Clinton Challenged on Cost of Health Care to Employers : Reform: Pizza chain chief tells the President his calculations are off, that a mandate to provide insurance for all workers will cost jobs.

Call it the confrontation of the President and the pizza man.

President Clinton traveled here Thursday for another in his series of televised town hall meetings designed to drum up support for his health care program. But in the midst of a generally polite and respectful set of questions, up popped Herman Cain, the chief executive of the national Godfather’s Pizza chain, who took on Clinton over the most sensitive point in the health care debate--costs.

“For many, many businesses, like mine, the cost of your plan is simply a cost that will cause us to eliminate jobs,” Cain said. “If I’m forced to do this, what will I tell those people whose jobs I will be forced to eliminate?”

Cain is a prominent member of several business groups that have campaigned actively against Clinton’s plan and has appeared in several advertisements opposing it. And the issue he raised is one of considerable importance in the congressional debate over health care because of the political potency of the small-business lobby and of the restaurant industry, both of which strongly oppose mandatory health benefits, and because of the more widespread public worry that the cost of Clinton’s plan would lead some businesses to eliminate jobs.

Godfather’s has about 10,000 workers but they are spread out among more than 500 franchise restaurants nationwide. Only about one-third of the company’s employees receive insurance, Cain said. A requirement that the company insure all its workers--the central requirement in Clinton’s plan--would boost costs enough to wipe out the company’s entire annual profit, Cain insisted.

As the rest of the audience, spread among television studios in four Midwestern cities, watched, Cain and Clinton engaged in a complex argument over insurance costs--precisely the sort of debate over numbers that has made the Washington debate over the issue so complicated.

Clinton insisted that the way his plan is structured, any company’s cost for insuring its workers would be capped at 7.9% of payroll. Because payroll costs are only about one-third of Godfather’s total costs, Clinton said, the requirement would add at most a little over 2% to the company’s total expenses.

Even if Godfather’s and its competitors all had to raise prices 2%, Americans would still buy pizza, Clinton said, adding, “I’m a satisfied customer.”

Cain, however, insisted Clinton’s calculations were wrong. The plan would cause as much as a 16% increase in his costs, he claimed, leading a frustrated President to finally ask him to “send to me personally your calculations.”

“You can’t get there,” Clinton insisted.

White House officials said they could not specifically rebut Cain’s argument because they had not seen the company’s figures. But they do concede that restaurants, which generally do not provide insurance and which employ large numbers of low-income and part-time workers, make up the industry that likely would be hit hardest by a requirement that all companies provide insurance to workers.

The debate with Cain was the exception to a generally polite--almost demure--discussion.

That friendly tone was a sharp contrast to a town hall two days ago in which Clinton was hit with several harshly worded questions on issues such as the Whitewater affair. Unlike that session, this one was explicitly limited to questions regarding health care reform.

Earlier in the day, Clinton visited Topeka, Kan., for a health care forum with owners of small businesses whose Washington lobbyists have become the most powerful critics of his health plan.

The forum broke no new ground, but clearly illustrated one of the most important contradictions in public attitudes about reforming health care. Virtually all members of the audience raised their hands when the area’s congressman, Jim Slattery, asked how many believed that all people should have health insurance and should contribute to it. But only three raised their hands when Slattery asked how many thought that coverage should be mandated.

“If we don’t require it,” Slattery asked, “how can achieve the goal?” That is the main issue Congress is grappling with, he added.

Slattery’s presence was the chief, indeed almost the only, reason why Clinton traveled to Topeka, in the midst of one of the most Republican states in the country. The conservative Democrat holds a key vote on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is one of the two House panels that will consider the bulk of Clinton’s plan.

From Kansas, Clinton flew on to Minneapolis where he plans to host another town hall tonight.