Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 4, 1994 TAG: 9403040081
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The 15 Democrats and 15 Republicans said they had plucked the common elements from the Clinton proposal and rival plans and repackaged them in a consensus bill that would not add a single dollar to federal spending or the deficit.
It would come nowhere near President Clinton's goal of guaranteed coverage for all Americans.
"I don't know why we have to do it all at once," said Rep. Roy Rowland, D-Ga.
His coauthor, Rep. Michael Bilirakis, R-Fla., said no more than a third of the Congress had backed any single reform bill, but 297 House members separately had backed the proposals grafted onto the consensus plan.
"The bottom line is . . . to [get] a bill through the Congress this year," Bilirakis said. "The way it is right now, everything is so splintered, we're just going to look like fools up here."
"Let's get started with the foundation. We can build the house later on," said Rep. William Zeliff Jr., R-N.H., a co-sponsor.
Thirty-three Republican senators, meanwhile, left on an overnight retreat to Annapolis, Md., to hash out their differences on health reform behind closed doors. House GOP leaders and the governors of South Carolina, New Hampshire and Utah were joining them.
Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kan., said it wasn't a bill-drafting session and Sen. John Chafee of Rhode Island, the retreat organizer, said, "I can tell you now, having taken a few soundings, that there won't be unanimity."
Dole said, "We'll get closer than the Democrats" and added, "I think we can do better" than the stripped-down reform plan that Rowland and Bilirakis have advanced.
Rowland, a former family physician, said their bill had "not one new dollar" in it. He called it a "cut-and-paste" job.
It would limit pre-existing condition exclusions in employer health-benefit plans and allow workers to keep coverage when they changed jobs. But it would not outlaw pre-existing condition clauses in policies sold to individuals.
by CNB