Clinton Defends Preschool Vaccination Program

Vowing that “there is no task of greater importance for a national government than to protect this nation’s young children,” President Clinton on Thursday came to the defense of his Administration’s controversial new preschool vaccination program.

“This government will carry out the challenge to build a coherent, properly functioning system for immunizing our children,” Clinton said in a letter to Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.). “We will do it on schedule.”

The Administration released Clinton’s letter as the $500-million program’s leading critic, Sen. Dale Bumpers (D-Ark.), presided at a hearing intended to dramatize a report by federal auditors raising numerous questions about the plan.

Under the Vaccines for Children program, the federal government will buy inoculations and distribute them through private physicians at no charge to youngsters who are on Medicaid, are uninsured or are Native Americans. Children whose insurance does not cover vaccines will be eligible for free shots at federally approved community health centers and rural clinics.

Bumpers said that the new government-run distribution system “is indescribably complicated and will create significant burdens for public and private providers as well as the states.” He said that it will not “help us immunize one more child.”

The Appropriations Committee approved Bumpers’ proposal Wednesday to delay the program’s scheduled Oct. 1 implementation until the Administration satisfies congressional concerns about safe distribution and costs. A fight over the measure is expected on the Senate floor.

A report by the General Accounting Office, a congressional watchdog agency, found that the vaccine program is behind schedule and might be unable to assure the integrity of the sensitive biological materials, which must be shipped at precise temperatures or frozen to retain effectiveness. About one-third of the nation’s vaccines will be distributed through a New Jersey facility run by the General Services Administration.

Clinton, who made boosting childhood immunization rates an early goal of his Administration, said he was assured by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which are overseeing the new program, that the initiative can kick off on schedule.

“I accept this assurance, and I expect no less than full performance on that agreement by everyone involved,” the President said.

At Thursday’s hearing before the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on labor, health and human services and education, GSA Administrator Roger W. Johnson said that the agency already “operates a distribution network that receives, stores and ships consumable supplies to over 165,000 customers worldwide.”