House-Senate conferees agree on medicare reform provisions.(Capitol Hill)

Senior citizens would get more immediate relief from high drug costs, and rural health care providers would get increased payments from Medicare, under an agreement reached by House and Senate negotiators.

The House-Senate conference committee has reached agreement on hundreds of pages of a compromise version of the Medicare Prescription Drug and Modernization Act, but hundreds more remain (DDR, Sept. 18, p. 142).

The conferees approved a proposal to provide Medicare beneficiaries with drug discount cards during the two years before a universal Medicare pres