Clinton Unlikely to Unveil Health Plan Before Mid-June : Legislation: By delaying release of the package, he hopes to avoid a traffic jam in Congress, which is considering his budget proposal, aides say.

President Clinton seems likely to delay the release of his health care reform package by about three weeks, hoping to avoid a legislative traffic jam caused by trying to push his health plan and his budget simultaneously, advisers said Thursday.

Clinton had been planning to release the health package in a speech to a joint session of Congress on May 25. Now, the speech is likely to be put off until mid-June, according to sources familiar with the White House debate on the subject.

Administration strategists hope that by mid-June the House will have passed the massive budget reconciliation bill that would enact key parts of Clinton’s budget for the next fiscal year, including his proposed tax increases. The bill should also have moved through the Senate Finance Committee by that point, which is where Republican leaders have been hoping to ambush many of Clinton’s tax ideas.

Delaying the health care plan until June would be something of a compromise between aides, including Budget Director Leon E. Panetta, who has advocated postponing the health plan perhaps until fall, and others, including First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, who fear that delaying the health plan would effectively kill any chance of enacting it by next spring.

“He’d still like to pass it this year, although that may not be realistic,” said one Clinton adviser. “If you delay longer than this, that would be impossible.”

The subject of when and how to unveil the health plan has been a matter of repeated discussion in the White House over the last few weeks. The debate intensified earlier this week when Panetta publicly suggested delaying the announcement until after Congress completes work on the budget.

Thursday evening, Hillary Clinton hosted a reception--in effect a farewell party--for the hundreds of people who worked for her health care reform task force. Since late January, when it was set up, the task force has prepared hundreds of memos summarizing scores of policy options and making recommendations about how to fix the system. Now it is up to the President and his top advisers, including his wife, to decide which of those recommendations to follow.

Earlier in the day, task force members were given what amounted to a mass debriefing at a standing-room-only meeting in the Old Executive Office Building. They were told by Administration lawyers, for instance, that they may not take their work documents with them.

“It’ll all end up someday in the Clinton presidential library,” said one task force member.

Many task force members will remain on call and be consulted in the next few weeks as the agenda takes its final shape, said Robert O. Boorstin, special assistant to the President for policy coordination. He also urged members to stay in touch with the White House and to help talk up the reform plan after it is introduced.

Hillary Clinton also met at the White House Thursday with Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), the House sponsor of a competing health care reform plan that now has 71 co-sponsors. It advocates a single-payer, government-financed system.

“They are struggling with a lot of the details of how to actually put a program together,” McDermott, a psychiatrist, said afterward.

In the meantime, two new polls released Thursday underlined some of the political problems facing any package that Clinton may propose--and some of the assets he takes into the coming battle.

One poll, conducted jointly by Republican pollster Ed Goeas and Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, showed that Clinton holds a massive 53-point advantage in credibility over congressional Republicans on the health care issue. Asked who inspired more confidence for dealing with the health care system, the 1,000 voters surveyed in the poll chose Clinton over the Republicans 72% to 19%. Even registered Republicans backed Clinton on the issue, giving him a 25-point advantage.

Those surveyed also had an overwhelmingly favorable impression of Clinton’s health care task force, with 71% saying that they approved of it and only 23% disapproving. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 points.

On the other hand, a separate survey conducted for a health insurance group found Americans willing to accept price controls on the health industry but opposed to any plan that might restrict their choice of doctors. The poll also showed voters willing to support a small, $250-per-year tax increase to cover the cost of insuring the poor. Most health care experts believe that the cost will be higher.