Health Reform Panel Spent $13.8 Million : Audit: Costs for Clinton task force was originally put at less than $100,000. Aide defends spending, cites work that was done.

President Clinton’s reform team, whose price tag initially was estimated at less than $100,000, ultimately spent $13.8 million to prepare the Administration’s unsuccessful 1993 proposal to overhaul the nation’s health care system, the General Accounting Office reported Thursday.

Most of the money--$9.1 million--was spent by the Department of Health and Human Services, which assigned 172 of its employees at various times to a health care task force headed by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

“If you look at the work they had to do, the overall cost was relatively modest,” said Ginny Terzano, deputy White House press secretary. Considering “reports that opponents may have spent $300 million to defeat the health care reform initiatives, then it puts some of the money into perspective,” she said.

However, opponents were spending individual or corporate resources, while the Administration was using tax dollars to pay the salaries of government workers and meet other expenses, including travel and consultant fees.

Rep. William F. Clinger Jr. (R-Pa.), the chairman of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee who asked for the audit by the GAO, said he was “shocked” by the results.

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“What we have here is another example of the Clinton Administration not being forthcoming with the Congress or the American people about the entire scale, scope and cost of their taxpayer-funded activities,” Clinger said.

Total spending to develop the President’s reform proposal, and to write the 1,340-page legislative package submitted to Congress, may have been larger than $14 million, said Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of a group that sued the task force to open its meetings and records to the public.

“The GAO only had access to what was paid by government agencies,” she said. “What was spent in the private sector is still open to question.” She said many participants working with the Administration were paid by foundation grants and fellowships or given leave from university teaching posts or private-sector jobs to join the deliberations in Washington.

“We estimate about 1,000 people participated,” said Orient, executive director of the American Assn. of Physicians and Surgeons, which filed a suit claiming the task force was violating federal law by meeting in private. Task force records were made public last September, and the suit never went to trial.

For the report issued Thursday, the GAO said it asked the government agencies to supply information on the activities of government career civil servants, political appointees and consultants who worked on health care reform.

Using records on personnel salaries and time devoted to the task force, the GAO calculated the amount of money spent by each agency. Additional costs included money spent for long-distance calls, research, computer time and printing, as well as travel.

Of the total spending, $7.6 million went to personnel, $5 million to outside reports and contracts, $302,000 for travel and $73,000 for telephone calls.

The health care reform plan, the centerpiece of Clinton’s domestic policy effort in his first two years in office, would have required all businesses to provide insurance coverage to their workers.

The White House said the original $100,000 cost estimate applied only to the formal work of the health care task force, a group of a dozen top officials headed by the First Lady. The bulk of the detailed activity was carried out by an inter-departmental working group, which included 500 or 600 people from various agencies, according to White House officials.