Divided Senate Panel Wrestles With Health Care Bill : Congress: Approval by Finance Committee will send the debate to its next phase. The final vote is expected today.

A bitterly divided Senate Finance Committee struggled on Friday night to pass a compromise health care reform plan, one that fails to meet President Clinton’s demand for guaranteed coverage but nevertheless would shift the hot debate into a new phase as Congress breaks for its July 4 recess.

The committee’s progress was slowed by a series of Republican attempts to restrict abortion coverage in the bill, and it adjourned late Friday night without a final vote. The panel was scheduled to resume work this morning.

The emotional debate over abortion is sure to be revisited as the health care issue moves through both houses of Congress later this summer. In the words of Sen. John C. Danforth (R-Mo.), author of several of the anti-abortion amendments: “the whole enterprise (of health care reform) could founder on this subject.”

Considered a bellwether panel for the full Senate, the Committee rejected by a 11-9 vote a proposal by Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) to bar abortion coverage in health plans except in the case of a life-threatening condition or if the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.

But the committee did adopt, 12 to 8, a Danforth amendment that says states would not be required to open abortion clinics in regions that have no doctors who perform abortions.

By the same margin, the panel adopted a second Danforth amendment providing a “conscience clause” allowing employers to offer health plans without abortion coverage. In such cases, individual workers wishing to have abortion coverage would have to buy a supplemental policy, Danforth said.

On a separate issue, the committee voted to impose a limit of $250,000 as the most that any victim of medical malpractice may receive for non-economic damages.

The committee, which earlier in the week had rejected any requirement that employers pay 80% of workers’ insurance costs, also killed--on a 13-7 vote--a 1% payroll tax on employers with 500 or more workers, which would have been used to subsidize coverage for low-income workers.

It also voted, 15 to 5, to kill a tax on handgun ammunition that would have helped pay for health care. Chairman Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) had proposed the tax.

The committee is expected to finish its work today, moving the focus of health care reform to the full House and Senate when Congress returns in mid-July. Three congressional panels have already approved varying versions of health care reform, and the next step is for House and Senate leaders to meld differing bills together before the issue is debated on the floors of the two chambers.

The White House and its Senate allies will seek to resurrect the key features of the President’s plan that have been stripped by the Finance Committee, including the so-called employer mandate. Most lawmakers say they believe that universal coverage cannot be achieved if employers and/or individuals are not required to pay for insurance.

“It doesn’t matter (what’s in the bill),” said one top Administration official. “We’ll do it on the floor.” The Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee earlier passed a bill that contains many of Clinton’s proposals.

The President, in a letter to House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.), hailed “a remarkable week . . . on health care” and noted that, when Congress returns, “we will have the opportunity to give the American people what they need and want, and to give the American economy what it needs--guaranteed private insurance for every American.”

The anticipated vote of approval by the Finance Committee will conclude the critical first phase of legislative action on health care reform.

Although the Finance Committee will be the last committee to act on health care legislation, its endorsement is thought to be particularly influential because its membership is more representative of the various factions that must be brought together before any such measure can become law.

To the chagrin of some senators, however, the price of passing a bill before the July 4 recess was a breakdown of bipartisanship.

Republicans said the final measure will be almost entirely the work of Democrats and is being “railroaded” to a final vote with little consideration for GOP amendments.

“It’s a sorry day for this committee,” said Sen. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.).

Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) also complained about what he said was more than $200 billion in taxes over 10 years in the committee’s bill, and he decried the rush to report out a bill before the July 4 deadline set by Democratic congressional leaders.

“That’s not the way this committee does business,” said Dole, who chaired the committee in the 1980s when the Senate was controlled by Republicans. “We spent more time on the B-2 bomber than on this bill.”

But Sen. John B. Breaux (D-La.) said committee members have sat through “countless meetings” and 31 formal sessions. “We’ve talked enough about health care to make us all sick,” he said. “We know the issues. We know enough to make the best decisions that are humanly possible.”

Earlier this week, a strong majority on the panel balked at imposing an employer mandate--even as a fallback--if other measures could not achieve virtually universal coverage. All nine Republicans and five Democrats joined to strike that provision--proposed by Moynihan--from a draft bill on a 14-6 vote.

Instead, the panel voted, 12 to 8, for an approach advanced by a group of moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats that would set up a government commission to make recommendations for expanding coverage if 95% of all Americans did not have health insurance by the year 2002.

The bill includes provisions aimed at making it difficult, but not impossible, for Congress to avoid voting on those recommendations or an alternative that it would select.

But whether this provision can be resurrected on the Senate floor is unclear.

The Finance Committee also voted for a provision, bitterly fought by organized labor, that would impose stiff taxes on health plans that are more costly than the average for their localities. The proposal, by Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.) would impose a 25% tax on high-cost plans, paid by the plans themselves.

Also on Friday, former independent presidential candidate Ross Perot confirmed reports that he intends to buy national television time for a program on health care to be produced by the Republican National Committee. He said that Americans “need more facts and less propaganda.”

GOP National Chairman Haley Barbour said Perot and his supporters “hold similar views to those of the Republican Party on health care reform.”

He said the GOP program would try to “advance the debate in a positive way.” Dr. Bernadine Healy, former director of the National Institutes of Health and a recent unsuccessful Senate candidate in Ohio, will host the program.

The unusual collaboration stems from Perot’s and the GOP’s dissatisfaction with Clinton’s health care proposals. Both Perot and the Republican National Committee contend that Americans are not getting factual information.

“The Republican Party wants an opportunity to explain health care to the American people. I have agreed to pay for this television time so the American people can have more balanced information,” Perot said in a statement. “The program will provide an objective analysis of the health care system in this country and how to improve it.”