Universal Coverage

WASHINGTON -- More than any other single aspect of President Clinton's State of the Union address, his threat to veto any health-care reform bill that "does not guarantee every American private health insurance that can never be taken away" has set inside Washington to speculating and interpreting.George Stephanopoulos, the president's senior (at age 32) adviser for policy and strategy, says the threat means just what it says -- that any bill that reaches Clinton's desk, to be signed, must include "a way to guarantee private insurance to every American, not just the right, but the means to exercise that right."

WASHINGTON -- Making a new bid for support for his health care reform plan, President Clinton offered yesterday to compromise on two key provisions, but he failed to placate many critics.The president told a meeting of the nation's governors that he was willing to compromise on proposals to limit health care spending and to require employers and employees to buy insurance through regional bureaucracies called "alliances."But the governors approved a health reform policy that doesn't achieve the president's goal of guaranteed coverage for all Americans.

WASHINGTON -- The Congressional Budget Office has tentatively determined that a modest approach to revamping the current health care system would be significantly less expensive and more workable than initially believed, congressional sources said yesterday.If that is the conclusion in the CBO's final report, it could add fuel to a movement among moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats toward reforms that would fall short of President Clinton's goal of universal coverage. The report may be released as early as today.

"If the legislation you send me does not guarantee every American private health insurance that can never be taken away, I will take this pen, veto the legislation and tell you to start over again." So said President Clinton at the most contentious moment of his State of the Union address.To some experts, this was a line in the sand he had to draw. Unlike last year's budget fight, which easily lent itself to Capital Hill horse-trading, the health plan drawn up by Hillary Rodham Clinton may be a stone arch that falls to pieces if one of its major building blocks is taken away.

WASHINGTON -- The business community dealt President Clinton's health care reform efforts another setback yesterday as the nation's largest corporate group denounced his plan and urged Congress to reject it.The statement from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce came a day after the Business Roundtable, made up of 200 of the largest U.S. companies, endorsed a rival bill that falls short of the president's goal of guaranteed universal insurance coverage.A chamber official, Robert E. Patricelli, told the House Ways and Means Committee that the Clinton plan should not "even be used as a starting point" for discussion.

WASHINGTON -- At the close of the winter meeting of the nation's governors here, Republican Gov. Carroll Campbell of South Carolina, the group's chairman, was asked whether in the conversations they had with President Clinton on health-care reform, the president had ever reiterated his State of the Union veto threat to Congress."

WASHINGTON -- The political gamesmanship is heating up between the White House and Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas as they wrestle with the possible impact of the fight over health care reform on the November midterm elections.In its desire to have legislation that demonstrates to voters that gridlock has been broken, the White House is playing softball.While reiterating that President Clinton will veto any proposal that doesn't deliver "universal coverage," two ranking spokesmen, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes and White House counselor David Gergen, told weekend television interview shows that Clinton would accept achieving it over several years.

WASHINGTON -- In the latest opinion poll made for NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, voters were asked if President Clinton should veto any health care reform bill that did not provide for universal coverage. Fully 65 percent said that he should.It would be a mistake, of course, to draw too many inferences from a single poll finding. The question defined neither universal coverage nor the funding mechanisms that would be required to achieve it.But it did suggest that the president might find a receptive audience by sticking to his guns on the veto threat that he delivered in outlining his plan to Congress last Sept.

WASHINGTON -- Women, who probably had the most to gain from President Clinton's proposed overhaul of the health care system, may now have the most to lose as Congress moves to shrink and delay the program.Women's health care advocates, who once viewed Mr. Clinton's proposal as a chance to make enormous strides on abortion rights, preventive services and direct access to insurance for the largest segment of the adult population that is without it, now fear they could lose ground in all these areas.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton, fighting to save his health care reform proposals and bolster his own standing with the public, gave a strong endorsement last night to a Senate Democratic plan that would give 95 percent of Americans health insurance coverage by 2000.In a nationally televised press conference, Mr. Clinton insisted that the compromise proposal, unveiled this week by Senate Democratic Leader George J. Mitchell of Maine, would lead to universal health coverage "in the near future."