Lawton Chiles Update for January 1987

whether it's underweight babies in a Miami hospital, toxic waste dump in Tampa, a national forest in North Florida or a military base in Panama City. Floridians have many common concerns. We'll examine those concerns and the events which affect whether in Washington or Florida on the Lawton Child's update.

I'm Senator Lord Charles. I hope you'll join us. Mhm. Mhm. Okay. Oh, yeah, Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Hi. I'm Lauren Charles. And this is the Law and Charles update. You can't find many places in the nation with as much variety as Florida.

We have people with all kinds of hopes, plans and concerns. This month, we'll talk with some officials involved in the Medicare program about one of those major concerns what can and must be done to speed up payments in the Medicare system. We'll also visit Tyndall Air Force Base to see how hard working members of the armed forces keep our national defense strong.

But we'll begin the program with a trip to another part of our state. That all by itself is a constantly changing, changing image of our variety, our history and our future. The Big Cypress National Preserve The big Cyprus shown here in yellow, was established by Congress in 1974 as a national preserve.

Right below it is the Florida Everglades. This whole area is a complex network of water and fragile plant life above the Everglades, and big Cyprus is another pristine land. And a lot of us are very worried about this particular area that it's vulnerable to development. The consequences could be hard, perhaps irreversible, on both big Cyprus and the Everglades.

Later, we're going to talk about the future of this area. But right now, let's take a look at big Cyprus itself. Even from the air, you can't see it all at once. It sprawls over 574,000 acres in South Florida. It looks peaceful enough, but it never sleeps.

Nature's at work down there day and night all year round. It's recharging and filtering the water supply, and it's renewing more than 650 species of plants through a natural cycle of fire and rain. The trees in this section of the big Cyprus had an abundance of wildlife.

Some of the species, like the bald eagle, the would store the red cockaded woodpecker are on the endangered species list. The big Cyprus is also home to alligators. This one is about to get its fill of the gar fish, which abound here in some sections of the big Sigh Pers animals have had to adapt to man's intrusion.

This purple Martin has found a mobile home of its own for a nest, raising its young in an oil pumping rig. Wildlife management officials are now taking a new look at the oil drilling situation in big Cyprus and assessing its impact on the environment. But not all the wildlife is faring as well.

Big Cyprus is the last habitat of the Florida panther. There are only 20 to 30 of these remarkable animals left. Alligator Alley is the cross state highway from Andy Town in Broward County to Naples and Collier County. Another panther was killed here just last month as she attempted to cross the highway.

Alligator Alley, in addition to threatening the panther, is also disrupting the water flow into the big Cyprus. Today. Mayor, one of the dedicated members of the Florida game and Fresh Water Fish Commission, works in the big Cyprus, and he knows it well. The area we're standing in now, uh, is a very dynamic one.

In fact, for half the year, it's probably underwater right now is very dry, and that suggests some of the rhythmic things that go on here in the big Cyprus. Come summertime, very regular thunderstorms will bring the water level up. Drought in the spring will make the water level drop and result in burns that you see here making the area dryer.

With the early summer thunderstorms, we get lightning strikes and fires that result. The plants that live here are adapted to that. In fact, they need a certain amount of burning to maintain their health and vigor. And so we have a very, uh, complicated system of flooding and drought and fire that works together to create a very dynamic system, that it was very productive for a number of species of wildlife.

A couple of years ago, Dave was studying black bears and involved in our successful campaign to save the Osceola National Forest in North Florida. He's now in charge of the state's Save the Panther project. This, uh, this landscape is very typical of a interspersed habitat that provides panthers and the Panthers pray with most of their food requirements.

The open marshes are used by deer for feeding primarily in the evening. And this is what we're finding out now that these cats are leading the thick forest lands during during the night and coming out into the open areas and feeding on dear uh, the area changes from one season to the next.

In terms of water level. The plants here pickerel, weed, duck, potato, maiden cane, variety of other wetland species actually stand dry for several months out of the year. Um, at those times it affects the movements of the animals that live here, and they'll tend to concentrate in wetter areas in cooler areas.

