Bush Boosts His Health Plan, Calls Clinton’s ‘Prescription for Disaster’ : Campaign: President again focuses on domestic agenda. Remarks come during rally to aid Senate candidate in Illinois.

Highlighting another major domestic issue, President Bush said Sunday that his health care proposals would help 90 million Americans afford private insurance and called Democrat Bill Clinton’s plan “a prescription for disaster.”

It was the President’s second straight campaign appearance in which he focused on his domestic agenda, widely perceived to be his most vulnerable area. In California on Friday, Bush talked about his plan to grant states new flexibility in managing welfare programs.

“What we need to do is to indicate how all this stuff fits all together,” said Gail Wilensky, an expert on welfare and health care issues who is deputy assistant to the President for policy development.

Bush’s remarks, delivered at a fund-raising luncheon in Chicago for GOP Senate candidate Rich Williamson, drew an immediate response from Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee. Noting that the last two Republican Administrations “have presided over the biggest explosion of health care costs in the history of this country,” Clinton said: “They don’t have any credibility on the health care issue.”

Bush characterized the differences between his and Clinton’s plans as “the Grand Canyon of philosophy” and invited comparison.

“The other plan will dump 52 million Americans into a new government bureaucracy--and my plan will help 90 million Americans afford private insurance to take care of their health care needs,” Bush said.

“The other plan would slap at least a 7% payroll tax on middle-income Americans--and my plan would provide tax relief to Americans, to help them pay for their own health care,” the President added, alleging that Clinton’s plan would cost 700,000 jobs.

Bush also played to widespread public concern--as reflected in most polls on health care reform--that any significant changes would restrict individual choice of doctors and cause delays in receiving treatment, including life-saving organ transplants. But he failed to acknowledge that his own plan would restrict individual choice.

“The other plan will create lines at hospitals so long you’ll think they were selling Bears tickets inside,” Bush said--referring to Chicago’s popular football team.

“My plan attacks the root cause of rising costs: faulty insurance, too much paperwork, far too many frivolous lawsuits out there,” Bush told several hundred cheering supporters of Williamson, who is running an uphill campaign against Democrat Carol Moseley Braun. Braun, an underdog in the Democratic primary, upset longtime Sen. Alan J. Dixon and could be the first black woman to win a Senate seat.

“Understand what is at stake here,” Bush concluded. “If the governor of Arkansas is elected with a Democratic Congress--and a new Democratic senator from Illinois--within a year the government will run health care in this country.

“Our health care system will combine the efficiency of the House post office with the compassion of the KGB. I’m not going to let that happen.”

In a related development, U.S. News and World Report said Sunday that the Bush Administration will refuse to approve Oregon’s unique health-care rationing plan on the grounds that it violates the Americans With Disabilities Act.

The Administration is expected to deny approval outright until the plan is corrected or will give approval conditional on resolving the alleged violations, the magazine said.

Oregon’s program would greatly increase the number of people eligible for medical care at public expense. The state needs a waiver of federal Medicaid laws to allow the state to provide health coverage to 120,000 people who are living in poverty. But the system would restrict the types of medical services the poor could receive.

Wilensky, Bush’s aide, denied Sunday that a final decision on Oregon’s waiver has been made. Wilensky said the delay has been caused by an extensive but necessary legal review of the ramifications of the disability act vis-a-vis the Oregon waiver request.

That Bush intended to focus on health care Sunday became clear when White House reporters flying to Chicago were given a two-page “backgrounder” prepared by the Bush/Quayle ’92 campaign. One page contains highlights of the Bush proposal, the other a critique of Clinton’s plan.

The backgrounder said the President’s plan would bar insurers from excluding people from coverage who have “pre-existing conditions,” provide tax credits and deductions to help offset the cost of insurance, cut costs by requiring all providers to use the same forms and alter malpractice laws to deter doctors from practicing defensive medicine. (Pre-existing conditions are ailments and diseases, ranging from bad backs to cancer, that insurers typically refuse to cover when considering whether to sell someone a policy.)

The Bush paper also claimed that the White House plan would not raise taxes or cost jobs and would not lead to “a huge new government bureaucracy to regulate prices and ration health care.”

The campaign backgrounder further said Clinton’s support for the “play or pay” concept--which would require employers to either provide insurance or pay into a fund through which insurance would be distributed to uncovered workers--would “require at least $80 billion in new taxes” and “inevitably” lead to a vast new federal bureaucracy.

A major underpinning of Bush’s plan is so-called managed competition, under which consumers would be grouped and then represented by a sponsor, perhaps their employer, who would negotiate the best health package available.

But virtually all health care analysts agree that under managed competition, consumer choice would be limited--to only those physicians and hospitals that enter into such arrangements.

Neither the President nor his issues backgrounder explained the seeming contradiction between his advocacy of managed competition and his claim that his plan would preserve choice.

Bush also refused to comment on three newspapers’ calls that he withdraw from the race. The Orange County Register and two Connecticut papers, the Sunday Republican of Waterbury and the Herald of New Britain, all urged him to quit.