Penalty for Healthcare & Looking into Sterilization

Penalty for Healthcare & Looking into Sterilization. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report. Washington Congressman Doc Hastings wants the Democrats to rethink a part of the new healthcare package that may be a devastating blow for ag producers. HASTINGS: The healthcare bill has provisions in it that even part-time workers have to be covered and we simply don't know all of the ramifications of that. The onerous part of that is that if they are not insured then the employer has to pay a $2000 fine. I think it's bad policy. I said it at the time and this has proven out to be even worse as we go along. It may take a couple of years but researchers think a new approach may get the best of exotic annual grasses that are harming millions of acres of western grasslands. Researchers with the Agriculture Research Service and Dow AgroSciences have been working on a solution and have found using herbicides to sterilize rather than to kill weedy grasses might be a more economical and environmentally sound weed control strategy. Researchers believe it should only take one to three years of herbicide treatment at the right growth stage to greatly reduce the soil seed bank of annual weedy grasses without harming perennial grasses. Now here's today's Washington Grange Report. (GRANGE) That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.