But again, it's a very dynamic situation, and what we see here is probably very good cross section of the type of place that that a panther would like to live. Jade Roof is also with the Game and Fish Commission. Jade flies several days each week tracking the panther by radio signals admitted from the collar's attached by wildlife biologist.

With the radio equipment in the plane, he can check out where the panthers are and what areas of the reserve they most prefer. In fact, Jade spends a lot of time finding out where the Panthers are to make sure the rest of us leave them alone.

This morning we flew our regular to our course, and we were looking for, uh, six Panthers that we have collard. We have three males and three females, and I can't wait to show you exactly where they are, because some people may go in there and try to bother them.

But they used generally the fact Apache Strand, which is pictured here, and they go sometimes out of the blocks. Um, they go on up in the Bear Island in just different areas. But we also have a bear that hangs around up in Golden Gate that we keep track of and several bobcats to that.

We're just trying to get an interaction between the Bears and the Bobcats and Panthers. But a male pastor arranged within maybe 15 or 20 miles in the night, and a female may go 5678 10 miles at night. Sometimes the Panthers are magnificent animals measuring from 6 to 7 ft long, and they weigh anywhere from 70 to £130.

Dave Mayor believes a key to tracking the Panthers and thereby gathering the information necessary for saving them is a fluorescent nylon collar attached to the Panthers during January and February. The radio collar ways somewhere between 1.5 and £2. It has a life of about two years, and we're able to pick up a signal from an aircraft anywhere up to 20 to 25 miles away.

Uh, we can pinpoint the signal, plot the location on a map, and by doing this, uh, consecutively over over days, weeks and months, we can come up with what we call the home range of the animal, basically the place that that that animal resides. It's, uh, his address, Uh, and from one year to the next we can get much more familiar with him and tell pretty much where he's gonna be at any at any given moment.

It also tells us how big an area this animal needs and be, and it's beginning to tell us how many cats a place like this can support. And, uh, we are now beginning to get a better feeling on exactly how many Panthers are remaining in the state.

The Panther is an elusive animal, blending perfectly with the landscape, and they remain hidden from all but the most skillful of trackers. Biologists usually have to be content with finding not the panther but Panther signs like this cat they found on the road in the big Cyprus.

They believed this was left by seven year old, £120 male that lives in the area. It looks like this cat's been here about a week as contents of it looks like Marshal Abbott, perhaps some some hog hair also, and what we'll do is go ahead and collect it and take it back for some more detailed analyses.

But we have a cat that lives in this area that spends a good deal of his time in this part of the preserve, and they're like Anybody else will use the easiest place to walk and they'll go right down the roads. And that's apparently what he was doing.

The big Cyprus is an irreplaceable refuge. It's a legacy given to modern Florida that we must nurture before passing it on to the Florida of tomorrow. I think the bottom line for Panther conservation is trying to maintain as much wild country as possible, and we're noticing a rapid decrease and landscapes available to panthers now with the encroachment of Citrus encroachment of urban areas, encroachment of agricultural crops like tomatoes and peppers.

If we can't control those sorts of things and there's no amount of territory in Florida that can support a 100 to 400 square mile home range for an individual cat, and we need more than one or two cats to maintain a viable population once you reach a ah a certain level, we get into problems with genetics, inbreeding, problems of reduced viability of offspring and low survival.

And we feel like we may be at that verge right now with the rate of habitat loss. It's very possible that we're looking at a 50 to 60 year period where we may not have cats anymore. This area is one of the congressman Tom Lewis of Palm Beach, and I introduced legislation during the last Congress to add 136,000 acres to the Big Cypress National Preserve.

In a nutshell. Our aim was to add buffer lands to the preserve in conjunction with the building of Interstate 75. The new road would improve the water flow situation and include provisions for animal crossings, Tom testified at our hearing. Most important, it is part of our watershed.

