TOPEKA, Kan. -- President Clinton has gone to the heartland to tell small-business owners his flagging health-care proposal would help them, not hurt them.
Sitting down with a half-dozen skeptical business people on Thursday, Clinton told them that under his plan to require all businesses to pay 80% of their workers' health insurance premiums, some would pay more - but he said most would get a break.
Later he met with six business owners. Sheryl Wohlford, who owns a company that makes automated machinery, said she now pays 5.5% of her payroll to insure 19 workers. She's worried that under the president's plan she'd pay 7.9%, the top rate for business.
"We've got to be up-front about this," Clinton said. "Not everybody pays less. Some people pay more."
Clinton told an airport crowd: "If this were simple or easy, someone would have done it already."
Under his plan, businesses with fewer than 75 workers and an average wage of no more than $ 24,000 would get subsidies to help pay the cost of insurance.
Tuesday, in North Carolina, he was hammered by tough questions about health care and Whitewater.
Thursday night in Kansas City, Kan., he encountered more skepticism from a TV studio audience selected by four local stations.
Clinton bristled a little at suggestions that his plan would cost jobs and that government can't be trusted to revamp health care.
"The cost of your plan is simply a cost that will cause us to eliminate jobs," Herman Cain, chief executive officer of Godfather's Pizza, told the president.
Clinton argued that requiring all employers to buy insurance for their workers would push up Cain's costs of business by only about 2%.
When Cain, an outspoken critic of the plan, insisted that his costs would be much higher, Clinton moved to end the questioning, telling him to write with more details. "Send it to me," he said. "We'll work on it."
Overall, Thursday's town hall was friendlier. Clinton aides said they supplied names of potential audience members from a list of local people who wrote the White House about health care. - Judi Hasson
