Medical Status Quo ‘Will Kill Us,’ First Lady Says : Health: During fact-gathering tour of Boston, Mrs. Clinton takes swipes at insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

Hillary Rodham Clinton charged Monday that America’s medical system will “kill us literally--financially, spiritually, morally (and) socially” unless it is reformed, but she also sought to lower public expectations that there will be any quick fixes.

After a 90-minute meeting with about 20 community health care providers and activists here, the First Lady warned that “there is no way” that everyone will be happy with the overhaul agenda she is shaping, which is scheduled to be presented to Congress in May.

In previous public appearances, she has said special interest groups are likely to vigorously resist any significant reforms. On Monday, she again took separate swipes at the pharmaceutical and health insurance industries during a tour of the commercial district of Hyde Park, a South Boston working-class community.

At Mario’s Restaurant, where a neighborhood resident told her that he cannot obtain health care coverage because of his diabetes, Mrs. Clinton seemed angered and then lambasted the insurance industry for seeking only “small pools with very few people with no pre-existing conditions and being able to move the rates up or down at will.”

She fumed: “It’s like we should all drop dead without ever going into the hospital. . . . This cannot go on.”

At the Home Pharmacy, when owner David Morgan talked about the “skyrocketing” cost of prescription drugs, Mrs. Clinton wondered out loud why name-brand drugs cost so much more than generic brands, saying: “Don’t you think we ought to find out?”

Mrs. Clinton, who chairs the White House Task Force on National Health Care Reform, also vowed to “come up with a plan that will contain costs,” noting that, unless controlled, health care spending could account for 20% of the Gross Domestic Product within 10 years, up from the current 14%.

“We have to make America competitive again,” she said. “We don’t have a choice.”

Having promised during the election to control health care costs and provide universal insurance coverage, the Administration is now increasingly hamstrung by its own projections that the budget deficit is worsening at a time when expanding coverage could cost $90 billion a year or more.

Mrs. Clinton’s task force is also studying a recommendation that the government subsidize long-term care and prescription drugs for the elderly, measures that will likely garner crucial support for overall change from powerful senior citizens groups but would add tens of billions of dollars to the cost of national health reform.

As a result, a wide array of new taxes is also under consideration, including on alcohol and tobacco, as well as specific insurance reforms, such as barring insurers from refusing to cover those with costly “pre-existing” medical conditions and imposing limits on how much insurers can charge for premiums.

The task force, which includes six Cabinet members and senior White House staffers, also is said to be considering a one-year wage-and-price freeze on the health care industry while implementing a nationwide system of insurance coverage known as managed competition.

Managed competition refers to the grouping of consumers into large purchasing pools staffed by professionals with the expertise to shop among doctors, hospitals and other providers for the best quality and price. But Clinton’s own health policy analysts have concluded that it could take five years or more before any tangible savings become evident under managed competition.

During her meeting with the score of community health providers, held at the Bunker Hill Community College in Charlestown, Mrs. Clinton listened virtually without comment, taking copious notes and frequently nodding in agreement with the speakers.

When a Taunton, Mass., pediatrician, Dr. Goverdhan Al Ohri, complained bitterly and at length about the morass of insurance paperwork required of doctors, Mrs. Clinton was instantly sympathetic, saying as she has previously, that “we have to have standardized forms. We’re going to have to do that.”

At the end of the 90-minute meeting, the First Lady issued her cautionary note against excessive expectations and then asked the meeting participants to join her campaign.

“I would urge you to help us not only by giving us your ideas but by talking to your friends, your neighbors or patients and others about why we need this change.”