This land is habitat for a wide variety of plants and animals. You've heard about the Panther, the bald eagle and the native orchids. All of these things. The addition of this land to the Big Cypress National Preserve would provide a much needed buffer zone for the Everglades National Park, a state resource and national treasure.

What we want to do in this bill is to purchase additional lands for the Big Cypress Preserve in conjunction with the planned construction of Interstate 75 in that region. This construction of the interstate is gonna sever access to private property north and south of the highway, requiring the payment of $45 million in severance damages by the Department of Transportation.

By using the Department of Transportation funds, we can cover half the value almost half the value of 128,000 acre edition. The legislation sets up a framework for the Department of Interior to join with the state of Florida and purchasing the remainder one of the main reasons for adding to the national preserve is to safeguard the aquifer and the underground water that feeds into the Everglades.

The House passed the legislation and the Senate was working on the bill when a substitute was introduced. The substitute called for exchanging big Cyprus acreage for federally owned land in which an Indian school now stands in downtown Phoenix, Arizona. Unfortunately, time ran out before we could pass the bill this year, our bill will be reintroduced when the 100 Congress convenes in January.

We believe we'll be able to convince the Congress this time that the big Cyprus expansion is necessary if we are to protect the panther and our most valuable of needs. Water Day Mayor puts it this way. With the increase in agricultural development with the increased UH increases in roads in human use, we need to look much more carefully at the water table situation and preserving large tracts of land like the Big Cypress Preserve is very important in maintaining water quality for this area and water for people to drink.

Basically, when we return, we'll talk about another kind of need what's being done about it in Panama city. Attention. The zoo will open in five minutes. Five minutes, please. Just five minutes. My lines, my lines. I can't remember my lines. Go home. My makeup, my makeup, wardrobe, I say wardrobe.

How do I look? Seriously, how do I look? Hey, uh, give me a little kiss before I go on, huh? Okay, guys, that's right. One way, guys going. Melton my lines! My life! Baba Baba! Baba Baba Baba Baba Booey! I want to talk to my agent.

Let me talk to your agent. Yeah! Mm! Take it from me. You just got to keep cool positions, everyone. Hey, no shoving. Hey, this place is a zoo. Visit your zoo and see how the stars live. One and two. And the 10 major military installations in Florida employ about 106,000 civilians and members of the armed services.

One of the installations, Tyndall Air Force Base, is in North Florida at Panama City. Tyndall is home of the air Defense Weapons Center. It's a big place. With 6400 employees on the payroll of more than 100 and $20 million. The Air Force trains pilots here. They begin their training in the T 33 shooting star.

They graduate to the top of the line, the F 15 eagle. One of the world's most respected fighter planes, the F 15 is a complicated powerhouse jet that can fly more than 2.5 times the speed of sound. Its twin after burning turbo fan engines and state of the art electronics mean that this fighter can carry a £12,000 weapons load.

Remember the B 17 Flying Fortress? It only carried £18,000 of bombs every two years. The best fighter pilots in the business participate in a three week international competition called William Tell It simulates wartime air to Air combat to sharpen fighting skills. Another training program is called Copper Flag.

It's held three times a year, and it trains our personnel and the best ways to protect against airborne threats to American security. Pilots here spend hours in the air and in flight simulators like this one, which duplicates the cockpit of the F 15 as Senate Budget Committee chairman of the next Congress.

I'll continue to make sure we have not only enough money to buy needed aircraft for our defense, but sufficient dollars to train our pilots. What do you think about the maintenance program that we've got given? Well in the last five years? Six years or so since I've been in the tactical Air Command, Uh, what's called utilization rates?

The actual how many times the airplanes fly has increased quite a bit. And it's a direct effect of that. Is the guys wearing the green bags like me get to fly more and that's good. We need to train. You think that's helped? Yes, sir. Are you getting enough flying time?

Enough fuel to fly? I believe so. As as long as these you'd rates. Stay up here is at the levels that we are certain aspects like our mission here is training. We fly slightly less than the operational units that are actually like, for instance, over at a glance, they trained more than pilots here.

