THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, July 11, 1994 TAG: 9407090017
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 62 lines
Playing his hand with exquisite timing, Senate Republican Leader Robert J. Dole, R-Kan., waited until the Clinton health-care monstrosity was in the intensive-care ward before springing his alternative. The Dole proposal is a package of sensible reforms that doesn't involve tearing one-seventh of the U.S. economy up by its roots. It is no ``Clinton-lite.''
There is now a clear alternative to the tax-increasing, mandate-driven, rationing-prone Clinton plan and every other Democratic alternative, all of which involve differing strengths of the same bad medicine. The Dole plan has the potential to keep compromise-prone moderate Republicans on board, and perhaps attract conservative Democrats nervous about being identified with the decreasing popularity of ClintonCare.
The Dole plan rejects mandates on employers or employees and does not impose arbitrary spending limits. It does not mandate a politically determined set of benefits every American must purchase. Nor does it propose new federal taxes or attempt to impose ``managed competition'' on the health-care industry.
Instead, the Dole plan concentrates on medical savings accounts, which would allow people to control their own health-care spending and impose price discipline on the system. People who purchase their own health insurance would get the same tax breaks that corporations now receive. States would be allowed to privatize Medicaid and the poor given vouchers to purchase their own health-insurance plans. People could not lose their insurance through no fault of their own.
The Dole plan is not perfect. His proposal to force insurance companies to sell insurance to anyone, regardless of health condition, would only encourage people to remain uninsured until they get sick. A better approach would be so-called high-risk pooling, a program advocated by the National Center for Policy Research in Dallas and is now in place in several states. These allow ``uninsurable'' people to buy policies at less cost than nationalizing the health-care industry.
Senator Dole purposely did not offer his plan in the bargaining pit of the Finance Committee. Not even health-care junkies can keep up with the dizzying efforts by Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan and other Democrats to square the health-care circle by providing ``universal'' coverage without appearing to raise taxes to pay for it.
That is an impossible task, a fact now dawning on Congress and the public. Nevertheless, that realization doesn't mean the Clinton plan will simply fall apart. House Speaker Thomas Foley and Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell will insist on a floor vote on something resembling the Clinton plan.
That will be the moment of truth for Virginia's members of Congress, such as Republican Sen. John Warner and Democrat Chuck Robb, who claim to be moderates in their respective parties. Self-described centrists such as Reps. Norm Sisiky and Owen Pickett will be on the spot as well.
There is now a clear, sensible, non-statist health-reform plan on the table. Will these members support it, or a vast, centralized Clinton plan the public clearly doesn't want and almost everyone in Washington except Hillary Rodham Clinton thinks is unworkable? We'll see. by CNB