $634 billion over 10 years to pay for expanding coverage. He’s also promising to hold hospitals, doctors, drug makers and other providers to their recent offer of $2 trillion in savings over 10 years.

The Energy and Commerce plan would build on the current system in which employers, government and individuals share responsibility for the cost of health insurance. But it would make major changes in the way Americans get and pay for coverage. Workers and employers would have new obligations to obtain coverage. Insurers would have to abide by new consumer protections to prevent sick people from being denied coverage.

The subsidies for health insurance would be offered on a sliding scale to those earning up to four times the federal poverty level, or $88,200 for a family of four, according to the document.

The House plan would set up a new insurance purchasing pool called an “exchange” to help make private coverage more affordable for individuals and small businesses. In its first year, the exchange would be open only to employers with fewer than 10 workers.

Health insurance plans that participate in the exchange would have to follow the same consumer protection rules. They would not be able to deny coverage to the sick, or charge them exorbitant rates.

The document also calls for creation of a new government insurance plan to compete with private companies. The government plan would probably be run by the Health and Human Services department, but it would have to compete on its own. The government insurance plan would be financed by premium payments, not taxpayer dollars.

By Erica Werner, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar

Three-digit temperatures have hit Tucson, making it an ideal time for the Salvation Army’s Operation Chill Out to begin.

The summer donation campaign for homeless people starts Wednesday.

“With the heat rising, more displaced and at-risk Tucsonans are going to find themselves needing important resources such as water and basic day-to-day items,” said Salvation Army spokeswoman Tamara McElwee.

To enhance this year’s efforts, the Salvation Army has teamed up with Walgreens and Naughton’s Plumbing, Heating and Cooling.

Walgreens locations throughout the city are hosting summer specials where customers can purchase select, tagged items found near the register that are donated to the Salvation Army.

Walgreens’ Sierra Vista store, which piloted the program, has seen about $100 worth of the tagged bottled water, soup, seasonal items and other goods donated each week.

People can also donate bottled water, hats, sunglasses, sunblock and lip balm by dropping them off at The Hospitality House, 1021 N. 11th Ave., or one of five Naughton’s locations:

• 1140 W. Prince Road

• 3940 W. Costco Drive

• 4226 S. Sixth Ave.

• 6062 E. Speedway Blvd.

• 8190 E. 22nd St.

One proposal: Tax boss-paid health insurance

WASHINGTON – After weeks of discussing ways to provide health care to the uninsured, Congress is beginning the difficult task of finding a way to pay for it.

Lawmakers are considering a broad range of ideas – including a new federal tax on soda – but a key Senate committee focused Tuesday on a proposal to tax health insurance that millions of Americans receive through their employers.

“I don’t think you can avoid taking that on,” Gail Wilensky, senior fellow at the health education foundation Project HOPE, told the Senate Finance Committee, which is helping to craft an overhaul of the health care system.

Nearly 164 million people, or 62 percent of the nation’s non-elderly population, receive health insurance through work, according to a joint congressional committee on taxation. Money spent on insurance provided by employers is excluded from an employee’s taxable income. If the exemption was lifted entirely, it could have raised about $226 billion in 2008, the joint committee reports.

During the campaign last year, President Obama opposed taxing employer-based health care benefits, and White House press secretary Robert Gibbs reiterated that opposition Tuesday.

Even so, Senate Democrats are taking a closer look at the idea of at least limiting the tax break. Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., said the exemption helps the well-off more than the poor, who are less likely to receive health care through work.

Baucus said the idea of repealing the break entirely is “just not going to happen,” but said Congress could cap the amount of benefit made available tax-free. He also said lawmakers may set an income limit so the exemption would not apply to high-paid employees.

Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi, the top-ranking Republican on the Senate’s Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, also supports the idea of repealing the exemption.

Gerald Shea of the AFL-CIO said limiting the tax break is “a step in the wrong direction” because it could punish employees who negotiated for better health care coverage rather than higher wages. Also, some employees pay more for health care insurance because of factors outside of their control, including the size of their company, he said.

School may be out soon, but free meals will still be in for Sunnyside Unified School District.

