Clinton Appeals for Bipartisan Health Bill : Reform: He says he ‘desperately’ wants Republicans to help but that they have rebuffed him. Dole replies nation might not want any action.

The political rhetoric over health care reform took on an even harder edge Wednesday as President Clinton proclaimed that he “desperately” wants a bipartisan bill but that Republicans retreat each time he reaches out to them.

GOP leaders were unmoved by Clinton’s plaintive entreaty during a South Lawn rally commemorating the enactment of the Americans With Disabilities Act.

“If we didn’t pass it, my view is there might be a big sigh of relief around the country,” said Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) as he emerged from a GOP strategy session.

The exchange came as Democratic leaders in both houses raced to complete separate health care reform bills for floor debate early next month.

With the broad outlines of the House Democratic leadership bill already known, focus is riveted on the efforts of Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) to craft a compromise that stands some chance of passage--”a difficult task,” he conceded good-naturedly Wednesday.

In its current state, Mitchell’s bill would seek universal coverage without imposing an employer mandate unless voluntary measures failed to provide coverage to at least 95% of the population, perhaps by the year 2001. Even then, sources said, it would exempt some small businesses--the most vocal opponents of an employer mandate in any form.

Sources also said Wednesday that a competing provision being floated privately would impose an employer mandate only on a state-by-state basis. In essence, just states that had not reached a target for coverage--probably 95% of their populations--by a certain date would be subject to a requirement for an employer mandate.

The House bill, being assembled by Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), is a virtual clone of that produced by the Ways and Means Committee and could be ready by Friday.

Mitchell said Wednesday that his bill will be ready either by the end of this week or early next.

The Maine senator declined to reveal specifics of his emerging bill but said that it will offer the country a “coherent, rational program” to overhaul the nation’s health care system, which represents one-seventh of the U.S. economy.

With a scheduled monthlong recess to begin on Aug. 13, time is running out on Congress to debate and enact comprehensive reform, a fact that both Mitchell and Dole addressed Wednesday.

Once debate begins, Mitchell said, he intends to keep the Senate going six days a week and “stay in session until we finish--however long it takes.”

Dole predictably took a different tack. He demanded that Republicans be given a week off “without interruption” to study the Democratic proposals.

“What’s the rush on this bill that’s not even going to take effect for five years?” Dole demanded.

Mitchell, meanwhile, got some additional room to negotiate when Sen. John B. Breaux (D-La.) said that he and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) will not put forward their latest health reform proposal until they see Mitchell’s bill.

Breaux has been at the center of a group of moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats who could become the swing votes when the bill reaches the Senate floor. The group opposes any type of mandates.

Had Breaux and Lieberman produced their own plan, it could have distracted and divided senators at a critical moment while Mitchell is trying to forge a consensus.

At the White House ceremony attended by thousands of guests, including many in wheelchairs, the President was joined by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, Vice President Al Gore and his wife, Tipper Gore.

Intended as a celebration of the enactment of the disabilities law, the event instead became something of a pep rally for health care reform.

With a supportive, chanting crowd, the President made a spirited pitch for the central element of his reform agenda: workplace-based insurance.

“I have seen no one yet who has come up with a better idea than shared responsibility between employers and employees for private health insurance in our private health care system,” he said.

“I desperately want a bipartisan bill,” Clinton said.

“I have reached out to members of the other party . . . “ he continued. “But every time I have reached out, they have moved further away.”

Specifically, Clinton referred to a bill authored by Sen. John H. Chafee (R-R.I.) that sought to provide universal coverage--Clinton’s bottom-line goal--by requiring individuals to buy insurance. Dole initially was a co-sponsor, but he no longer supports the concept.

The Kansas Republican also has backed away from his earlier endorsements of Clinton’s characterization that a health care “crisis” existed.

Despite his criticisms of GOP tactics, the President concluded his remarks by urging bipartisanship.

“Let us discard politics,” he said. “And let our focus be simply this: What will work? I have no pride of authorship, nothing would please me more than if somebody else’s name, a hundred names, four hundred names, five hundred names in both houses of Congress would be on a health care bill.”

Many of the guests at the White House rally later lobbied for health reform on Capitol Hill and some were among the more than 40 persons arrested for attempting to stage a sit-in in Dole’s office.