Health-Care Panel in O.C. Unimpressed by Clinton Plan

President Clinton’s impassioned appeal to overhaul the nation’s health-care system did little to impress a panel of health-care experts at the Richard Nixon Library on Wednesday night. Most of them said his proposal would raise costs and reduce the quality and availability of medical services.

“As soon as we get health care approved as a right it is going to cost more,” said Hubert C. Perry, former chairman of the board for Presbyterian Inter-Community Hospital in Whittier and a trustee for Not-For-Profit Hospitals in Washington. “You can’t put a cap on (costs), have more people in the health-care stream and do more things for more people unless you cut something out.”

Perry was one of five panelists representing various fields in the health-care industry who gave their immediate analysis after watching a broadcast of Clinton’s speech along with 200 others at a town meeting sponsored by the Nixon library.

While many health-care colleagues throughout Orange County praised Clinton’s plan Wednesday, most of the panelists said the private sector could do a better job of dealing with those problems through free market competition, rather than the government intervention Clinton is proposing.

Richard Lipeles, an executive vice president with PacifiCare Health Systems, which operates health maintenance organizations, was the only panelist who responded enthusiastically to Clinton’s proposal.

“Overall, it’s good news for Americans,” he said. “We have tremendous optimism about providing a more efficient delivery system that will improve the quality of health care and control costs.”

However, Lipeles joined his colleagues in criticizing Clinton’s call for price controls and the expansiveness of the proposal’s basic benefits plan.

Michael D. Stephens, president and chief executive officer of Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach, cautioned that Clinton’s proposal could collapse in uncontrolled spending if not phased in.

“I do not believe that you can concurrently increase benefits as he has described and at the same time fund those benefits by cost reduction,” Stephens said.

Dr. Terence Maloy, a Laguna Beach dermatologist and former president of the Orange County Medical Assn., said Clinton’s proposal for a trust fund that would pay for emergency care not covered by the national health plan, such as care for illegal immigrants, would be insufficient and shortsighted.

“Illegal immigrant care cannot just be limited to emergency care and be workable,” Maloy said.

Michael E. Berumen, senior vice president for marketing at PM Group Life Insurance Co. in Newport Beach, said the Clinton plan for regional “alliances” would cut the health-care choices people currently enjoy.

“Because of the complexity of the health-care environment . . . and because it represents about a seventh of our economy, I think you take a big risk in experimenting with it too much. This is not a place to test social engineering.”