Clinton Says Health Insurance System Is Unfair to Many Families, Firms : Reform: The President cites fee hikes for smaller companies and coverage denials over some pre-existing conditions.

President Clinton, seeking to forge support for health care reform, charged Saturday that the nation’s health insurance system “is rigged against ordinary families and small businesses.”

In his weekly radio address, Clinton, his voice still raspy from his hour-plus State of the Union speech Tuesday night, said health insurance companies hike fees for businesses that are too small and deny coverage to those with costly pre-existing conditions.

“Unless we change things, 58 million Americans may have no coverage at all for some time this year,” Clinton said. “And experts say three of every 10 small businesses may be forced to stop covering their employees in the years ahead because small-business costs are going up so much faster than big-business and government costs.”

Estimating that he and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton had received nearly 1 million letters on health care, Clinton also derided claims that there is no health care crisis.

“The only place where people say there’s really no health care crisis is right here in Washington, where so many enjoy secure health benefits at reasonable cost, paid for by the taxpayers,” he said.

Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) had earlier questioned whether there is a health care crisis, but he later said the health care system does have “serious problems” that need reform.

The President’s assault on the health insurance industry drew support from an important ally, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. He also had frustrated the White House by questioning the existence of a genuine health care crisis, although he later said he meant that while there is no health care crisis, there is a health insurance crisis.

“Our insurance system is klutzy and complex and inadequate and incomplete” Moynihan said on CNN’s “Evans and Novak” program, where he drew a distinction between the quality of health care and the shortcomings of health insurance.

Moynihan responded angrily when shown a television commercial put out by the Health Insurance Assn. of America that attacked “new mandatory government health alliances” that would require “tens of thousands of new bureaucrats” and create “another billion-dollar bureaucracy.”

“If you had a big profit-making enterprise which was making a lot of profits, you’d probably be able to pay for ads like that,” Moynihan said. “It doesn’t help. . . . They’ve got to watch that. . . . We’re trying to do something decent. We’re trying to do it without blaming anybody.”

Moynihan also contended that no one ever got elected on a platform of favoring insurance companies, “so maybe they can just ease off a bit. They ought to know better. If they don’t, they’ll find out.”

Moynihan, who earlier stressed the importance of reforming the nation’s welfare system more than health care, said Clinton had promised him a welfare reform bill that his committee can take up after Congress deals with health care.

Moynihan said he expects to have the welfare proposal by June.

Clinton, in his radio remarks, said he will ask Congress to “revolutionize” the welfare system because it discourages work and destroys families.

“For those who depend on welfare, we should provide the support, the job training and the child care needed for up to two years,” Clinton said. “But, after that, anyone who can work must work.”

In the Republican response to Clinton’s speech, Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire contended that the Administration’s health care proposal “demands that the American people become dependents, that we rely for our sustenance and our happiness on the self-congratulatory few who know better.”

Gregg said Republicans believe “that independence, not dependence, underlies the fundamental culture and strength of America.”

The health care debate spread Saturday to the opening of the National Governors’ Assn. winter meeting here, where Republican Gov. Carroll A. Campbell Jr. of South Carolina, the group’s chairman, and Democratic Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont, the vice chairman, split on Clinton’s pledge to veto any reform measure that does not include universal coverage.

The line that Clinton drew in the sand will be wiped out by “a rising tide of consensus on how to get somewhere,” Campbell said, contending that he had already detected flexibility on the requirement for universal coverage among other Administration officials.

Dean, on the other hand, said it is “critical” to have universal coverage. “I don’t see the sense of trying to control the costs unless everybody’s in the system,” he said.