Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, August 25, 1994 TAG: 9408250117
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JILL LAWRENCE ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Call it damage control in advance. With prospects for major health reform this year all but dead, congressional Democrats are now talking up the value of taking a step - any step - in the right direction.
President Clinton and Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, D-Maine, remain cautiously noncommittal, determined not to enter into a public debate over how minimal a bill could be and still earn the reform label.
But House Speaker Thomas Foley, D-Wash., this week made a startling departure from the policy. He offered his bottom line.
Clinton's goals include implementing universal insurance coverage, reforming the insurance industry, containing health costs and reducing the federal deficit. Foley said a significant first move toward at least one would be worthwhile.
``He was only outlining one scenario,'' White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers said Wednesday. Yet the scenario carried a strong feeling of inevitability.
Central to Senate hopes at this point is a modest bipartisan plan that seems to meet Foley's definition of ``worth doing.'' Several members of the group that produced the plan hailed him Wednesday as a wise man.
``A very accurate assessment of where the future lies,'' said one, Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo.
The president himself, however, came out swinging Wednesday for his own vision of the future. ``If you are asking me where I am, I am still where I always was,'' he told a B'nai Brith gathering in Chicago via satellite. ``I will do my very best to provide it.''
Clinton also seemed to suggest the bipartisan plan was unacceptable. He lit into ``so-called moderate and conservative people'' for abandoning a requirement that most employers pay for worker insurance. He called it ``the only known way'' to provide universal coverage and other benefits.
But other Democrats seemed to be laying the groundwork for a Foley scenario.
Unlike many other liberals, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., did not attack the bipartisan alternative as inadequate or counterproductive. Instead, he made a point of effusively praising its insurance reforms.
The same day, Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala said policy-makers would be debating health reform for years to come, ``no matter how large the chunk is that we bite off this year.''
Some of the most pessimistic assessments are coming from the bipartisan group, whose plan is widely viewed as the only viable route to action this year. Prospects are ``not terrific,'' said Sen. Bob Kerrey, D-Neb. ``Less than 50-50,'' said Sen. John Danforth, R-Mo.
It would be strange indeed if Kennedy and other champions of comprehensive reform ended up carrying the banner for the incrementalists. But it very well could turn out that way, because they're also the ones most determined to achieve something this year.
by CNB