Total Repeal of Catastrophic Care Is Seen

The No. 3 Democrat in the House predicted Tuesday that the catastrophic health care law will be repealed because the House will not accept a pared-down version unanimously approved by the Senate last week.

The Senate voted, 73 to 26, against repealing the hotly controversial law and instead then unanimously passed a compromise plan to retain coverage for hospital bills of Medicare recipients. The compromise, authored by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), also would kill a surtax on benefit recipients.

But on the House side, Majority Whip William H. Gray III (D-Pa.) said: “I do not see the votes for the McCain plan.” Gray was among 360 representatives who voted last week to repeal the catastrophic coverage plan, even though the House had voted support in both 1987 and 1988. According to Congressional Quarterly, 151 Democrats and 44 Republicans who originally favored the law changed their minds and voted to scuttle it.

Now, Gray’s remarks indicate that even the belated Senate effort to rescue parts of the package appear doomed to fail.

“It’s good to wipe the slate clean,” he told a breakfast meeting of reporters about the largest expansion of the Medicare program since its inception in 1965. Gray acknowledged that it may take years for Congress to adopt a replacement because of the strong backlash against the financing of the catastrophic coverage.

Reminded that the Senate had voted nearly 3 to 1 against repeal, Gray shot back: “The Senate has been known to be wrong.”

Gray noted pointedly that the House Democratic leadership did not take a position on the catastrophic health care law, well aware that almost 200 Democrats in the House were prepared to scrap it.

He forecast that the Senate-approved bill would be defeated in the House just as an alternative plan presented by Reps. Pete Stark (D-Oakland) and Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) was defeated by a vote of 269 to 156 last week.

On the issue of reducing capital gains taxes, Gray said that there is no hope of changing the outcome even if the House votes a second time. The Democratic leadership opposes the capital gains cut advocated by President Bush but the cut passed the House after a number of Democrats defected to the Administration position.

Under a compromise being discussed in the Senate, the capital gains provision would be removed from a House-passed budget reconciliation bill and therefore would have to be approved by the House again and sent back to the Senate. But the outcome, Gray said, will not change.

“The issue is lost in terms of the House,” Gray said. “More than 60 Democrats already have voted for it, so how can they explain how they changed their minds less than a month later?”

Gray minimized the long-term impact of the loss for House Democratic leaders, however, noting that Bush is a first-term President with high popularity and had made a cut in capital gains a top campaign issue.

“He’s going to roll you on any issue he wants,” Gray said. “We lost a battle, but not the war.”

But Gray acknowledged that Bush presents a difficult target for Democrats because he has moved to compromise on such issues as Central American policy, budget funding decisions, the savings and loan bailout and his drug program.

“The guy is not a target like Ronald Reagan was,” Gray told reporters.

Members of Congress had said they were flooded with letters, phone calls and demands at town meetings from constituents that led to last week’s moves to end the tax and many benefits. While some congressmen reported large amounts of mail continuing Tuesday after a three-day holiday over Columbus Day, others said letters had tapered off.

Some reported the letters and phone calls nearly duplicated an uproar in 1983 when Congress bowed to public pressure and repealed a proposed income tax witholding on interest and dividend income that had been passed the year before.

NEXT STEP

A House-Senate conference committee will meet on the fate of the controversial law providing catastrophic health care for the elderly. It could repeal the plan entirely, as the House voted to do. Or it could scale it back, as the Senate did when it voted to keep the hospital care benefit. No date has been set for the meeting.