Starting June 1 and running through July 24, free breakfast and lunch will be served to kids 18 and younger who live within the district’s boundaries, according to a district news release.

Breakfast will be from 7:30 to 8:30 a.m. and lunch served from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the the following locations:

• Billy Lane Lauffer Middle School, 5385 E. Littletown Road

• Challenger Middle School, 100 E. Elvira Road

• Craycroft Elementary School, 5455 E. Littletown Road

• Gallego Basic Elementary School, 6200 S. Hemisphere Place

• Liberty Elementary School, 5495 S. Liberty Ave.

• Santa Clara Elementary School, 6910 S. Santa Clara Ave.

• Sierra Middle School, 5801 S. Del Moral Blvd.

• Sunnyside High School, 1725 E. Bilby Road

• San Xavier Indian Community Education Center, 1960 Wa:k Lane

WASHINGTON – Social Security and Medicare are fading even faster under the weight of the recession, heading for insolvency years sooner than previously expected, the government warned Tuesday.

Medicare already is paying out more money than it receives, something that happened for the first time last year. And Social Security will be by 2016, a year sooner than had been projected, the trustees’ annual report said.

Unless changes in Social Security are enacted, the retirement fund will be depleted in 2037, four years sooner than projected last year. The Medicare trust fund is in even worse shape. It is projected to become insolvent in 2017, two years earlier than expected.

More immediately, the trustees do not expect Social Security recipients to get cost-of-living increases in 2010 or 2011, something that hasn’t happened since automatic adjustments were adopted in 1975. The Social Security Administration will set next year’s cost-of-living adjustment in October, based on inflation over the previous year.

“We should neither be casual nor hysterical about the revised insolvency dates,” Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue said. “The Social Security system will weather this recession. However, the sooner we get on with the task of reforming the system, the easier it will be to make the tough choices.”

The recession is hurting both funds, which are financed by payroll taxes. The U.S. has lost 5.7 million jobs since the recession began, meaning fewer payroll taxes are flowing into the funds. At the same time, aging baby boomers and rising health care costs are adding to expenditures.

The trust funds – which exist in paper form in a filing cabinet in Parkersburg, W.Va. – are bonds that are backed by the government’s “full faith and credit” but not by any actual assets. That money has been spent over the years to fund other parts of government. To redeem the trust fund bonds, the government would have to borrow in public debt markets or raise taxes.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the head of the trustees group, said reducing health care costs is the key to saving Medicare.

“The most effective entitlement reform measure will be a major health reform that helps bring down the growth rate of national health care spending,” Geithner said.

SAN JOSE, Calif. – An office worker cleaning a fridge full of rotten food created a smell so noxious that it sent seven co-workers to the hospital and made many others ill.

Firefighters had to evacuate the AT&T building in downtown San Jose on Tuesday after the fumes led someone to call 911. A hazmat team was called in.

What crews found was an unplugged refrigerator crammed with moldy food.

Authorities say an enterprising office worker had decided to clean it out, placing the food in a conference room while using two cleaning chemicals to scrub down the mess.

The mixture of old lunches and disinfectant caused 28 people to need treatment for vomiting and nausea.

Authorities say the worker who cleaned the fridge didn’t need treatment – she can’t smell because of allergies.

HAVANA – Fidel Castro accused Mexico of failing to disclose the spread of swine flu until after U.S. President Barack Obama had visited, as Cuba confirmed its first case of the virus in a Mexican medical student studying on the island.

The Health Ministry said the “young male” became ill during a vacation in Mexico and returned to his studies at a medical clinic in Matanzas province, east of Havana. A statement read on state television Monday night gave no details on his current condition.

Castro, the former Cuban president, reacted hours later, writing in a column posted on a government Web site that “Mexican authorities did not inform the world of the presence (of swine flu), while they waited for Obama’s visit.”

Obama stopped in Mexico en route to the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad last month, days before Mexican health officials closed schools and announced swine flu was spreading, prompting an eventual mass shutdown that brought many parts of the country to a virtual halt.

The Cuban Health Ministry statement said a group of Mexican students began arriving on April 25 — four days before Cuban authorities halted airline flights to and from Mexico to keep swine flu from spreading to the island.

