VICA Members Assail Health Care Plan’s Key Provisions : Briefings: Group opposes purchasing cooperatives and mandates on employers to provide insurance.

Concluding their annual visit here, members of the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn. expressed intense opposition Wednesday to major provisions of the Clinton Administration’s health care reform plan at a meeting with one of the proposal’s architects.

Two VICA members--one a physician, the other an insurance representative--voiced their objections to Walter Zelman, a senior Clinton aide on health care and former California deputy insurance commissioner, who touted the Administration’s controversial initiative.

Reaction became so vehement that Zelman at one point pleaded: “Let’s try to keep the dialogue civil.”

VICA, which has 350 member companies representing about 150,000 employees throughout the San Fernando Valley area, has endorsed incremental health insurance reforms rather than the sweeping overhaul proposed by the President.

Dr. Keith Richman, chairman of VICA’s health care task force, said the group opposes those parts of Clinton’s plan that call for the formation of mandatory alliances, or purchasing cooperatives, and mandates on employers to provide health insurance for workers.

Specifically, the group supports steps to guarantee that those who change jobs or have pre-existing conditions can still obtain insurance. It backs the creation of strictly voluntary purchasing cooperatives and tort reforms to limit lawyers’ contingency fees. And it would provide subsidies to low-income people who are unable to afford insurance coverage.

Richman urged Zelman to “do something sensible and reasonable.”

Zelman responded that VICA’s proposal will “not solve the large problem of the people who are uninsured. We also think the problem is cost. We don’t see any great capacity in this system to generate savings.”

Hank Frazee, a Woodland Hills representative for Connecticut Mutual Life, later said he was frustrated with the session. “I felt it was a lecture selling the plan rather than an exchange of ideas.”

The meeting with Zelman in the ornate Indian Treat Room of the old Executive Office Building next to the White House was the culmination of three whirlwind days of briefings with Administration officials, lawmakers and lobbyists for the 38-member VICA delegation.

The group hoped its visit would have a payoff next week. Working through John Emerson, an assistant to the President and former Los Angeles chief deputy city attorney, they discussed the prospect that First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton will present a $9.1-million loan from the Small Business Administration to a Chatsworth company when she visits Los Angeles next week.

Devon Industries Inc., which makes disposable surgical supplies, was badly damaged in the Jan. 17 earthquake. The loan, the largest for quake recovery, was approved this week.