Dole, in Finale, Targets Health Care

Outlining an agenda for his few remaining weeks as Senate majority leader, Bob Dole said his top legislative priority will be to push through Congress a stalled health insurance bill that would allow millions of Americans to continue buying coverage after changing jobs or developing serious illnesses.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee, speaking to reporters as he and his wife flew to Florida as part of a weekend of light campaigning, also conceded that for the second time in as many years he is short of the votes needed to pass a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced federal budget, another personal and GOP priority.

Dole’s commitment to enacting the health insurance legislation--like his recent resignation from the Senate--represents a high-risk gamble to rejuvenate his quest for the White House.

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If the popular health care bill became law, President Clinton would surely also claim credit for what would be the most sweeping health care legislation in more than 30 years. It was Clinton who put health care reform atop the national agenda three years ago, and Clinton used his most recent State of the Union address to plug the bill that Dole now hopes to see become law.

Dole initially supported Clinton’s efforts in 1993 but eventually opposed them--as did a majority in the then-Democratic Congress--on grounds that the president’s plan amounted to a government takeover of the private health care system.

In his own presidential campaign, Dole has said little about health care reform other than to support the currently stalled insurance measure.

If the negotiations with the Clinton administration over that bill do not bear fruit--and time is rapidly dwindling for the 104th Congress--Dole may well be saddled with much of the blame.

It was his parliamentary maneuverings that sapped the measure’s momentum on Capitol Hill: He has been trying to tilt the legislative process in favor of including “medical savings accounts”--tax-deferred contributions that could be used to pay health care bills--in the health insurance bill, but Democrats so far have blocked those efforts.

Dole’s comments came in a wide-ranging discussion during a Saturday night flight to Bal Harbour, where he and his wife, Elizabeth, have a condominium. Asked if he thought the biggest gamble of his political career--quitting the Senate to campaign full time for the presidency--was working, Dole replied: “I think it is.”

But asked if he thought he could sustain the sense of excitement and momentum that followed his resignation announcement last week, Dole was less certain.

“You can’t resign every day,” he replied, adding that he will “get it together, one step at a time.”

Virtually every public opinion poll shows Clinton commanding a double-digit lead. Dole dismissed such numbers as he often does: “This is May. If it’s this way in September, I’ll be a little nervous.”

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After attending a Sunday morning church service, the 72-year-old Kansas Republican and his wife visited Miami’s Bay Front Park and greeted participants at a festival marking Cuban Independence Day.

He criticized Clinton for a policy of “appeasement’ toward Cuban President Fidel Castro and said a Dole administration would “bring Castro down and end his regime of terror in Cuba.”

Dole is scheduled to make a campaign stop in Tampa today before returning to Washington.

He said he intended to meet Tuesday with other Senate Republican leaders to discuss, among other topics, whether to continue pursuing passage of the balanced-budget amendment in the face of certain defeat. A year ago, the measure fell one vote shy in the Senate while the House passed it easily by the requisite two-thirds majority.

“We’ll lose,” Dole said. “The question is: Do I want to bring it up and lose?” Many Republicans want a vote anyway--as a ploy to gain a fresh campaign issue against Democrats who vote against the measure.

On the health insurance bill, sponsored by Sens. Nancy Landon Kassebaum (R-Kan.) and Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), Dole said discussions were underway between his staff and the White House in an attempt to iron out key differences.

The bill has stalled even though it was passed by overwhelming majorities in both chambers, including a unanimous 100-0 vote in the Senate.

The House version includes a provision to limit medical malpractice lawsuits. Clinton has vowed to veto any health care reform bill containing such restrictions.

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The House measure also would create the individual, tax-deferred medical savings accounts. Clinton has said medical savings accounts would disproportionately benefit the rich and could increase insurance costs for poor people who could not afford the necessary savings.

The Senate bill’s most controversial provision--not contained in the House measure--would require all insurance policies to offer the same level of coverage for mental health services as for physical illnesses--a mandate that many businesses say would send insurance costs soaring.

To date, no Senate-House conference committee has been appointed to hammer out compromise legislation, largely because Senate Democrats object to Dole’s attempt to appoint a sufficient number of GOP senators to guarantee that the final bill includes the medical savings accounts.

Administration officials confirmed that private discussions were underway to find a compromise that would allow some scaled-back version of both the mental health parity requirement and medical savings accounts. Only then would conferees be named, sources said.