Tindall's home to the weapons controller school. The only one of its kind in the Air Force. Kendall also is the headquarters for the Air Force Engineering and Services Center. Other personnel are trained in rapid runway repair, war damage repair, security and chemical warfare. Defense. Hi. How you doing?

Nice to see you about what? You didn't get too far. How you doing? Thanks to see you. From what we've seen so far, it's easy to get the idea that training is the only mission here. Not so right here at Tyndall is Sirach, the Southeast Region Operation Control Center.

It's the lead facility in the major modernization of North America's air defense. The center opened in March of 1983 under the supervision of the 23rd North American Aerospace Command. It oversees the region from Maryland to the Florida Keys to Laredo, Texas. That means it takes in more than 3000 miles of shoreline, 19 states and the District of Columbia.

Its mission is air surveillance to guarantee the integrity of the US coastline. Can you tell on this whether it's a light aircraft or anything about it of it? I mean, we we have an indication from the flight characteristic song altitudes that tells characteristic. Yes, sir. It tells us that he has been identified.

Friendly flight size of one tracking 104 degrees speed, 298 knots. His altitude is 19,000 ft. Uh, mode three transponder code. And then, uh, latitude, longitude position and all of this updates as the information changes, How low can he fly? And you pick him up on this, its line of sight from from our land based radar sites.

So the further out, you know, yes. Then, uh, and we wouldn't have real good low level coverage for all right, But closer to the site, you even pick him up. He's on the day. Yes, sir. It's not a look down, but it's, uh it's line to line of sight of interest for us is the South Florida area.

It's a very busy area, so we might just look at it briefly. See the tip of Florida. Here you can see Cuba. We do have good coverage. So this this is our busiest area. And this accounts for the bulk of our activity because of all your own line.

24 hours a day, then Yes, sir. These computerized radar maps are always turning, always watching for possible intruders. This operation is vital to American security, and each of these specialists is highly trained and carries the traditional pride of service in the job. They do a secondary mission of these men who constantly watch their radar screens is spotting drug smugglers under the Posse Comitatus Law, which we passed five years ago.

The military is now involved in the war on drugs. We had a big bust where we get a president or a letter from the vice president. One of my young airmen made a detection on a track coming up from Southern Florida. There was a high interest track to customs.

They passed it to customs Customs, launched on them, intercepted What do they launch with one of the kings? Or I don't know. If that was, I think it might have been a King year, the floor and yes, and intercept them, shadow them in and right prior to landing at Lakeland, they saw three bags being thrown out, landed, apprehended the crew of three, and they put them in a van under the auspices until they got some local law enforcement help.

They planted a tape, so these three guys started talking and said, Well, they saw the three. They didn't see the other 10. So they go back over the flight while they went back over the flight path, recovered them, and that that hit was uh, 13 bags £988 of pure Coke Street by in excess of 175 million that we were directly involved.

I had the chance to speak to a group of trainees at Tyndall. They, like all the personnel who serve here, are no nonsense group. They understand that peace is why they're here. So the lights are never out and the work never ends. After I toured Tyndall, I met with news reporters and the question of effective defense spending was on their minds.

It was on mine, too, since in these days of tight budgets, every dollar has to count. For a while. There was a great deal of criticism of cost overruns with construction projects, aircraft projects. Has that been contained to some extent? Well, I think we're doing a better job of it.

One of the things I'm going to talk about today is some of the things that are in the Packard Commission are in some of the other areas, and one of the best things we do, of course, is have competition. Most of the construction is going on here.

Uh, has been bit out. There's good competition. Uh, competition is the best policemen. I think on the lot it's better than all the regulations you can write. Uh, one of the other things we're trying to do is to go to multi year procurement so that we quit trying to sort of micro manage everything in a time span like that and say, We're going to, uh, spend, uh, let you know that we've got two or three years in a procurement.

I think you have more time to do a better job. I think we're doing a better job at the beginning to police some of the problems that we had in toilet seats and the other things. We need to continue to work on that because that helps destroy the consensus that we've had, and then we have to have for a strong defense.

