Health Plan Takes Heat at GOP Meetings : Medicine: Lawmakers tell crowds that Clinton proposal will cost jobs, limit choices. Some blast government bureaucracy.

Republicans attacked President Clinton’s health care proposals at town hall meetings across the country Saturday, telling people that “Hillary’s plan” would cost jobs, limit consumer choice, balloon the federal budget deficit and create a massive new bureaucracy to oversee a system too complicated to work.

The series of meetings coordinated by Republican congressional leaders drew large crowds of people who clearly were dissatisfied with the current health care system--but who just as plainly were anxious and unsure about what the various proposals for reform would mean for them.

The nearly 30 meetings held in communities from coast to coast were billed by the GOP as an attempt to stimulate the national debate on health care before lawmakers return to Washington in January to confront the issue.

Most of the encounters appeared designed to give Republican lawmakers an opportunity to criticize Clinton’s proposed health care reforms as a cure whose side effects would be far worse than the current system.

GOP lawmakers argued that Clinton’s proposal to make employers pay 80% of the health insurance premiums for their employees amounted to a payroll tax that would cripple small businesses and cost hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Referring to First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton’s key role in formulating the proposals, many of the GOP lawmakers also derided the Democratic reforms as “Hillary’s plan” and said they would lead only to the creation of an enormous new bureaucracy that would stifle competition and innovation in the health care industry.

“Hillary’s plan gives us a new ambulance when all we need is a new headlight,” said Rep. Joel Hefley (R-Colo.), who echoed the Republican argument that the current health care system is in need of repair but is still working well enough to do without major and costly reforms.

A number of Republicans reported heavy turnouts at the meetings, but the predominant theme emerging from the questions they received was one of uncertainty over how the reforms being debated in Congress would affect the quality and affordability of health care.

Another attitude expressed at many of the encounters was a distrust of bureaucracy and a skepticism that anything good can be expected to come out of anything government does.

“Look at all the programs the government has done. . . . They’ve not done one thing right in 40 years. Now do you want the government to direct health care too?” asked retired Col. Richard Haney, 74, who was one of about 200 people at the meeting Hefley held in Colorado Springs.

That sentiment was shared by a number of the 300 people who packed a high school auditorium in Chantilly, Va., to hear Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.) speak out against the Clinton plan. While several business owners expressed concern that Clinton’s employer mandate would drive their small firms into bankruptcy, the loudest applause from the audience was reserved for a middle-aged, self-employed man who complained that the federal government “always creates two new problems” for every one it tries to fix.

“Governments don’t fix problems any more than foxes fix henhouses,” he said.

Most of the questions were basic, but laced with anger. One man said it was unfair that his insurance company paid only 80% of his medical bills, while a middle-aged woman who said that she had “survived three major operations” in the past few years wanted to know why “they don’t finance health care reform by taking it from the welfare system so we can stop paying people not to work.”

That theme was echoed at other meetings, where people expressed fears about government interference in their ability to choose which doctors they will see.

Times staff writer Doug Smith in Los Angeles and researchers Ann Rovin in Colorado Springs and Lianne Hart in Houston contributed to this story.