Gore homes in on Nevada issues

Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2000 | 11:22 a.m.

Vice President and presidential contender Al Gore ripped through Las Vegas Monday, hammering his Republican opponents on issues that included health care reform, the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump and proposed tax cuts.

Gore arrived shortly after 11:40 a.m. and traveled by caravan to UNLV, where he attended a private discussion on health care issues, then spoke to a rally of about 1,000 partisans, many of them members of labor unions.

The vice president promised the UNLV crowd "to be a fighter for people and not the powerful."

He stuck to now-familiar talking points at the rally and used the event as an opportunity to push other Democrats running for national office: Ed Bernstein, who wants to replace Richard Bryan in the Senate, and Shelley Berkley, running for re-election to the House.

In the afternoon, Gore spoke to another, much larger, partisan crowd at Bally's resort: the International Brotherhood of Teamsters convention. The union endorsed the vice president Sept. 8.

Gore also spoke to a handful of Las Vegas reporters earlier in the afternoon. He restated his opposition to "interim" or immediate but theoretically temporary storage of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, and said he believes that individual states, not the federal government, should decide what to do with the issue of a ban on betting on collegiate athletics.

But the central theme of the visit centered on health care issues. He began pumping the issue before his private discussion at UNLV, brought the issue to the UNLV rally, and continued hitting it at the Teamsters convention.

Although he did not name his opponent, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, Gore slammed the Republican leadership for failing to provide for 44 million Americans who do not have health insurance. He also slammed "powerful special interests" -- health insurance companies and health maintenance organizations -- for making medical decisions based on financial considerations.

The Republicans and health insurance companies had failed to provide coverage for women's health needs, including mammograms and surgery for breast cancer, Gore said.

"An HMO should not be able to overrule" medical decisions made by a doctor, Gore said, "but it's happening every day in the United States ... by somebody behind a computer terminal.

"We have to find ways to control costs, but what's happening now is not acceptable," he said.

"I'm sick and tired of health care decisions being made not by doctors, but by bean counters on the other end of a telephone line," he said at the UNLV rally a few minutes later.

"I believe it is time to take on the drug companies to get prescription drug benefits for our seniors," he told the crowd.

Gore said electing a Democratic slate would ensure a "patients' bill of rights" that would allow a patient to choose where to go, guarantee the right to see a specialist if it was deemed medically necessary, and allow an outside appeal to insurance decisions. An alternative Republican "bill of rights" fails to meet that criteria, he said.

"The old saying, 'There ought to be a law ...' " Gore said. "Well, there ought to be a law, and it's called the patients' bill of rights."

Gore also tackled nuclear waste issues. Locally elected Democrats helped him frame the issue.

"We believe that Al Gore will not allow nuclear waste to contaminate our community," Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman said at the UNLV rally.

And former Nevada Gov. Bob Miller said Bush will allow immediate, "interim" storage of nuclear waste in the state, a temporary solution that could become permanent.

"Nuclear waste will come rolling through our streets" if Bush is elected, Miller said.

Miller and Sen. Harry Reid, who arrived on Air Force II with Gore, referred to Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., who reportedly said the Yucca Mountain dump would be approved six months after Bush becomes president.

"They showed us their hole card, and that hole card is 'within six months,' " Miller said.

In the journalists' round table, Gore did not rule out the option of putting a permanent dump in Nevada, but said the "interim" waste storage facility, which he opposes, is a Trojan horse to allow waste into the state.

"I've been fighting this battle for years," Gore said. "One of the biggest risks associated with nuclear waste is the transportation of it."

Putting the waste in temporary storage here, then moving it to Texas, would "double the risks," he said, making it likely that the waste would stay in Nevada forever.

And Gore said he believes that scientific evidence has raised questions about the reliability of storing the waste in a mountain in the Nevada desert.

"I think that science can give us an answer that is clear enough for the basis of a decision" on the reliability of Yucca Mountain as a permanent storage site, he said.

On other issues, Gore said:

"Ninety-eight percent of the problem ... is illegal already," he said. "I'm not an expert on this issue, which is why I think it is a state issue."

"I am for the goal of universal health coverage, and I think the best way to get there is step by step," Gore said. "You don't want to destroy what's good in the current system to fix what's bad."

Gore and allies said several times through the day that the economy is the strongest in the 224 years of the United States. But banging the election-year drum, he asked for the chance to do more.

"I am not satisfied yet," Gore said at UNLV. "We've got a long way to go ... The election isn't about me or my opponent, it's about you and the future."

He closed at both UNLV and at the Teamster rally with a joke about his wooden image.

"I won't always be the most exciting politician -- like Harry Reid -- but I will work hard for you," he said.