Relations between Cuba and Mexico have been chilly for several years, since a diplomatic spat involving the government of then-President Vicente Fox. Mexican authorities had said Fox’s successor, Felipe Calderon, would visit the island during the first quarter of 2009 as part of an ongoing effort to improve ties.

But Calderon recently said he may have to delay plans for a Cuba visit, quipping that the island’s grounding of flights to and from Mexico may leave him with no way to make the trip.

Cuba’s 82-year-old former president blasted Calderon for that comment and chided Mexican authorities for failing to disclose the spread of swine flu sooner.

“At this moment, we and dozens of other countries are paying the consequences and, on top of that, they accuse us of taking hurtful measures toward Mexico.”

He added that the measures that the Mexican president was complaining about “met established norms and had not even the slightest intention of affecting the brother country of Mexico.”

In its statement Monday, Cuba’s Health Ministry said other Mexican medical students returning from vacation at the same time as the young man diagnosed with swine flu experienced cold symptoms and were quarantined for observation, but most were deemed healthy and released.

Tests by the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Havana confirmed the first case of swine flu, though it was unclear how many Mexican students might still be isolated for more testing.

The ministry said that in all of Cuba, authorities tested 84 possible cases in people of eight nationalities and had only found the one positive result.

The official ban on flights between Mexico and Cuba has since been eased to allow Cuba’s national airline to send a few planes a week to pick up its citizens in Mexico. Still, several flights a day between Havana and the resort of Cancun or Mexico City continue to be canceled, stranding hundreds of passengers.

A study published Monday in the journal Science estimated Mexico alone may have had 23,000 cases by April 23, the day it announced the epidemic. The study estimates swine flu kills between 0.4 percent and 1.4 percent of its victims, but lead author Neil Ferguson of Imperial College, London, said the data remain incomplete.

The number of countries reporting swine flu cases stands at 31, with the World Health Organization confirming about 4,800 cases. At least 61 people have been killed by swine flu around the world: 56 in Mexico, three in the U.S., one in Canada and one in Costa Rica.

This is a June 25, 1990 file photo of Farrah Fawcett and Ryan O'Neal. Ryan O'Neal says Farrah Fawcett's strength in the shadow of cancer has made him love her more than ever.

LOS ANGELES – Ryan O’Neal said Farrah Fawcett’s strength in the shadow of cancer has made him love her more than ever.

“She’s so much more of a woman and powerful, courageous, fearless and all those adjectives. And I look at her with awe,” he said in an interview with Meredith Vieira for NBC’s “Today.”

Vieira also talked to Fawcett’s friend, Alana Stewart, for reports airing on the “Today” show Wednesday and Thursday.

O’Neal and Stewart participated in the documentary titled “Farrah’s Story,” a video diary of the actress’ fight against anal cancer that has spread to her liver. The film airs Friday on NBC.

O’Neal and the “Charlie’s Angels” star had a long romantic relationship that ended in the late 1990s and are parents of a son, Redmond O’Neal.

Ryan O’Neal said Fawcett has managed to joke about her illness and his own battle against chronic myelogenous leukemia, which was diagnosed in 2001.

“She asked me once, `Am I gonna make it?’ She asked me that a couple of weeks ago,” O’Neal recounted. “I said, `Yeah, sure, you’ll make it. And if you don’t, I’ll go with you.’ And she said, `Then stop the Gleevec.’ And the Gleevec’s the medicine that I take for my leukemia.

“She’s the rock. She taught us all how to cope,” O’Neal said. “She’s extraordinary. I don’t know what I’ll do without her, to tell you the truth.”

WASHINGTON – The FDA on Tuesday warned consumers to stop using face paints commonly dabbed on children’s cheeks at parties, sporting events and other festivities and sold in retail stores.

The six face-paint products are being recalled after reports of rashes and skin irritation, according to the Food and Drug Administration. FDA spokeswoman Susan Cruzan said the products were found to have yeast and mold counts above industry guidelines.

The FDA said it learned of children suffering rashes, itchiness, burning sensations and swelling where the face paints were applied.

