Addressees

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the funds allocated by DOE to the High Commissioner and in turn to the
District Administrator, Marshalls are exhausted.
Dr. Burr, Roger Rey,
Dr. Weyzen and I discussed the fact that some of the patients have
contacted Micronesian Legal Services Corporation to look into the

matter of entitlement,

We all agreed that it made good sense to

honor these claims once we had a handle on how much they were.
If
funds are available for this perhaps the High Commissioner could
be contacted to call for all these outstanding claims to be sent

to Saipan from Majuro for review and payment.

DOE could then

reimburse the TTPI and essentially clean up everything under this

agreement.

This brought up another main point of our discussions on this issue,
that being the new agreement DOE will enter into with the TTPI to

address the new TT Public Law which takes the place of old PL No,
5-52.

I told Dr.

Burr that PASO would be willing to assist him

in the administration of new agreement to the extent he wished.

He had mentioned the possibility of putting this in the NV financial

plan and in turn our office could be charged with administering
the program.
I then offered our assistance once decisions are
made on handling past claims under the old agreement.

One of the main problems of administering the current agreement,
from the Marshall Islands Administration's point of view, is that
patients are collecting the per diem and still eating and sleeping

at the hospital free of charge.

Problem,

Although this is a Marshalls’

the new Public Law and thus the new DOE/TTPI agreement

does not stipulate a set per diem rate. I suggested that DOE
and the TTPI may want the new agreement to stipulate that some of
the DOE funds are to be used to reimburse the hospitals for bed
and meal charges.
I was told that meal costs, when charged, are $.50
each.
Patients could then be paid an additional daily stipend for

incidentals, perhaps: $2.00 or $3.00.

With this type framework it

would seem that several things could be accomplished, namely the
program would probably be less costly, the patients would continue
te be afforded balanced meals, the reimbursement to the hospital
would help a Marshalls’ admihistrative and financial problem, and

the patients would still have a stipend for incidentals.

Dr. Burr appeared to favor the suggestion that PASO become involved
in the administration of the programs resulting from impending
decisions and we were all aware that any such action would be cleared

through the Nevada Operations Office.

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