Gop, Insurers Sabotaging Reform

Congress is considering health care reform that is far less ambitious than the massive overhaul proposed two years ago by President Clinton.

For that reason alone, its fate is more important. If lawmakers cannot agree on the most mildmannered of health care reforms, then we all might as well give up. Either that or start a revolution.

During the health care debates of 1994, Republicans sank Clinton’s confusing plan to extend coverage to all Americans. At the time, they vowed to come up with their own ideas using an incremental, baby-steps approach. The Senate has such a plan now, and it has drawn wide bipartisan support.

Sponsored by Sens. Nancy Kassebaum, R-Kan., and Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., the bill would make health insurance portable. When a worker leaves or loses a job, the insurance company must continue to sell him coverage. The legislation also would hamper the ability of insurers to deny coverage to people with heart disease, diabetes or other medical conditions.

This is a very modest proposal. It does nothing for the more than 40 million (and growing) Americans who have no medical coverage to begin with.

Nevertheless, it represents progress. Democrat Clinton backs the legislation, as do Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Orrin Hatch of Utah and other respected conservatives.

The soundness of the proposal makes it very dangerous. It just might pass.

Thus, forces opposed to any effective health care reform - meaning many insurance companies - must destroy it. But because the legislation is so popular, stealth weaponry has been deployed.

First, opponents of reform have encouraged internal strife.

Enemy agents asked provocatively how a Republican-controlled Congress could pass anything that might benefit Clinton in an election year. A “well-connected health care lobbyist,” who did not want to be identified, confided to the press that Clinton’s endorsement would be the bill’s “kiss of death.”

Meanwhile, the Health Insurance Association, the industry’s main lobbying group, warned that the reform would raise the cost of coverage by as much as 30 percent.

That number, however, was shot down immediately by the American Academy of Actuaries. According to their analysis, the increase would be something less than 2 percent or 3 percent.

Next, anti-reform forces tried to strangle the proposal. In January, several senators put secret “holds” on the bill, which would have stopped it from coming to the floor for debate.

But the valiant Kassebaum put her foot down. Her party’s leadership promised to have the “holds” removed if she would agree to delay discussion.

Now, according to many Democrats, House Republicans are trying to crush the proposal by loading it down. They plan to add provisions dealing with medical malpractice, higher insurance tax deductions for the self-employed, medical savings accounts and other matters.

Democrats say that inserting those controversial items into the legislation would be tantamount to killing it.

Republicans, meanwhile, declare their utter innocence. Asked whether the intent is sabotage, Rep. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, who is spearheading the House efforts, answered “absolutely not.”

This writer is no mind reader, and she admittedly harbors a cynical streak. But if anyone wanted to smother the reform legislation, this would be a nearly perfect crime.

For starters, some of the add-on proposals have the virtue of being decent ideas. The problem is: Many Democrats oppose these changes and would vote against a bill that contains them.

Here’s what a Republican opponent of reform could hope for: The public blames the Democrats for defeating health care reform. Then a grateful insurance industry pours more gold into GOP coffers as a reward for preventing a narrower bill - one that could have passed - from even coming to a vote.

Unfortunately for that scenario, too much incriminating evidence points to the Republicans.

There were the secret “holds” placed on the Senate bill. There was the Wall Street Journal editorial condemning the Senate bill as “another attempt to micro-manage medical insurance.” And there is a long history of obstruction of reform.

Republicans really have more to lose here. If they can’t get behind their own doctrine of baby-step health reform, then they reveal no serious interest in the subject at all.