Fun Express Inc., which recalled the products, said in a statement that it sold the affected items to 130 customers and 95 percent of these sales were before January. “The recall action is being taken as a precautionary measure to ensure there are no other occurrences,” the company said in a statement.

Fun Express is a wholly owned subsidiary of Oriental Trading Co., the distributor of the product. The face paints were made in China by Shanghai Color Art Stationery Company Ltd.

A sales manager for the company, Jiang Chao, said he was unaware of the recall but would look into the situation.

“We’ve been exporting our face paint to America for over three years and never had a recall,” Jiang said.

Chinese regulators have repeatedly pledged to tighten enforcement of safety and quality standards following a slew of complaints about shoddy or dangerous products. Shanghai’s own food and drug administration had no immediate comment about the recall.

Any reactions should be reported to the Food and Drug Administration’s MedWatch adverse event reporting program at www.fda.gov/medwatch.

The recall includes face paint in these colors with the following codes:

• Blue: item No. 85/2077; UPC 8 8760048110 7.

• Purple: item No. 85/2078; UPC 8 8760048112 1.

• Red: item No. 85/2079; UPC 8 8760048114 5.

• Orange: item No. 85/2080; UPC 8 8760048116 9.

• Black: item No. 85/2081; UPC 8 8760048118 3.

• Green: item No. 85/2082; UPC 8 8760048120 6.

———

ON THE WEB

Food and Drug Administration: www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2009/NEW02015.html

WASHINGTON – The White House trumpeted the news: health care providers taking a $2 trillion scalpel to their costs and pushing the U.S. toward President Obama’s vision of health coverage for all. But don’t line up yet for those insurance cards.

First, a reality check for the nation’s 50 million uninsured.

Medical providers have a long track record of avoiding fiscal constraints, as witnessed by the government’s efforts to tamp down Medicare costs.

And none of the groups that went to the White House can actually dictate prices to itsr members. Doctors in New York or hospitals in Los Angeles are free to charge what the market can bear.

There’s one more catch: Even if every penny of the promised savings shows up, not all of it would be used to help cover uninsured Americans. Actual savings to the government are all that can be counted as Congress tries to pay for subsidies that will be needed to help make health insurance affordable for everyone.

Costs could still turn out to be the greatest obstacle to Obama’s health care plan.

Outside experts estimate the taxpayers’ tab could total between $1.2 trillion and $1.5 trillion over 10 years. Some go as high as $1.7 trillion. Obama’s budget proposal includes a down payment that may cover less than half the bill.

Pledging restraint on costs Monday at the White House were groups representing hospitals, doctors, drug makers, medical device manufacturers and a major health care labor union – a Who’s Who of health care interests. The president posed proudly with them and called it “a watershed event.”

Obama wants to build on the current system in which most people get coverage through private insurers. But he wants to change the rules so the sick can’t be turned down. And he wants to provide subsidies to help low-wage workers and even some in the middle class afford their premiums.

House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio isn’t impressed. “Today’s announcement promises savings with no concrete plan to achieve them and no enforcement mechanism if they don’t,” he said Monday.

Indeed, it’s too early to tell whether the White House meeting will be remembered as a turning point or as a political mirage.

The administration is projecting an image of a new coalition for health care, with Obama and most of the health care industry and consumer interest groups claiming the political center.

Left out, for now, are conservative Republicans, who oppose Obama’s direction but have yet to articulate their own vision, and liberal Democrats who have been hoping to move toward a nationalized system like Medicare for all. As the debate heats up, the voices from both ends of the political divide will get louder – and the pressure on the center will increase.

By joining Obama, providers are acknowledging at least some responsibility for a bloated and dysfunctional system that economists say is unaffordable.

“I think the reason all these groups want to actively participate in the process is they don’t want to see a blunt instrument used to get spending down,” said Mark McClellan, who ran Medicare for President George W. Bush. “This is an opportunity to get everyone behind a better approach to improve the way health care works.”

That’s just what the groups say they want to do. Their proposals include coordinating care for people with chronic illnesses, rewarding quality not quantity, and using technology to root out waste and prevent errors that get patients sicker.

