Proposal Would Force Congress to Join Cheapest Health Plan

WASHINGTON —  Rep. Pete Stark (D-Oakland) tweaked the White House over its health care strategy by introducing a bill Monday to force members of Congress into the cheapest plans established by President Clinton.

“What’s good for the goose is good for the gander,” said Stark, a longtime critic of the “managed competition” strategy Clinton has embraced for his promised overhaul of the nation’s health care.

“If managed competition-type organizations are the answer . . . why aren’t more members of Congress, the President and his Cabinet in them?” asked Stark, who chairs the House Ways and Means health subcommittee.

Clinton’s health advisers back setting up regional health care alliances, which Americans would have to join, to buy health coverage. The Administration believes these regional purchasing pools would have increased bargaining power to get cheaper rates.

Through the pools, citizens might have to join health maintenance organizations, in which patients pay a flat fee for their care but get less choice in doctors.

Stark contends that this managed competition will result in lower quality and advocates instead a “single-payer” system in which the government pays all health bills.

Clinton is not expected to release his plan until at least September. White House aides have said the federal health plan that covers members of Congress probably would be put under the same system as everyone else and required to join a health alliance.

Stark’s bill would make members of Congress part of the cheapest alliance in their district.

Meanwhile, a Congressional Budget Office study estimated that a health reform plan relying purely on managed competition would add $19 billion to the nation’s medical bills by the year 2000 and still leave 25 million people uninsured. There are now 36 million Americans without health insurance.

A government-financed, single-payer plan, on the other hand, would save $150 billion and cover everybody, the analysis said.