Health Care Policy Team Convenes : Insurance: Clinton presides at meeting of advisers amid concerns deficit may hurt efforts to achieve reform goals.

President-elect Bill Clinton Monday convened his first formal meeting to craft a health care plan amid concerns that the bloated federal deficit may crimp efforts to reach the ambitious goal of reform that he has long espoused.

In an afternoon session, Clinton met with members of his health care policy team, led by senior health adviser Judith Feder. The session was a general briefing, aides said, and participants were expected to discuss only broad aspects of a plan.

But hanging over the gathering, sources said, were worries about the extent to which Clinton’s pledge to provide universal health care coverage would aggravate the worsening deficit. Providing some level of health insurance to the estimated 35 million uninsured Americans could add an estimated $12 billion to $27 billion a year to the nation’s annual health costs, which exceeded $800 billion in 1992--more than 14% of the value of all that the nation produces.

At the same time, the benefits of a better-insured and healthier populace--one that presumably would require fewer medical services--may not translate into dollar savings for three to five years, Clinton’s advisers have concluded.

For that reason, Clinton is coming under growing pressure from some advisers to achieve faster results by moving quickly to establish a national board that would set an annual budget for health care spending.

The two dozen people attending the two-hour meeting included Vice President-elect Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, deputy OMB director-designate Alice Rivlin, National Economic Council chairman-designate Robert E. Rubin and Clinton economic adviser Ira Magaziner.

At the daily press briefing in Little Rock, transition communications director George Stephanopoulos said there is no question the deficit will have an effect on government health reform efforts. He said the plan is to offer better access to health care insurance gradually as the reform program brings down costs under a timetable now being drawn up.

“We have to make sure that as we control costs we increase access,” Stephanopoulos said. “The exact timetable, how it will be done has not yet been finally decided.”

As the transition entered its final full week Monday, there were new signs of how the deficit, foreign affairs crises and other complications have slowed the incoming Administration’s efforts to “hit the ground running.”

Asked about long-awaited appointments to the top level of the White House staff, Stephanopoulos acknowledged delays. “That’s a good question. I think we’re very close to an announcement, probably within the next couple days.”

Even if the announcements come within the next several days, the Administration will fall short of its goal of naming 200 top officials--of a full complement of 3,000 federal appointees--by the inauguration.

The White House posts seemed set last week. But new concerns arose that the senior appointees would not be diverse enough to meet Clinton’s goal of a staff that “looks like America.” Among the positions at stake are deputy chief of staff, communications director, White House counsel and domestic policy adviser.

At a meeting with congressional leaders Nov. 19, Clinton said he wanted to have his economic plan prepared by the time he takes office. He said he would “do my best” to “close the loops in the details of our policy” before he is sworn in.

Now it appears that Clinton has abandoned that timetable.

At his confirmation hearing Monday, OMB director-designate Leon E. Panetta said the Clinton team would have its economic plan completed in February and that a full budget would not be ready until sometime in March.