Moorhead, Waxman Do Partisan Duty on Health Bill : Politics: As legislation moves through Energy and Commerce, Valley- area congressmen’s maneuvering shifts into high gear.

For all the talk of bipartisanship, the nitty-gritty work of moving a health-care reform bill through the pivotal Energy and Commerce Committee has polarized Democratic and Republican members.

San Fernando Valley-area Reps. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the panel’s health and environment subcommittee, and Carlos J. Moorhead (R-Glendale), the panel’s senior Republican, are smack in the middle of the behind-the-scenes maneuvering as the process shifts into high gear this month.

Waxman has joined forces with Energy and Commerce Chairman John D. Dingell (D-Mich.) in trying to craft a politically viable alternative to President Clinton’s controversial proposal. Waxman and Dingell are scrambling to round up more conservative Democratic members who are concerned about an overly bureaucratic approach and the burdens on small business.

Moorhead, meanwhile, is part of a GOP effort to hold the line against what the conservative lawmaker calls “a totally socialized health bill.” Dingell recently approached Moorhead to see if there were circumstances under which he could win Republican cooperation.

“He wanted to know if we would work together on the Clinton plan,” Moorhead said in an interview. “Of course, I told him that unless they were willing to make serious changes, it would be very difficult.”

Energy and Commerce is one of three key House committees devising alternatives to the Clinton plan that would retain the President’s bottom-line goal of guaranteeing health coverage for all Americans. The others are the Ways and Means Committee and the Education and Labor Committee.

Energy and Commerce is considered the most conservative of the three panels and perhaps the most representative of the entire House. If Dingell and Waxman can steer a bill to the floor, the committee’s makeup could give their measure enhanced clout when the Democratic leadership and health-care powerbrokers eventually hammer out an amalgam of the various proposals.

At this point, Dingell has circulated the outlines of a scaled-back plan that provides additional relief for small businesses and would discard the Administration’s requirement that most Americans join a government-organized purchasing cooperative or alliance.

It meets Clinton’s goal of universal coverage by requiring workers in smaller firms to buy their own health coverage if their employers do not. Government subsidies would be available to low-income people who could not afford their own insurance.

“The changes that we’re proposing are geared to assuaging some of the concerns of members who are uneasy about the (Clinton) proposal,” Waxman said last week. “The biggest concern I’ve heard is that people are afraid we’re going to get too bureaucratic with the alliances. We’re meeting that problem head on.”

Dingell vows to bring his bill to the committee when he has enough votes to pass it. In the interim, Waxman, who will manage the bill in the full committee, is huddling with recalcitrant Democrats in Dingell’s office to mollify their concerns.

He and Dingell expect that they will have to pass the measure with most of the committee’s 27 Democrats because the 17 Republicans are uniformly opposed.

“The Republicans on the committee have pretty much decided not to work with us, not to try to fashion a bipartisan bill that would provide universal health care coverage,” Waxman said. “And we have some Democrats who are very, very conservative. We’re not looking at a large margin to get our majority.”

Nevertheless, he remained upbeat about the measure’s prospects.

“I’m optimistic that we’re going to pass legislation this year,” the nine-term lawmaker said. “The President has staked a great deal on health care reform. He’s been a fervent spokesman for the cause and I think most Americans want us to reform the system so that everyone is given health care security.”

Moorhead agreed that the public wants to see some changes in health care, including steps to prevent insurance companies from denying coverage to those who have pre-existing conditions or those who change jobs. He is a co-sponsor of a more gradualist Republican House plan that would require employers to offer--but not necessarily pay for--policies for their workers and allow employers to join health purchasing cooperatives to get lower rates from insurers.

The plan calls for a standard acute-care benefit package without the prescription drug, dental, mental health and in-home care coverages that more sweeping Democratic-sponsored proposals are seeking. It would also allow families to contribute up to $5,000 a year into a tax-deductible “Medisave” account for health care.

Moorhead said that Dingell’s proposal is too close to Clinton’s to win his backing.

“It’s not the Republicans who haven’t been willing to work on something,” insisted Moorhead, who had struck a more conciliatory posture earlier in the process. “We’re not going to support something that gives our people a lower-quality health care program and mandates to them what they have to do and where they have to go and how to get there. I don’t want to see people told they aren’t going to have choice in their providers.”

In addition, he said, “The biggest problem with most of these health care bills is that they’re not properly financed. They say they’re going to do a lot of things but they don’t have the money in them to do it and that’s going to bring about rationing of health care.”

Democrats, in turn, have dismissed the Republican bill sponsored by House Minority Leader Robert Michel (R-Ill.) because they say it doesn’t assure universal coverage or control costs.

Moorhead appears to be emboldened in his attacks on Clinton’s plan by a barrage of criticism leveled by the insurance industry and some health care providers in recent months. During a recent visit to his district, he said he did not hear any support for the Democratic President’s plan. “They all had the same opinion,” the 11-term legislator said.

Waxman acknowledged that public support has eroded. After Clinton’s election, he warned that if health care reform wasn’t passed quickly, special interests would pick it apart.

“My sense is that the public wants reform but (people) get nervous about the particular details because they’ve been hearing the propaganda on television paid for by the insurance industry, although many people don’t realize it’s the insurance companies’ pitch,” Waxman said. “Or they get concerned because health care is so important and they can’t follow the details of a proposal that is pretty complicated. And, of course, the proposal is changing.”

Not surprisingly, the two Valley-area congressmen differed on whether the Whitewater matter and related disclosures have impaired the prognosis for the President and Hillary Rodham Clinton to deliver health care reform before Congress adjourns this fall to face the voters.

“The shredding process, the destruction of evidence and all these new revelations--big chunks of taxes they avoided paying in the past--can’t do them any good,” said Moorhead, who was one of President Richard M. Nixon’s staunchest defenders during the Watergate impeachment proceedings. “I don’t think that’s giving the American people a lot of confidence in them.”

Waxman put a contrasting, if idiosyncratic, slant on the same developments.

“I don’t think it’s been a detriment,” the liberal Democrat said. “Ironically enough, it may even help us because members of Congress, as they see this Whitewater feeding frenzy by the media, get worried that we had better produce some worthwhile legislation or the public cynicism about government will be even greater, which is hard to believe.

“A scandal and gridlock is not going to be a good formula for electoral success in November for anybody who is in office.”