Then Clinton told the governors that a central feature of his plan backup price controls was there only to satisfy the bean counters. And, by the way almost everything else was negotiable except mandatory coverage (someday) for all Americans. Whereupon his friends accused him of a preemptive cave-in. So to prove its populist mettle. the White House (led by Hillary Clinton) stepped up its attacks on the insurance industry Yet aides predict they’ll ultimately cut a deal with Rep. Jim Cooper, who has his own less sweeping and in some respects irreconcilable plan though they privately think Cooper’s package is a fraud and that he’s a tool of the insurance industry.
There hasn’t been this much posturing since Madonna’s last tour. Americans are thoroughly befuddled about the nature of “the crisis,” the reforms being discussed and the abiding beliefs if any, of the players. Here’s a tour of the debate as politicians stake out positions. react to public opinion, stall for time as elections approach and try to undermine enemies.
when asked, Americans agree there is one. In the newest NEWSWEEK Poll, 79 percent say so. By large margins they support mainstream ideas for dealing with that crisis: universal coverage, insurance for “pre-existing” conditions, purchasing co-ops to drive down the cost of care. But when asked in other polls to name urgent problems facing the country health care rarely is volunteered. “When they think they’re taking an IQ test they say ‘yes’,” says Illinois polltaker Mike McKeon. “But health care isn’t the talk on the street. It’s crime, it’s jobs, it’s welfare.”
This “crisis” question doesn’t matter to those on the far left and right in Congress. They have fixed ideological views, safe districts or both. It’s members in the middle who have everything to lose -and who will decide the outcome. The “crisis” debate is aimed at them. Now it’s the White House that most wants to keep the argument going as a way to make the GOP look oafishly out of touch. “It’s a gift from God,” chortle’s Clinton political adviser Paul Begala. Republicans are haunted by the example of the hapless Richard Thornburgh, who blew a 47-point lead in a Pennsylvania Senate race in 1991 because he seemed isolated from Main Street concerns–including fears about health-care coverage. So Dole’s wild vacillations are emblematic of the GOP as a whole -and will continue until final action on health care, if and when it comes.
The Clinton and Cooper plans spring from the same theoretical source: the notion of “managed competition” as a mechanism for controlling costs (box). But otherwise the two Rhodes scholars’ plans aren’t any more alike than the Old and New Testament. Clinton’s is an entitlement program; Cooper’s isn’t. Cooper would prescribe “access” to private health insurance, but wouldn’t require employers to help pay for it, as the Clinton plan does. “That’s like saying you have ‘access’ to a RollsRoyce if you can see it in a showroom,” says one White House aide. But not too loudly. The administration needs Cooper’s votes.
The Clintons are moving in opposite directions at once. That’s standard operating procedure, but the cross-pressures are more intense than the White House would like. The Clintons had hoped to win the silence, if not the assent, of Big Business. That would have given them more leeway to move to the left as deliberations start in the liberal-leaning House of Representatives. So they promised companies insurance subsidies for early retirees. They set up-and knocked down the straw man of government-run national insurance. Aides portray Clinton’s recent veto threat as a subtle invitation to Congress to rewrite anything except universal coverage. Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont confirmed to NEWSWEEK that Clinton, in his chat with the governors, pledged to be flexible.
It hasn’t worked. The insurance industry’s “Harry and Louise” ads have raised fears of vast new bureaucracies, limits on choice of doctors and new financial burdens on small business. In a NEWSWEEK Poll last fall, Americans said they looked with favor on the Clintons’ plan by a 55-27 margin. In the new poll, 41 percent approve -while 34 percent disapprove.
Such numbers have caused Big Business, once cautiously supportive, to turn on a dime. Lobbyists for small business always have been vocal critics. Last week the Business Roundtable-representing the country’s 200 largest corporations-endorsed the Cooper plan as a “starting point,” despite pleas from the Clintons. And the U.S. Chamber of Commerce reversed course in a matter of hours, winding up endorsing no plan at all. The National Association of Manufacturers is following suit.
There’s new grousing, too, on the left - some of it genuine, much of it staged to pressure a president who is seen as all too malleable. Clinton’s lieutenant in the Senate, Democrat Jay Rockefeller, complained that placating the governors was “not helpful.” The White House chief of staff tried to soothe him at dinner that night. Reports of what Clinton had said to the governors were overstated, said Thomas (Mack) McLarty. Talk of retrenching chagrined Rep. Harry Johnston, a Florida Democrat, who called it “too much too early. I’m out there defending the plan,” he said. “We ought to be compromising from a position of strength.”
The Clintons’ first task is to get a deal in the House. They are counting on strong committee chairmen, liberals and party loyalty. The White House vote counters think they can get to 188 of the needed 218 votes with Democrats alone: the 100 who are cosponsors of the Clinton plan, an additional 35 who support “single payer” government insurance and the 53 whose support of Clinton on tough budget votes shows they’ll be open to a deal. They hope to get the other 30 from Cooper’s Democrat and Republican supporters. The Senate, where 41 members can mount a filibuster, is another matter, but the White House hopes Dole won’t want to risk being Thornburghed if he runs for president in 1996.
Clinton’s strategy is to push as hard as he can for whatever he can get and declare victory over almost any result. The 1,300-plus-page bill that Mrs. Clinton and her experts spent a year devising is a fat sheaf of specifics ripe for dealmaking. But the philosophical sticking point is real: whether employers should be required to pay most of the cost of health insurance for their employees. Clinton says he’ll veto anything less, and it will take Republicans many months to decide whether to make him do it.
HARRY AND LOUISE: An ongoing, multimillion-dollar ad campaign by the Health Insurance Association of America. It depicts Middle Americans worrying aloud about the Clinton plan-and raises fears that it will restrict choice and increase bureaucracy.
THE NEW REPUBLIC: In a scathing cover story that the White House later branded as full of “lies,” Elizabeth McCaughey charges that the Clinton plan would make seeing a specialist “almost impossible,” and result in a government takeover of medicine.
THE BUSINESS ROUNDTABLE: Despite frantic pleas from the White House, this influential group of CEOs from 200 of the nation’s largest companies voted last week to support Rep. Jim Cooper’s less sweeping health-care plan.