But it’s hard to put numbers next to any of those ideas. For example, what if better care for chronically ill patients turns out to increase costs? None of the groups has set a target for how much its members should have to pony up.

Congress is going to need hard numbers to pass Obama’s plan this year.

Robert Laszewski, a former health insurance executive turned policy consultant, said he’s betting the consensus won’t last.

“When Congress comes up with mechanisms to reduce costs that actually take money out of the hands of doctors, hospitals and insurance companies, that’s when we’re going to find out if things are really different this time,” he said.

President Obama leaves the State Dining Room of the White House after speaking about health care reform Monday.

The White House trumpeted the news: health care providers taking a $2 trillion scalpel to their costs and pushing the U.S. toward Barack Obama’s vision of health coverage for all. But don’t line up yet for those insurance cards.

First, a reality check for the nation’s 50 million uninsured.

Medical providers have a long track record of avoiding fiscal constraints, as witnessed by the government’s efforts to tamp down Medicare costs.

And none of the groups that went to the White House can actually dictate prices to their members. Doctors in New York or hospitals in Los Angeles are free to charge what the market can bear.

There’s one more catch: Even if every penny of the promised savings shows up, not all of it would be used to help cover uninsured Americans. Actual savings to the government are all that can be counted as Congress tries to pay for subsidies that will be needed to help make health insurance affordable for everyone.

The medical groups’ pledge is “a very hopeful sign,” said economist Robert Reischauer, head of the Urban Institute. “But when we get down to hammering out the details, health care reform remains both complex and philosophically and politically difficult to accomplish.”

Costs could still turn out to be the greatest obstacle to Obama’s health care plan.

Outside experts estimate the taxpayers’ tab could total between $1.2 trillion and $1.5 trillion over 10 years. Some go as high as $1.7 trillion. Obama’s budget proposal includes a down payment that may cover less than half the bill.

Pledging restraint on costs Monday at the White House were groups representing hospitals, doctors, drug makers, medical device manufacturers and a major health care labor union – a who’s who of health care interests. The president posed proudly with them and called it “a watershed event.”

Obama wants to build on the current system in which most people get coverage through private insurers. But he wants to change the rules so the sick can’t be turned down. And he wants to provide subsidies to help low-wage workers and even some in the middle class afford their premiums.

House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio isn’t impressed. “Today’s announcement promises savings with no concrete plan to achieve them and no enforcement mechanism if they don’t,” he said Monday.

Indeed, it’s too early to tell whether the White House meeting will be remembered as a turning point or as a political mirage. The administration is projecting an image of a new coalition for health care, with Obama and most of the health care industry and consumer interest groups claiming the political center.

Left out, for now, are conservative Republicans, who oppose Obama’s direction but have yet to articulate their own vision, and liberal Democrats who have been hoping to move toward a nationalized system like Medicare for all. As the debate heats up, the voices from both ends of the political divide will get louder – and the pressure on the center will increase.

Still, the sight of health care industry leaders volunteering to hold back spending is pretty unusual.

By joining Obama, providers are acknowledging at least some responsibility for a bloated and dysfunctional system that economists say is unaffordable.

In the 1990s, when President Bill Clinton attempted to overhaul health care, the battle lines quickly hardened. Obama, who has gone out of his way to woo the interest groups, praised their willingness to sacrifice on Monday.

The groups don’t just have the national interest in mind. Industry is worried that Congress will create a government health plan to compete with private insurers.

Such a plan would quickly become the biggest in the country and could use its power to set lower payment rates, driving costs down on the backs of medical providers.

“I think the reason all these groups want to actively participate in the process is they don’t want to see a blunt instrument used to get spending down,” said Mark McClellan, who ran Medicare for President George W. Bush. “This is an opportunity to get everyone behind a better approach to improve the way health care works.”

That’s just what the groups say they want to do. Their proposals include coordinating care for people with chronic illnesses, rewarding quality not quantity, and using technology to root out waste and prevent errors that get patients sicker.

But it’s hard to put numbers next to any of those ideas. For example, what if better care for chronically ill patients turns out to increase costs? None of the groups has set a target for how much its members should have to pony up.

Congress is going to need hard numbers to pass Obama’s plan this year.