My visit to Tender was a lesson sort of a refresher course and how hard our armed forces worked for all of us. We're lucky to have these people working for the country, and we're certainly proud to have them here in Florida. Last May, I chaired a hearing at the Senate Aging Committee in Jacksonville at the Mary Singleton Senior Citizens Center Jacksonville is the home of Florida Blue Cross and Blue Shield, the Medicare insurance agent in our state.

I wanted to know why many of our Medicare patients were not getting their claims paid on time. We heard from patients, doctors, Blue Cross officials and representatives of the National Health Care Financing Administration, the organization which runs Medicare. The problem, I discovered, was not that Blue Cross was dragging its feet.

It was that the Health Care Financing Administration hick for, as we call it, was not releasing enough money to pay and process the claims hit for, it seems believed by holding onto the money longer, it would appear that the federal government was not spending so much as a result of our hearings.

Hicksville began paying the claims on time. But when I returned to Washington, several other senators join with me to make sure Tikva kept paying the claims on time. We introduced a bill that said Medicare claims had to be paid within 22 days or people would get interest on their money.

The bill ran into trouble with the House of Representatives and we had to alter our goals somewhat, but we did get improvements. Bill Long, the chief of governmental operations for Florida Blue Cross, came to Washington to report on the new laws. Acceptance. Yes, there has been a new prompt claims payment law that that's in effect.

This law, in effect, establishes a time limit of 30 days under which 95% of all clean claims must be paid by Medicare contractors. This time limit will decrease to over the years to where it's at 24 days for 1990. We're not sure yet what clean claims or what the definition of clean claims is going to be.

We expect that it will be those claims that do not require us to go back out to the beneficiary or the physician to get additional information to process a claim. And there's a positive incentive for the government to pay claims timely in that I believe it's in April.

Any claims processed after 30 days will incur an interest payments for for those claims. Florida Blue Cross has added five more toll free telephone lines to its Jacksonville headquarters. That brings to 67 the number of phones answered by claims experts eight hours a day. Bill long reported the 1000 Blue Cross employees have a backlog of 900,000 claims, but the average claim processing time has been reduced from 30 days at the time of our hearing to 19 days.

One of my main concerns over the years has been the decline in the number of participating physicians in the Medicare program. We've tried to increase the number of doctors who will limit their charges to the amount allowed by Medicare in this next year. One of our major efforts is to enroll more physicians as participating positions.

Currently, about 20% of the physicians in Florida participate, which means that they have agreed to accept the Medicare assignment 100% of the time. And the impact of accepting assignment means that if, for example, a physician was accepting assignment, he charged $100. Medicare might only allow $80 they would.

Medicare would then pay 80% of that, which is $64. The physician who accepts assignment has agreed that he will accept the $80 is his full charge, so he would collect no more than the difference between the $64 payment and the $80 allowance if a physician does not accept assignment, they are able to charge the difference between the $64 payment and the $100 that was charged.

This is often confusing to Medicare recipients in Florida who do not understand the paperwork. They don't understand exactly what their responsibility is, and it's very beneficial for them to to have the assistance of the physician's office. Blue Cross sees the importance of communicating with our Medicare patients.

We have established over a period of years a number of Medicare advisory councils where we meet with them routinely. They tell us how well we're meeting their needs and we provide information to them. And as an extension of that, we're thinking about putting into place a senior advocate position.

It would be an individual who travels around the state meeting with organized beneficiary groups such as AARP to provide information on the Medicare program and to act as a as an advocate on behalf of these beneficiaries and positions. I want to thank those of you who wrote to me complaining about the Medicare claims situation last spring.

I'm happy we've been able to come this far and I certainly hope you'll keep me informed about your experiences with Medicare. The Medicare number at Blue Cross is 1 800 3427586 Well, that's our program for today. I hope you'll join me next time for the Lawton Child's update.

Uh huh. Okay. Mhm. Yes. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah, yeah. Oh, Oh, yeah. Mhm. Thank you. Mhm. Yeah.