Exhibit 99.02


     The Company incurred special items during the quarter, consisting primarily
of restructuring and merger related costs, partially offset by income received
in conjunction with settlement of litigation arising from antitrust claims
against certain vitamin manufacturers for amounts overcharged in prior years
("vitamin litigation"). Merger charges include such items as costs associated
with exit and consolidation of facilities as well as cost of integrating
acquired businesses. Restructuring charges primarily relate to decisions made by
management to incur costs to realign components of its business operations to
meet current business demands. On a net basis, these special items totaled $13.2
million ($8.7 million after tax) versus $18.7 million ($15.6 million after tax)
for the year-earlier period. In the opinion of management, these items, by their
nature, rarely have predictable trends and are not truly reflective of ongoing
operating results. Therefore, the Company presents its results on both a GAAP
basis (GAAP) and a GAAP basis excluding these items ("adjusted").

     Management encourages readers to rely upon the GAAP numbers, but includes
the "adjusted" numbers as a supplemental metric to assist readers. It should be
noted that the items being adjusted from the GAAP results represent actual
income or expense to the Company. These items impact operating cash flow
available to support on-going operations. As such, these items are an important
component of the financial performance of the Company and any metric excluding
them will present an incomplete picture. Nevertheless, management uses
"adjusted" results to measure its performance, in addition to the GAAP results.
As the Company's core business is providing health care products and services to
the healthcare industry, management finds it useful to use a metric that is free
of charges and gains associated with restructuring, merger related activity and
litigation. While these may be recurring items for the Company, management
believes they are not reflective of the day-to-day offering of its products and
services and are related more to strategic, multi-year corporate actions that
tend to mask the trends and financial performance of the Company's products and
services. Management also believes that investors may also find an unmasked view
of the Company's core operations to be useful.