Clinton Slams GOP on Medicare Plans : Benefits: President tells recipients he will halt attempts to add costs. His punch, aimed to rivet Republicans, is called ‘despicable’ by Gingrich.

Setting aside pledges of cooperation, President Clinton joined a defiantly partisan rally for Medicare Tuesday to declare that Republicans want older Americans to “bet their lives” on scaled-back health services “simply to pay for a big tax cut for people who don’t need it.”

Clinton, seizing his biggest club in the budget battle with Congress, joined two liberal Democratic warhorses--Rep. John D. Dingell of Michigan and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts--to promise that he will not allow Republican budget-cutters to increase any expenses for Medicare beneficiaries.

“It’s a bad deal,” he told a largely elderly audience on Medicare’s 30th birthday. “We ought not to do it.”

Clinton’s blunt approach showed the special place that Medicare has found in the 1996 budget confrontation. Confident that the public is squarely in his corner on this issue, Clinton has largely abandoned the conciliatory approach that he favors on most issues to swing freely at the opposition.

He apparently hopes that the attack on the Republicans’ Medicare proposals will ignite unease with the broader Republican congressional offensive on a range of domestic issues, forcing Republican leaders who have been largely ignoring him to take a more conciliatory attitude.

“I got the message of the 1994 election, and I’m not going to let the government mess with your Medicare,” Clinton vowed.

Republicans accused the Democrats of trying to conceal the fact that Medicare will be broke within seven years unless its spending is brought under control. Haley Barbour, the Republican National Committee chairman, said that the Democrats were “purposefully trying to mislead people into thinking that the system’s OK.”

House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said: “Trying to scare senior citizens as a reelection strategy is frankly a despicable strategy.”

Medicare has grown as a focus of the budget struggle because of its extraordinary political sensitivity and because GOP plans to extract $270 billion from its accounts by decreasing its rate of growth over the next seven years make it the Republicans’ largest cost-cutting vehicle.

Republicans favor moving millions of people into health maintenance organizations and other managed-care systems, where there would be a limited choice of doctors and hospitals. They say that the additional choices of HMOs, or plans under which beneficiaries could buy insurance policies, would provide good coverage at a lower cost.

Democrats say that this would dismantle the current Medicare system, with people being forced into HMOs to avoid paying higher deductibles and other charges.

The President has proposed $127 million in Medicare savings, money he says would come from reduced payments to hospitals and doctors rather than from higher charges to beneficiaries.

The President said that the same groups which fought Medicare “tooth and nail 30 years ago” helped sink his health plan last year by arousing fears that it would erode the elderly’s coverage.

Clinton charged that the Republican plan, with a fixed benefit, would in years ahead leave many older people without necessary care because they lack extra money for deductibles, co-payments or supplemental insurance coverage.

The Republican plan might benefit the older person who is “healthy as a horse,” he said, but would do little for one who became ill and put extra demands on the system.

Other Democrats were even more pungent in their comments.

Kennedy said: “Keep your tax-cutting, greedy hands off our Medicare.” And Dingell warned: “Don’t let them tell you they’re not going to cut Medicare, because they are.”

The Medicare program is the fourth largest activity of the federal government, with outlays of about $180 billion this year. It ranks behind only Social Security, defense spending and interest on the national debt. The program serves 37 million people, 35 million who are 65 or older, and the disabled of all ages.

Spending is soaring at a rate of 10% a year, a figure that the GOP budget would slow to 6.4%. Even with the slowdown, spending per person would reach $6,700 in 2002, a 40% rise from current outlays.

Republicans say that this would be ample to buy private insurance to offer generous benefits. Democrats insist that the sum would be inadequate and could force enrollees to spend far more than they do now out of their own pockets to maintain the level of benefits.

The White House says that a person using home health services and laboratory services could be forced to spend an additional $2,000 or more.