Hillary Clinton to Lead Health Panel : Medicine: President names wife to head top-priority reform task force. Its focus will include extending coverage to uninsured and providing for long-term care.

President Clinton announced Monday that First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton will lead his drive to reform the nation’s health care system, working on an ambitious agenda to slow medical spending, extend coverage to the uninsured and, officials said, for the first time provide coverage for long-term care.

“This is going to be an unprecedented effort,” Clinton said as he announced creation of the presidential Task Force on Health Reform. “There is an overwhelming knowledge that we have to move and move now.

“We’ve talked about it long enough,” Clinton said. “The time has come to act. And I have chosen the course that I think is most likely to lead to action that will improve the lives of millions of Americans.”

In naming his wife to chair the panel--the first time any First Lady has taken on such a major role--the President has sent an unmistakable signal that health care reform is now his No. 1 domestic priority. While governor of Arkansas, Clinton also appointed his wife, an attorney, to lead a successful drive that overhauled that state’s education system.

“I think that in the coming months the American people will learn, as the people of our state did, that we have a First Lady of many talents, but who most of all can bring people together around complex and difficult issues to hammer out consensus and get things done,” Clinton said.

“Of all the people I’ve ever worked with in my life, she’s better at organizing and leading people from a complex beginning to a certain end than anybody I’ve ever worked with in my life. And that’s what I want done here,” he said.

Clinton’s desire to include coverage for long-term care in his package--an element disclosed by a senior Administration official--brings a striking new element to the equation that could alter the dynamics of the emerging debate and greatly increase the cost of the reforms.

During the campaign, Clinton said virtually nothing about how to deal with the daunting medical expense of caring for millions of Americans in expensive nursing facilities or at home.

But a comprehensive long-term care program--depending on benefits and eligibility--could cost $10 billion to $30 billion a year in addition to the cost of providing basic health insurance to the 35 million Americans who have no coverage.

Clinton was told in recent days by his health policy advisers that providing that basic coverage could cost as much as $70 billion to $90 billion a year--estimates that he found highly disturbing, sources said. It was then that he turned to the First Lady.

Without being specific, Clinton said that changing the current system will require “tough choices” likely to generate strong opposition from “powerful lobbies and special interests” and “may make some people angry.”

But he said he is undaunted. “We are determined to come up with the best possible solution,” he said.

Shortly after Clinton met with his new health policy team, senior Administration officials put out word that the White House is “a lot more flexible” than is generally assumed--and is open to negotiations with Congress and various groups while the plan is taking shape. Clinton has a self-imposed 100-day deadline for submitting a plan to Congress.

“Don’t assume--just because we’ve got a plan out there--that we’re not prepared to talk,” a Cabinet officer and member of the newly created task force said in an interview after meeting with the President on Monday afternoon at the White House.

Clinton himself invited the public to write him at the White House with suggestions--and even gave out his new ZIP code: 20510.

“There is no such thing as a perfect solution,” Clinton said. “So, whatever course we take, we will preserve what is best about American health care, of consumer choice and the quality of care.”

Despite the potentially high costs of his reforms, during Monday’s health policy meeting Clinton reiterated his strong commitment to slow overall health spending and at the same time to extend coverage to Americans who are uninsured, sources said.

A Cabinet officer insisted that it is premature to specify where such additional funds would come from. “But we’re not going to back down,” the official said.

Clinton’s desire to propose long-term care--while threatening to increase overall health care spending--could win important support from influential seniors organizations, such as the American Assn. of Retired Persons and the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.

But it also will elicit more criticism. As one health policy expert who advised the Clinton transition team said Monday: “Sure, it’s do-able. All you need is revenues.”

During Clinton’s 1983 drive to overhaul education in Arkansas, Hillary Clinton conducted hearings in each of the state’s 75 counties. And one Administration source said Monday that the White House may want to stage a nationally televised “town meeting” similar to the two-day economic summit in Little Rock that Clinton hosted shortly after winning the election.

Clinton said that his wife will “work with” his domestic policy adviser, Carol Rasco; his senior adviser for policy development, Ira Magaziner, and the head of the transition health policy team, Judith Feder.

Interest groups with strongly different approaches to health care reform were unanimous in praising Hillary Clinton’s appointment as evidence that the issue has top priority at the White House.

“We’re very encouraged that he put her in charge--it corroborates the fact that he is serious about it,” said Karen Ignagni, benefits policy director for the AFL-CIO. “She will be solidly in charge of moving ahead with this issue and we look forward to working with her.”

Michael Bromberg, executive director of the Federation of American Health Systems, which represents the for-profit hospital industry, added: “This is a unique time in history, with leadership throughout the health industry ready to be cooperative to get something passed.”

Other members of the presidential task force include Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen, Defense Secretary Les Aspin, Veterans Affairs Secretary Jesse Brown, Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown, Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich, Office of Management and Budget Director Leon E. Panetta and senior White House staff members.

“It’s time to make sense of America’s health care system,” Clinton said. “It’s time to bring costs under control and to make our families and our businesses secure. It’s time to make good on the American promise that too many people have talked about for too long while we have continued to spend more than 30% more of our income on health care than any other nation in the world, get less for it, and see 100,000 (people) a month losing their health insurance.”

Clinton admitted that--precisely because it is “very, very ambitious”--his reform agenda “will no doubt be criticized.” But he expressed a strong determination to press on.

Taking a longer view, Clinton added: “In my judgment, if we do this right over the next eight years, you’re going to see a huge savings in tax dollars and even bigger savings, more than twice the savings, in private dollars that will free up hundreds of billions of dollars literally between now and the end of the decade to reinvest in economic growth and opportunity.”

Times staff writer Robert A. Rosenblatt contributed to this story.