Clinton to Seek Social Benefits Expansion

Moving to expand federal social insurance on at least two major fronts, President Clinton will soon propose restoring food stamps for some legal immigrants and providing Medicare benefits for the first time to retirees ages 62 to 64, if they are willing to pay for them.

Administration officials said Friday that Clinton, in his budget to be unveiled in early February, would propose restoring food stamps to some legal immigrants who lost them under the welfare reform law of 1996. However, the White House is still debating exactly how far-reaching the proposal would be.

The president’s budget also will include a proposal, which Clinton is expected to make public and discuss in some detail early next week, to allow people as young as 62 to pay a monthly fee to “buy in” to receiving Medicare benefits that are now generally available only to those 65 and older.

Both proposals are likely to meet resistance from Republicans in Congress, who have been fighting to restrain rather than expand federal entitlement benefits. The food stamp proposal, in particular, had been vigorously opposed by the GOP last year during negotiations with the White House over the terms of the budget balancing agreement.

In those negotiations, Clinton and Congress did agree to restore disability and Medicaid benefits to certain legal immigrants. But congressional Republicans rejected an administration proposal to restore food stamps to legal immigrants.

The 1996 welfare law cut off food stamp benefits for about 1 million noncitizens nationwide, including 426,900 legal immigrants in California.

Officials said the administration’s new attempt to restore food stamps to legal immigrants may give priority to the most vulnerable immigrant populations, such as families with children, the elderly and the disabled.

Under the current Medicare program, people 65 and older are covered by hospital insurance financed by payroll taxes and can receive other medical benefits financed by patient premiums and federal funds. Clinton wants to allow younger retirees to get the same benefits if they pay a special fee. The amount of the fee is still being decided, but one administration official said the “buy-in” option would probably cost about $3,000 to $4,000 a year.

Clinton’s Medicare proposal, first reported in detail by the Wall Street Journal on Friday, will mark another step in the president’s effort to expand health insurance coverage for Americans. It is emblematic of the more cautious, incremental approach he has taken to that end in the wake of the collapse of the broad health-care reform proposal he pushed in 1993-94, which met with spectacular defeat.

Since then, Clinton has pursued--with some success--more modest health-care initiatives, such as one to expand coverage for poor children that Congress passed last year. And last year’s budget-balancing agreement established some new Medicare benefits for certain disease-prevention measures that had not previously been covered.

“The president is personally interested in incremental steps on health care,” said one administration official who asked not to be named. “One of the groups of people who are really having trouble getting health insurance are people in their early 60s who do not qualify for private insurance because they are not working or who are retirees from companies that can’t afford to insure them.”

*

The ranks of the uninsured in that age bracket include many who lost their jobs to corporate downsizing, who find it hard to get another job when they are near retirement and find it hard to get affordable private insurance because of the greater health risks associated with their age.

Clinton’s proposal also could benefit many under-65 women who depended on a husband’s health insurance coverage before retirement but who lost that coverage when the husband shifted to Medicare.

About 15% of Americans ages 62 to 64 are without health insurance.

The proposed Medicare expansion is surfacing just as the White House and Congress are launching a bipartisan commission to spend the next two years addressing the politically sensitive question of how Medicare can be retooled to accommodate the huge costs of the baby boom generation entering retirement early in the next century.

And news of the administration’s effort to extend Medicare benefits to some Americans under 65 comes as support appears to be growing in Congress for raising the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67.

The movement to raise the eligibility age is prompted by concerns that baby boomers will bankrupt the program; administration officials say Clinton’s proposed expansion would virtually pay for itself.

Clinton’s proposal will likely be welcomed by Democrats in Congress, some of whom believed the administration went too far in curbing the growth of Medicare in last year’s budget deal.

“You have a society where people are living longer and retiring earlier--not always voluntarily,” said one senior House Democratic aide. “We need a Medicare program that has more flexibility.”