Chamber Drops Its Support for Key Parts of Health Plan : Insurance: Largest business group no longer agrees to mandatory premium payments by employers. It also suspends backing coverage for all.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said Monday that it no longer will support a requirement in President Clinton’s health care reform proposal that all employers pay some portion of their workers’ insurance premiums.

The nation’s largest business group also withdrew, at least for now, its backing for universal coverage--the requirement that every American be guaranteed private insurance coverage. Clinton has declared universal coverage a non-negotiable issue and has vowed to veto any legislation that does not contain it.

“Companies . . . just have a natural opposition to mandates,” Chamber President Richard L. Lesher said of the requirement for employers to pay part of their employees’ insurance premiums.

The vote by the chamber’s 63-member board was not a surprise, given the strong opposition to the employer mandate from its membership. But it was another blow to the President’s effort to restructure the nation’s $1-trillion-a-year health care system.

The chamber’s action drew a tepid response from the White House, which sought to emphasize its common ground with a business community that now has largely rejected Clinton’s prescription for reform.

Earlier this month, the influential Business Roundtable, made up of the heads of more than 200 of the nation’s largest firms, rejected Clinton’s plan and instead endorsed as “a starting point” a far less ambitious proposal introduced by Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.). The National Assn. of Manufacturers later also spurned Clinton’s plan.

The Chamber of Commerce previously was on record in support of an employer mandate--as long as the employer share was no more than 50%. Clinton would require companies to pay at least 80% of workers’ premiums.

“Last year, we were in favor of ‘shared responsibility.’ Today, we are rejecting that position. The business community will not in our view support the employer mandate,” said chamber official Robert E. Patricelli. “A very, very substantial portion of our membership opposes the mandate.”

In a press conference Monday afternoon, he and Lesher noted that the organization supports many other elements in Clinton’s plan, including provisions that increase consumer choice of providers, band consumers together voluntarily to increase their purchasing power and prohibit insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.

“The chamber has once again supported many elements that are contained in the President’s health care reform proposal,” said Lorrie McHugh, a White House spokeswoman.

“The Administration continues to believe that workplace-based insurance is the best means to achieve health coverage for every American,” she added. “Nine out of 10 Americans already get private insurance at their work. The President’s plan will build on this existing system and provide discounts to small businesses.”

To further gauge opinion among its 220,000 members, the chamber is conducting an extensive survey, with results expected in about six weeks. But Lesher said it is already clear to the board that there is overwhelming opposition to the employer mandate.

“We are also suspending support for universal coverage,” he added. “If the survey should show that there is a majority support for it, we will reconsider that.”

As recently as Feb. 15, the chamber’s health and employee benefits committee voted to support the employer mandate, according to Patricelli, chairman of that panel.

“The board properly decided, in my view today, that in light of our knowledge of where our membership was, that we should not support employer mandates,” he said.

But Patricelli left open the possibility that the chamber may support a requirement that employers make available to employees--but not pay for--health insurance.

Lesher said that the chamber suspended its support for universal coverage “because it is very difficult, if not impossible, to get to the notion of universal coverage without some form of mandate.”

Times staff writers Karen Tumulty in Washington and Paul Richter in Chicago contributed to this story.