Rostenkowski Offers National Health Measure

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.) Friday introduced a national health bill that would require all employers to provide health insurance to their workers or pay a 9% federal tax on their payroll to help the government provide it.

Anyone not covered on the job or by Medicare would be enrolled in a new federally run health insurance program with benefits similar to Medicare’s. They would pay some fees and premiums, but medical care for the poor would be free or subsidized.

Rostenkowski drafted the measure after the AFL-CIO and other groups complained that no bill before Congress from a high-ranking member, including one sponsored by Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.), contains strong mandatory controls on the growth of health costs.

The bill’s mandate to employers to provide health insurance or pay a tax also is used in the Mitchell bill, but it is opposed by small business and the White House.

Under the bill, all public and private health insurance would have to contain a specified package of acute-care benefits so that everyone’s acute care would be covered by either private or government insurance.