Clinton to Press Congress on Drafting Health Bill : Reform: Presidential lobbying could provide breakthrough. Two Senate and three House panels remain bogged down over key points.

With all five congressional committees working on health care legislation now certain to miss their self-imposed Memorial Day deadline for producing bills, President Clinton will go to Capitol Hill this evening to prod them personally to finish their work.

Until Tuesday, it appeared that at least one of the panels--the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee--stood a chance of passing a bill to overhaul the nation’s health care system before Congress adjourns for the weeklong recess. However, Chairman Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) announced late in the day that it would be “unwise” to rush to meet that deadline.

He blamed at least part of the delay on “unforeseen events”--an apparent reference to the death and funeral of his sister-in-law, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

“But there is also a larger sense that in this situation, haste right now would make waste,” Kennedy said. “The more time we spend, the more progress we are making. It would be foolish to jeopardize further cooperation by forcing too many decisions prematurely.”

Indeed, Kennedy has been more successful than expected in winning GOP votes for various aspects of his bill. All but two Republicans joined Democrats Tuesday in beating back efforts to weaken his proposals for expansion of coverage for long-term care.

Yet despite Kennedy’s optimistic stance, the fact remains that, in varying degrees, all five committees--two in the Senate and three in the House--have bogged down over the most fundamental choices.

The toughest issue involves finding a way to reach the President’s most basic goal of assuring that every American and legal resident has health coverage. Clinton’s proposal to require all employers to provide it has proved to be the most controversial element of his bill, with opponents contending that the additional cost would cause the smallest and weakest firms to fire workers or shut down altogether.

Clinton and his allies thought they had made a breakthrough last week, when Sen. John B. Breaux (D-La.), previously one of the most influential opponents of the so-called “employer mandate,” had said he would support a modified version that exempted the smallest firms. However, Breaux said Tuesday that he is not finding much support for that approach, particularly from Republicans.

Now, Breaux said, he is testing sentiment for a proposal under which employer mandates would be put into force only if companies did not expand coverage on their own under a reformed health care system.

Meanwhile, in what appears to be the most dramatic effort to date to bridge party lines on the issue, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.), the committee’s ranking Republican, will work together in drafting the initial version of a health care bill to be presented to their committee after the Memorial Day break, Packwood said.

Bipartisanship is more of a necessity on the Finance Committee than anywhere else in Congress. Democrats command an 11-9 majority there and it is an even more fragile party front, given the fact that the Democrats on the committee include several conservatives such as Breaux.

There seems to be a growing sense in Congress that some sort of breakthrough must happen--and happen soon--to preserve any chance of sweeping legislation this year. Otherwise, lawmakers might pass only a set of marginal changes in the current system.

That is why some were viewing Clinton’s visit with particular interest, despite efforts by both the White House and Democratic leaders to downplay its significance.

Some suggested that he might use the trip to Capitol Hill as an opportunity to put forward new proposals that might elicit support from Republicans and more conservative Democrats.

Others, however, said that would be precisely the wrong tactic. Instead, they said, Clinton should stand firm behind his bill.