Clinton’s Health Plan Push Meets ‘Show Me’ State

President Clinton came here Saturday to begin what aides described as a final push to build support for universal health care. The crowd that met him in front of the Harry S. Truman Courthouse made it clear just how far he still must go.

Leave aside the hundreds of well-organized opponents--some wearing Rush Limbaugh T-shirts and bearing anti-abortion placards--who lined the streets and surrounded the perimeter of the President’s rally with a distant roar of protest as he exhorted the crowd to “finish Harry Truman’s fight” for universal health care.

Clinton’s real problem is not them but people like Kim Woods and Judy Barlow, unionized auto workers from a nearby Ford plant in Claycomo, Mo., who, despite having stood in the sun for more than five hours awaiting Clinton’s arrival, said they remain uncertain about his plan.

“I have to wait and see; I want to see what he says,” Woods said. “I’ve got pretty good health coverage, but my kids (ages 17 to 30) don’t. It’s a question of how much am I going to have to give up to get my boys covered.”

Nothing better underlines the depth of the problem facing the President: At this late date, he must still persuade active members of a union, the United Auto Workers, that has campaigned for national health insurance since its late president, Walter Reuther, began to push the subject more than 50 years ago.

“Harry Truman would say: ‘The buck stops here.’ The buck stops in Congress and the buck stops with you,” Clinton told the crowd. But so far, many seem reluctant to take up that challenge.

Despite more than a year of work, Clinton’s aides concede--and polls confirm--that his Administration has yet to persuade the main potential beneficiaries of their plan--particularly lower-income workers and the elderly--that this time a government program will really help them.

His opponents, on the other hand, have no doubt about what Clinton has in mind and are firm in their dislike of it.

As the most recent Times Poll showed, lower-income Americans typically say they understand much less about the details of the opposing health care plans than do those who are better off. And those with higher incomes are far less likely to support a government-backed universal health care plan than are members of lower-income working families.

White House aides hope that as the seemingly endless debate gives way to final congressional votes, the public support they have been lacking will crystallize. “It’s like the (National Basketball Assn.),” said Clinton’s pollster, Stanley B. Greenberg. “A lot of people don’t pay attention until the playoffs. That’s where we are.”

If potential Clinton supporters now begin to tune in, and if they actually support the sort of plan Clinton and congressional Democrats want, the shift will come not a moment too soon. “It’s almost over,” said one White House official. “We have two weeks left.”

As the final phase of the debate begins to fall into place, Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) called a press conference in Washington to denounce the latest health plan put forward Friday by Clinton’s allies in the Democratic congressional leadership.

The plan represents “even more government” than Clinton’s original proposal, Dole said, pointing to its provision to create a new Medicare Part C, intended to cover millions of people without access to workplace-based insurance, such as part-time and seasonal workers and their families.

Meanwhile, a hitch has developed that threatens to further delay plans by Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) to introduce his own health care reform proposal early this week.

The problem involves technicalities of legislative drafting that could require time-consuming rewriting by congressional staff members, according to Sheila Burke, Dole’s chief of staff.

As currently drafted, Dole said, the legislative language “has no resemblance to the Finance Committee bill that people thought they were passing, and there may be some effort not to file that bill until it’s reconciled with what many people who voted for it thought it contained.”

Out on the road, however, Clinton, accompanied by his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton; Vice President Al Gore and his wife, Tipper; country music singer Willie Nelson and dozens of supporters who have been riding a bus from Oregon to Washington, D.C., eschewed such fine points. Their rally was designed to try to draw the distinctions between the President’s plan and the opposition in the simplest possible terms: fear against hope, us against them.

The charges that have been made against his plan, Clinton said, are the same as those made against President Truman when he tried to get Congress to pass national health insurance in 1945, 1947 and 1949. And they are the same as those leveled against President Lyndon B. Johnson when he pushed for Medicare in 1965.

To drive home the point, rally organizers brought out a Truman impersonator to deliver one of the late President’s speeches denouncing “reactionary Republicans” for their opposition to his health plan.

When it was his turn, Clinton exhorted the crowd with one of his favorite messages: the importance of being open to change.

“Think about your own life,” he said. “Every time you’ve been asked to change, you may have a mixture of hope and fear. And the real test every time is: Are your fears going to overtake you, and are you going to give in, or are you going to live by your hopes and your courage and charge forward?”

Judging by many in the crowd, however, that argument may be premature. Health care reform did have some ardent supporters here, but for many of them, Clinton’s plan is merely an achievable substitute for what they would really like--a Canadian-style, government-run health plan.

Instead of ardor, Clinton’s proposals--and those of congressional Democratic leaders, who have done their best to distance themselves from Clinton even as they support him--seem to draw a mix of emotions that run from cautious hope to confusion to strong opposition.

Consider the contrast between Mark Schuler, 39, and Melinda Clarke, 31, standing a few yards apart as they waited to get into the rally on Independence Square.

Schuler is the sort of person one might expect to oppose Clinton’s plan--a manager at Kansas City Power & Light, a Republican, a conservative. His remarks fit his demographic profile.

“I’m very much opposed,” he said. “I don’t think the government has the right to mandate how much business should spend on health care. I think this plan is being ramrodded through Congress. It’s a federal power grab.”

Clarke, by contrast, is the sort of person from whom Clinton might expect support. “I don’t like private health systems,” she said, explaining that her family has twice in the last year had to change doctors because her husband’s insurance changed. “I think it stinks,” she said of the current system. “I just don’t know where I’m going.”

But when asked what she thinks of Clinton’s plan, she replied: “I’d like to hear a lot more about it. I’m just not sold. There are just a lot of questions I have, and I think it’s moving awful quick.

“I like Clinton,” she added. “But I didn’t vote for him. Actually, I’ve never voted. I’m really here to see Willie Nelson.”

Times staff writer Edwin Chen in Washington contributed to this story.