Dole Is Conciliatory on Health Reform : Insurance: GOP leader tells governors of need for bipartisanship. He stresses his opposition to employer mandate and a big new tax program.

Preaching bipartisanship, Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) told the nation’s governors Tuesday that Republicans are ready to work with President Clinton to enact health care reform, despite their opposition to his proposal to require employers to offer health insurance to all employees.

“There’s flexibility,” Dole said. “We’re prepared . . . to extend our hand of cooperation.”

The minority leader made his remarks at the closing session of the annual meeting of the National Governors’ Assn. and to reporters afterward.

Dole, interrupting a vacation in New Hampshire to appear here, also urged Clinton to seek speedy congressional approval of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Otherwise, the agreement “may fall victim to the 1994 election,” Dole said.

On health care, his generally conciliatory tone surprised some Democratic governors.

“I think it’s fair to say that an employer mandate is going be a pretty hard sell,” Dole said. “A lot of Republicans, a lot of Democrats have trouble with the employer mandate. But that’s just one piece of a big, big puzzle.

“But there’s much we can agree on,” he added, citing as examples the need to cut costs, expand coverage to all Americans and enact insurance market reforms.

“The one thing that could derail this would be a lot of big new taxes, big payroll taxes,” Dole said.

White House officials have said that Clinton’s health reform agenda, to be unveiled this fall, likely will propose only a tax on cigarettes and possibly alcohol. Dole said that he might support such sin taxes.

He said that the GOP’s “primary concern centers around the . . . prospect of the government imposing an employer mandate.”

The White House has said that Clinton intends to require large employers to pay at least 80% of every full-time worker’s medical insurance premium, with the workers picking up the rest. Such contributions, however, would be capped--at about 7% of total payroll for large employers, 3% for small businesses and 2% for most workers.

Dole said that such a mandate would “damage the economy”--a charge also made on Monday by John Motley, vice president of the National Federation of Independent Businesses. Motley’s comments drew a heated response immediately afterward from the President, who followed Motley as a speaker at the governors’ meeting here.

As a sign of the GOP’s willingness to approach health reform with flexibility, Dole noted that the draft of a letter ultimately sent to the President about two weeks ago, bearing the signatures of 41 Republican senators, initially stated that “under no circumstances” would they vote for Clinton’s plan if it contained an employer mandate. But that phrase was changed to “strongly disapprove,” Dole said.

Oklahoma’s Democratic Gov. David Walters said that Dole’s words were “welcome to all our ears.” Added Hawaii Gov. John Waihee, also a Democrat: “For Dole, that was really conciliatory. I was surprised.”

Dole echoed Clinton’s call on Monday for bipartisan enactment of health care reform.

“It’s got to be bipartisan or it’s not going to work,” Dole said.