ABLEnews Extra

              Health Reform Quixote-Style

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Washington--Liberal Democrats in the House renewed their quixotic
struggle Monday to scrap private health insurance and bring
Canadian-style, tax-financed coverage for all to the United States.
   
They acknowledged their cause was hopeless in this Congress, but Rep.
Jim McDermott (D-WA) said they were pressing ahead to expose "the
gross deficiencies of Republican health reform."
   
President Clinton has called for a more modest approach to health
reform this year while warning against cutting Medicare to pay for GOP
tax cuts or deficit reduction.
   
Meanwhile, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Bob Packwood said Monday
that the Republicans will look to Medicare and Medicaid for savings of
$250 billion to $400 billion over five years if the balanced-budget
amendment passes.
   
McDermott, a psychiatrist from Seattle, has 54 co-sponsors for his new
American Health Security Act, down from a peak of 91 in the last
Congress.
   
It would levy a new 8.7 percent payroll tax on employers, require
individuals to pay 2.2 percent of their taxable income for health
insurance and raise cigarette taxes by 45 cents a pack.
   
McDermott, who believes the Clinton administration blundered in trying
to preserve private health insurance in its plan, said of the White
House, "We haven't talked to them...They're working on their problems.
We'll come together."
   
Packwood (R-OR) appealed to the Group Health Association of America to
help the lawmakers devise savings, warning that Congress otherwise
"will strike out blindly" at the big health entitlement programs.
   
Some savings should come from patients' pockets, he said. "This cannot
all come out of providers."
   
His comments on cutting Medicare and Medicaid spending came after the
speech to the health maintenance organization executives.
   
McDermott, citing Congressional Budget Office estimates on his
previous bill, said that setting limits on health expenditures while
allowing consumers free choice of doctors and hospitals ultimately
could save $175 billion a year and pare the deficit.
   
States would negotiate fees with health care providers under the plan.

"This Congress will not bring the American people what they need in
health insurance, but this Congress will not be here forever,"
McDermott said. "Ultimately, single payer is politically inevitable."
   
In the meantime, "we will be offering amendments at every turn" to GOP
health proposals, he vowed.
   
McDermott's co-sponsors include Reps. Henry A. Waxman, Pete Stark and
Lynn Woolsey of California, Sam Gibbons of Florida, Barney Frank of
Massachusetts, John Lewis of Georgia and Lane Evans of Illinois.
   
Waxman, who failed to get a bill through his Commerce health
subcommittee last year, said the Democrats stumbled in 1994 "because
we tried to pass a highly complicated bill that frightened the
American people and the medical establishment. ... Today we return to
basic principles."
   
In addition to last year's setbacks in Congress for Democratic health
reforms, California voters soundly rejected, 6 million to 2.2 million,
a proposal to scrap private insurance and create a single,
taxpayer-financed health care system in that state.
   
[Liberals Try Anew to Bring Canadian-Style Health Insurance to US,
Christopher Connell, AP, February 27, 1995]

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