Robert Laszewski, a former health insurance executive turned policy consultant, said he’s betting the consensus won’t last.

“When Congress comes up with mechanisms to reduce costs that actually take money out of the hands of doctors, hospitals and insurance companies,” he said, “that’s when we’re going to find out if things are really different this time.”

Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar reports on health care policy for The Associated Press.

MEXICO CITY – The swine flu virus spread to more countries Tuesday as scientists estimated the new strain could have sickened 23,000 people in Mexico alone before anyone realized it was an epidemic.

Fidel Castro, meanwhile, accused Mexico of hiding the epidemic until after President Barack Obama visited last month.

Mexican Health Secretary Jose Cordova said his nation’s shutdown of schools — which was lifted in most of the country’s 31 states Monday — had averted an avalanche of cases.

“It would have been difficult for us to have controlled this epidemic,” Cordova said in a statement, adding that Mexico had 56 deaths and 2,059 confirmed cases of swine flu.

But Castro, the former Cuban president, accused Mexico of failing to disclose the spread of swine flu until after Obama had visited en route to the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad last month.

“Mexican authorities did not inform the world of the presence (of swine flu), while they waited for Obama’s visit,” he wrote on a government Web site hours after Cuba confirmed its first swine flu case.

Obama’s April 16 visit came a week before Mexican health officials announced swine flu was spreading, prompting an eventual mass shutdown that brought many parts of the country to a virtual halt.

Thailand and Finland reported their first confirmed swine cases Tuesday of people just arrived from Mexico. Cuba and China — both countries that had imposed strict measures on flights and travelers from Mexico — also reported their first confirmed cases.

Cuba identified its patient as a Mexican student attending a Cuban medical school and China said its case involved a Chinese student who had just returned from the United States.

At least 61 people have been killed by swine flu around the world, and the World Health Organization has confirmed over 5,250 cases.

Cuba’s Health Ministry said a group of medical students from Mexico began arriving on the island to resume their studies April 25 — four days before Cuban authorities halted airline flights from Mexico. Fourteen of the students suffered from flu-like symptoms.

A study published Monday in the journal Science estimated Mexico alone may have had 23,000 cases of swine flu by April 23, the day it announced the epidemic. The study estimates swine flu kills between 0.4 percent and 1.4 percent of its victims, but lead author Neil Ferguson of Imperial College, London, said the data remain incomplete.

“It’s very difficult to quantify the human health impact at this stage,” he said.

The analysis in Science suggests there are many more cases than those confirmed by laboratories — anywhere from 6,000 to 32,000 cases in Mexico as of April 23. The flu has since spread around the world, and the study said it appears to be substantially more contagious than normal, seasonal flu.

Researchers also compared the genetic sequences of the viruses in 23 confirmed cases, and came up with an estimate of Jan. 12 for their earliest common ancestor — presumably when person-to-person transmission began. But they said it could have been anywhere from Nov. 3 to March 2.

The researchers said the 2009 H1N1 flu appears to be about equal in severity to the flu of 1957 and less severe than the deadly 1918 version.

In Mexico, Monday’s reopening of kindergartens and primary and middle schools shut since April 24 was the latest step in efforts to restore a sense of normality. Businesses, government services, high schools and universities reopened last week.

But six of Mexico’s 31 states put off reopening schools for a week because of local rises in the number of flu cases, and a seventh pushed it back a day to Tuesday. The Education Department said it will tack an extra seven days onto the school calendar to make up for the lost time.

But while officials praised the health and education systems for their response to the crisis, there were signs that Mexico’s overburdened health system was under strain.

Dozens of government health care workers, including doctors and nurses, marched and blocked streets in the Gulf coast city of Jalapa to demand higher pay and better working conditions.

“The government asked our help in combatting the influenza epidemic, now we are asking the government to do us justice,” said nurse Mariana Cortes, one of the protest organizers.

Mexico is trying to revive its economy after the epidemic pummeled tourism, the country’s third-largest source of legal foreign income. Mexico provided details Monday of a $1.1 billion package to help restaurants, hotels and other businesses.

