Despite movement toward a bipartisan compromise on health reform, the Senate remains at an impasse.
A developing middle ground was attacked Wednesday from both ends: The White House exhorted Democratic allies not to abandon President Clinton's reform proposal, while Senate Minority Leader Robert Dole promised his own plan would be out next week.
The Kansas Republican intends to answer White House demands for mandatory employer-paid health coverage with a bill that promises all Americans access to affordable insurance. But it doesn't require them to buy it, as the new compromise would, and doesn't require employers to pay for it, as Clinton would.
"I'm just going to try to put something together that attracts most Republicans and hopefully attracts some Democrats, but I think we're still a long way from any consensus," Dole said.
Two House committees are working on their versions of health legislation, but all eyes now are on the Senate, where lawmakers are breaking down into three factions:
-- Moderates led by Sens. John Chafee, R-R.I., and Bill Bradley, D-N.J., appeared close to agreement on a compromise designed to break a deadlock on the Finance Committee, which begins drafting sessions Monday.
-- Democrats aligned with Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, D-Maine, pledged to build on the Clinton plan in hopes of putting together a bare 51-vote majority.
-- Republicans led by Dole balked at the evolving Chafee-Bradley compromise, which would include a requirement that individuals get insurance - in reformers' jargon, an "individual mandate" - if 95% of Americans don't have health insurance by 2002.
It would be financed by taxes on tobacco and top-dollar insurance policies, and savings from Medicare and Medicaid.
The three separate tracks further confused an already complicated political situation, with liberals urging a Democrats-only approach to health reform, conservatives seeking less extensive incremental improvements, and moderates insisting their solution is the only one capable of passage.
The moderates' challenge:
-- Liberals want an "employer mandate," under which companies would pay most of their workers' insurance costs, plus price controls and guaranteed coverage for all Americans. They disdain the moderates' effort as "a search not for necessarily what is right, but what can pass," said Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., a Mitchell ally.
-- Conservatives don't want the mandates or controls.
Dole is working on his proposal with Sen. Bob Packwood of Oregon, ranking Republican on the Finance Committee. It includes a form of standardized insurance rates, reduces paperwork, makes health policies portable from job to job and sets up voluntary insurance purchasing groups.
On the Democrats' side of the aisle, liberals lunched with Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday as moderates met with the Chafee group.
Finance Committee Chairman Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., put the first lady on the spot, asking her if the administration would support a bill without an employer mandate.
She said that might be acceptable. But when he asked about a bill with no mandates at all, she responded that would not achieve universal coverage, the bottom line both Clintons have been sternly re-emphasizing this week.
"We've got 40 hard votes for good reform today," said Daschle. "The question is how do we get the next 10 or 12."
Hillary Clinton expressed optimism that ongoing talks would produce a compromise that sticks by the president's goal of guaranteeing coverage for all: "I am encouraged by what I hear."
