
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, February 4, 1994                   TAG: 9402040077
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

CHAMBER SCORNS CLINTON HEALTH PLAN

President Clinton's health plan took another blow from business groups Thursday, with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce dismissing it even "as a starting point."

Rep. Jim Cooper, buoyed by support from big business, said he may broaden his rival proposal. Cooper, a Tennessee Democrat, has 57 co-sponsors in the House for his Managed Competition Act and four in the Senate. It is the only plan with significant bipartisan support.

White House senior adviser George Stephanopoulos said more than 70 percent of the American public supports Clinton's goal of guaranteed coverage for all Americans, and Cooper's bill won't do that.

Shrugging off the setbacks at the hands of the chamber and the Business Roundtable, Stephanopoulos said: "There are going to be a lot of ups and downs along the way. But in the end, we believe we're going to get exactly what the president has called for."

Wednesday, the influential Business Roundtable, a group of 200 corporate chiefs, backed the Cooper bill as "the best starting point for reform." Cooper's bipartisan bill would try to make health insurance more affordable without requiring employers to pay for coverage for their workers.

Clinton backers decried the vote and charged the Roundtable was under the spell of drug makers and insurers.

"Shame on big business," said Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va. "There's a special place in hell waiting for Bob Winters of the Prudential Life Insurance Co."

Winters, the Prudential chairman, led the task force that recommended backing Cooper.

While the 215,000-member chamber last year endorsed the idea of making both employers and employees kick in for health insurance, it said Thursday it cannot support Clinton's employer mandate or any other mandate now before Congress.

The chamber's Robert E. Patricelli told the House Ways and Means Committee the Clinton plan "proposes such a burden of high employer premium contributions, rich benefits and counterproductive regulation and . . . bureaucracy, that we believe it cannot even be used as a starting point."

by CNB