At least 10 commercial banks are involved in the plan, promising three-month reprieves for small businesses with outstanding loans in Mexico City and two hard-hit states. Small businesses in beach resorts and other tourist destinations were promised a six-month grace period.

Later in the day, Tourism Secretary Rodolfo Elizondo said the government would launch a $90 million publicity campaign this week urging Mexicans to vacation at home.

Noting that several nations have issued travel warnings or restricted airline flights to Mexico, Elizondo said trying to promote trips to Mexico by foreigners now “would be like throwing money away.”

With Cuba, Thailand and Finland reporting their first cases, the number of countries reporting confirmed swine flu cases grew to 33. The United States has the most confirmed cases — 2,618 — according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Swine flu has killed 56 people in Mexico, three in the U.S., one in Canada and one in Costa Rica.

Associated Press writers Miguel Angel Hernandez in Veracruz, Maria Cheng in London, Randolph E. Schmid in Washington and Gillian Wong in Beijing contributed to this report.

By Mark Stevenson, David Koop

The Southern Arizona AIDS Foundation will hold a local candlelight memorial Sunday as part of the worldwide 26th International AIDS Candlelight Memorial.

The event will be at Himmel Park, near East Speedway and North Tucson Boulevards. It will start at 5:30 p.m. with music and performances, and the candles will be lit at 7:30 p.m.

The memorial is aimed at reducing stigma and discrimination associated with AIDS; ensuring access to treatment; increasing resources to HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis; and promoting greater involvement by affected communities, SAAF said in a news statement.

Similar candlelight memorials will be held in more than 1,200 communities worldwide.

AIDS group to hold

candlelight memorial

WASHINGTON – President Obama’s plan to provide medical insurance for all Americans took a big step toward becoming reality Sunday after leaders of the health care industry offered $2 trillion in spending reductions over 10 years to help pay for the program.

Hospitals, insurance companies, drug makers and doctors planned to tell Obama on Monday they’ll voluntarily slow their rate increases in coming years in a move that government economists say would create breathing room to help provide health insurance to an estimated 50 million Americans who now go without it.

With this move, Obama picks up key private-sector allies that fought former President Bill Clinton’s effort to overhaul health care. Although the offer from the industry groups doesn’t resolve thorny details of a new health care system, it does offer the prospect of freeing a large chunk of money to help pay for coverage. And it puts the private-sector groups in a good position to influence the bill Congress is writing.

Six major groups plan to deliver a letter to Obama and pledge to cut the growth rate for health care by 1.5 percentage points each year, senior administration officials said Sunday. They spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to sketch the offer before full details are revealed at a White House event scheduled for Monday.

Obama has offered an outline for overhauling the health care system, and he wants Congress to work out the details and pass legislation this year. His plan would build on the current system in which employers, government and individuals share responsibility for paying the cost and care is delivered privately. The government would play a stronger role by subsidizing coverage for many more people and spelling out stronger consumer protections.

“We cannot continue down the same dangerous road we’ve been traveling for so many years, with costs that are out of control, because reform is not a luxury that can be postponed, but a necessity that cannot wait,” Obama said in prepared remarks the White House released Sunday. “That is why these groups are voluntarily coming together to make an unprecedented commitment.”

The industry groups are trying to get on the administration bandwagon for expanded coverage now in the hope they can steer Congress away from legislation that would restrict their profitability in future years.

Insurers, for example, want to avoid the creation of a government health plan that would directly compete with them to enroll middle-class workers and their families.

Drug makers worry that in the future, new medications might have to pass a cost-benefit test before they can win approval. And hospitals and doctors are concerned the government could dictate what they get paid to care for any patient, not only the elderly and the poor.

The head of Pima County’s health department will join Arizona’s director of health services and others in a public briefing here Wednesday on H1N1, the swine flu virus.

The lecture will be from noon to 1 p.m. at the University of Arizona College of Medicine’s DuVal Auditorium, 1501 N. Campbell Ave.

Among the scientists who will speak are Nafees Ahmad, Ph.D, a professor in the department of immunobiology, on the virology of the disease, and Katie Mathhias, Pharm.D, on therapeutic options for treatment of the virus.