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Pivotal Senate Health Vote Looms GREG HITT and JANET ADAMY WASHINGTON -- The White House and Senate leaders expressed confidence Sunday that they have the 60 votes in the Senate needed to overcome Republican opposition and pass a bill estimated to cost $871 billion over a decade. A flurry of deal-making amid a December snowstorm locked in the final elements of the Senate bill and won the support of the last holdout, Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson. He won a tightening of rules to ensure no federal money allocated under the sweeping bill is used to fund abortions, and got more...

Dr. R. Scott Hitt, an AIDS specialist and the first openly gay person to head a presidential advisory board, has died. He was 49. Hitt died Thursday of colon cancer at his home in West Hollywood, according to John Duran, the city's mayor and a longtime friend. Hitt was chairman of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS during President Clinton's administration in the 1990s. "I think Scott's legacy was drawing AIDS to the attention of the president. He was uncompromising," Duran said. "He was not afraid of challenging the president about what would make good public policy." When...

4:33 a.m. July 23, 2004 LOS ANGELES – A doctor who during the Clinton administration headed the Presidential Advisory Council on AIDS and HIV has lost his state medical license after being arrested for investigation of possessing a controlled substance. Dr. Russell Scott Hitt's surrender of his license became effective Tuesday. The state medical board barred Hitt from practicing medicine for 60 days earlier this year after allegations that he had molested two patients at a Beverly Hills practice. The board also revoked his license, but the revocation was stayed and he was placed on seven years of probation that,...

Hitt Says Wig Was To Salute Player, Team.. ORLANDO, Fla. -- University of Central Florida President John Hitt apologized for wearing an Afro wig after a picture of him and a university trustee was published on the front page of the campus newspaper. Hitt said he and Board of Trustees Chairman Dick Nunis, who are both white, were acting like many UCF basketball fans have this season in support of Dexter Lyons, a black student who wears his hair in a combed-out Afro. "Just as many fans wear Afro wigs to the games, we wore them to salute the player...