Universal Coverage

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 -- President Clinton may have to yield soon on what he has called the one nonnegotiable element of his health care reform proposal -- guaranteed private insurance for all Americans -- or risk getting no bill at all this year.As the practical deadline for bringing the legislation to the House and Senate floors fast approaches, the president is being advised by Democratic and Republican legislators that he must settle for a compromise far short of what he's seeking or pass no bill and put the issue before voters in the fall congressional elections.

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 -- 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 -- 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 -- Despite President Clinton's vow to veto any health reform legislation that doesn't cover all Americans, Congress is likely to modify his plan in favor of a compromise that would fall short of his ambitious goal of "health security" for everyone.The president's veto threat -- a highlight of his State of the Union address Tuesday night -- cheered supporters of his reform plan but probably came too late to change the attitudes of lawmakers. Many are increasingly convinced that the nation's health care system does not require the kind of costly, radical reform advocated by Mr. Clinton.

"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 -- With its formal arrival on Capitol Hill yesterday, President Clinton's health care reform proposal began a months-long struggle for survival against at least five competing alternatives -- each with its own legion of passionate advocates in Congress.The biggest challenge is not expected to come from those who would do nothing or just a little.Instead it would come from a growing centrist coalition that advocates reform almost as sweeping as the president but without the two most controversial elements of his plan: requiring large employers to pay 80 percent of workers' insurance premiums and setting cost limits that critics fear could lead to rationing.

NOW that the broad outline of President Clinton's health-care plan has emerged, it is important to understand what sorts of obstacles, roadblocks and potholes the plan will encounter as it wends through Congress.The easiest way to get a handle on what lies in store is to take a peek behind the veil that was draped around the process by which the plan was born.From February to May, I served as one of the 500-plus members of the Domestic Health Care Task Force advising Hillary Clinton on health-care changes.