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

DATE: TUESDAY, April 19, 1994                   TAG: 9404190157
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By LAURA WILLIAMSON STAFF WRITER NOTE: Above
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

PANEL HAS ITS OWN HEALTH PLAN

Boucher, D-Abingdon, said committee members have been meeting for informal discussions in congressional offices and talking on the telephone and among themselves on the House floor while general debate goes on around them.

They won't go public with their bill until they've reached agreement on what it will look like, Boucher said.

Nothing unusual about that, said Rep. L.F. Payne, D-Nelson County. Payne, who serves on the House Ways and Means Committee, said his group has been doing the same thing.

"I think it's pretty much business as usual," he said.

Trying to reach agreement on an issue while following rules of parliamentary procedure - required when the committees meet publicly - slows them down, Payne said.

"It inhibits our ability to discuss ideas, to find alternatives," Payne said.

Payne and Boucher serve on two key committees involved in setting the course for restructuring the nation's health care delivery system. A third House committee, Education and Labor, is also working on the problem. All three will complete their work by Memorial Day, then try to reach a consensus bill to take to the floor of the House by July, Payne said.

The Senate won't begin its work on the issue until June.

So far, Boucher's committee appears to have gotten the most done. Boucher said he expects Energy and Commerce to reach an agreement within the next week.

While he would not discuss the details of what the committee hopes to put in its legislation, Boucher said the panel was taking "a new approach."

"We are not simply fine-tuning a previous recommendation," he said. "We're starting from scratch."

Boucher said he had two major goals for the bill: He hopes to provide universal private health insurance coverage - without eliminating jobs.

"I have been very concerned about the employer mandate requirements contained in, for example, the president's proposals," he said. "Employer mandates won't work."

The president's proposal would require employers to provide health insurance for employees and to cover 80 percent of the cost. Small businesses would either band together into cooperative purchasing groups or earn discounts based on the size of the company and its payroll.

Boucher, whose district covers the southwestern part of the state, said 75 percent of the businesses in the region he represents have 10 employees or fewer.

"Those are the companies that are most vulnerable," he said. "Those concerns must be addressed in whatever final legislation is written."

Boucher has been hearing from the small businesses in his area, along with lobbyists for consumers, the National Restaurant Association and the Health Care Reform Project, a group representing business, labor, senior citizens and health care providers. He's heard from so many special interests, in fact, that he no longer meets with them. His staff does.

"I meet with my constituents," he said, "but no organized interests. I simply don't have time."

He has also had trouble handling all of the phone calls, many generated by advertising targeted at his district and at Payne's. Television ads run by the Health Care Reform Project list both congressmen's phone numbers.

That caused some confusion with constituents, he said, who thought he placed the ads. Some even called to ask him to take them off the air.

Payne, too, has been deluged with calls from constituents and lobbyists. He's sending a survey to everyone in his district to find out, in a more scientific fashion, what people think.

Payne, who favors a plan that offers less government control than Clinton's but does not guarantee universal coverage, said it is too early to tell which bill his committee will endorse. But there's one area in which he and Boucher already agree: Health care reform should not be financed with heavy taxes on tobacco.

"I think very likely, when all is said and done, that tobacco taxes will be a part of how we pay for health care," Payne said, "but not all of it."