BURBANK : Meeting Planned on Health-Care Reform

A town hall meeting on health-care reform with an array of state, local and federal officials will be held Tuesday by the Burbank Chamber of Commerce at Woodbury University.

About 200 business people from San Diego to San Francisco are expected to attend the conference, as well as Rep. Carlos Moorhead (R-Glendale) and representatives of U. S. Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein.

The conference, being held from 7:15 to 9 p.m., was set up by the Burbank chamber’s health-care task force after months of sifting through health-care legislation, studying the health-care system and, finally, coming up with a position on the issue.

“We just decided this would be the last time they would be home before they go back and actually have to make a decision about health-care reform,” said Cheryl Williams-Khoury, head of the chamber’s 41-member task force created in October.

The group, which is made up of health-care professionals and representatives of both large and small businesses, came up with a position that supports some aspects of President Clinton’s health-care reform proposal. But the chamber also wants to protect businesses from the impact of providing health insurance, Williams-Khoury said.

“In terms of the existing system, we would like to see access to health care become easier,” she said.

But she said the task force also was concerned about a small employer having to bear the brunt of the expenses for a cancer patient, for example.

“There has to be a quality of health-care delivery and there has to be answers to some very difficult questions,” Williams-Khoury said. “For example, no one bill has really come up with a fool-proof funding mechanism.”

She added that other issues such as crime and the economy have to be addressed when trying to find an answer to the health-care problem.