How Congress Should Operate on Health Care System : We should only fix what is wrong with health care, not restructure the entire system, as the Administration is attempting to do.

We should fix what’s wrong with health care and leave the rest alone. President Clinton deserves credit for raising the need to examine problems in health care. However, we do not need and should not want a government-imposed, government-run system. Instead, we need to focus on the specific problem areas of most concern to most people:

* Catastrophic coverage--Most Americans are rightly afraid that a sudden illness or injury will bankrupt them or cost them their home. To avoid this, we should standardize catastrophic coverages in private health insurance.

* Portability of benefits--People should not have to fear losing their coverage if they lose their job. We should expand the present labor laws to provide for coverage.

* Deductibility of health care premiums--Small business and individuals should have the same right as large corporations to deduct health care premiums from taxes.

* Pre-existing conditions--There should be some restrictions on insurance companies’ ability to exclude pre-existing conditions from coverage. However, we should not subsidize unhealthy health habits or throw suburban residents in with the inner city.

* Legal reform--Conspicuously absent from the Administration’s proposals is any suggestion of reform of the legal system. Coincidentally, trial lawyers were the single largest donors to Bill Clinton’s campaign--and to Anthony Beilenson’s. As state planning director, I personally wrote comprehensive proposals for legal reform, and I will do the same in the Congress.

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The Hippocratic Oath states, “First, do no harm.” Unfortunately, much of what has been proposed would only make our health care system worse. It is an unwarranted leap of logic to suggest that these specific problems or others justify wholesale restructuring of a system with which 80% of Americans say they are satisfied.

In one sense it is hardly surprising that medical costs are increasing. As a society grows richer, people want to live longer and healthier lives. So they spend more on health care. We should maintain this patient choice and provider freedom and strengthen the doctor-patient relationship instead of inserting bureaucrats 3,000 miles away into personal decisions.

Government-run (or government-imposed) health care will do what every other government social program has done: waste money, support bureaucrats, soak the middle class to subsidize the poor and reduce the level of choice and quality for everyone.

First, I challenge the notion that there should necessarily be a “national health care system” beyond the specialized systems we have already set up for the needy (Medicaid, Medi-Cal) and retired (Medicare). We live in a free society and a private-sector economy, and most decisions are and should be made by individuals, not the government.

Second, the employer mandate proposed by the Administration is simply a disguised tax increase. It will come in the form of higher prices for goods and services, and lost jobs (especially entry-level jobs, the kind we most need to pull people out of poverty).

Third, proposals for a government-run health care system will inevitably hurt seniors, who have the greatest need. All government systems ration care, not by price but in two other ways: first, by making people wait for many procedures; and, second, by making other procedures not available at all.

Fourth, the Administration’s price-control proposals will not work. You cannot repeal the laws of supply and demand by setting up a federal bureaucracy.

Indeed, everything proposed in the current Washington debate has been tried, implemented and found wanting somewhere else. Unfortunately, the health care debate has degenerated into a partisan political battle where the original aim of sound policy has been lost. Partisan Democrats are simply looking for a political victory for the President, regardless of whether it’s a good result. Partisan Republicans are simply looking for a defeat. Both sides are misusing policy arguments for political goals.

For example, only about 3% of the U.S. population (not “37 million people”), most of whom are young or temporarily between jobs, are the hard-core medically uninsured. These are the people we need to reach, and we are already doing so through programs like Medi-Cal and Medicaid and emergency rooms of hospitals. These systems may be improved, but that is how the debate ought to be framed.

Although he is now trying to hide the fact by sending out taxpayer-paid campaign mail that he favors a “go-slow” approach, my opponent Mr. Beilenson is one of the co-sponsors of HR 1200, the legislation that would impose a full-blown, government-run “single payer” system like that in Canada. He says it works. Evidently he hasn’t spoken to many Canadians.

His sponsorship of what is essentially socialized medicine will punish the middle-class people of this district, just like his support for tax hikes and slashes in defense jobs, and his refusal to get tough on crime or pay more than lip service to illegal immigration.

The kind of “health care reform” the Administration wants appears to be dead, at least for this year. That’s a good thing. Members of Congress ought to read 1,400-page bills before voting on them. The even more radical “single payer” system proposed by Mr. Beilenson is also dead. Next year, I will be a voice in the Congress for sensible, cautious, incremental change that addresses real problems and otherwise leaves people alone.