March 28, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Hillary: Health care reform a must> 6,000 at UM hear first lady promote administration’s goal

ORONO — First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton brought her prescription for major surgery on the nation’s health care system to a University of Maine town meeting Monday morning.

As expected, Clinton’s forum at the Harold A. Alfond Arena, which drew an overflow crowd of 6,000, arrived with all the pomp and circumstance of a White House visit. Indeed, there were perhaps more people at the university Monday than attended President Clinton’s trip to Portland last June, and gaining entrance was considerably more difficult.

Save for the requisite protest groups stationed outside the arena, Clinton was preaching to the converted as she worked to sell the proposal that has been called the largest policy overhaul since Medicare was enacted 30 years and six presidential administrations ago.

Between the standing ovations and the roaring applause came the pin-drop silence when 10 Maine residents stood to tell their stories of dealing with the nation’s health care morass.

Picked at random, their voices often shaking, the residents ranged from a University of Maine student asking about the plan’s limitations, and a disabled Bangor man concerned about special needs, to a China mother of two critically ill children seeking out-of-state care.

“There will of course be some limits,” Clinton said. “It’s not everything we would like.”

But the one story that had almost everyone in the arena buzzing came from Cathy Conn, who summed up the health care puzzle with a simple tale of a relatively minor injury.

When the uninsured Old Town woman broke her wrist, only $350 of her $1,500 bill was for doctor’s services. The rest came from hospital fees — a $15 ice bag, an Ace bandage that was never used, and so on, she told Clinton.

“How could there be a $50 charge for a physician’s assistant when all he said to me was, `The doctor will be in in a minute’?” Conn said.

“That,” Clinton said after the applause had died down, “is an excellent recitation of what is wrong.”

But if the first lady provided a sympathetic ear to a handful of the thousands of Mainers who fought ice and cold to see her, she also wasted few words in identifying the enemy in the battle for reform.

“We have a health care crisis, but let us be clear about what it is — it’s a crisis about how we finance health care,” she said during a half-hour speech often punctuated by strong charges against the insurance industry. “Today’s health care system is rigged against families and small business, and the insurance companies are in charge.”

Although every president since Franklin Roosevelt has tried and failed to revamp the nation’s health care system, Clinton pointed out that 1994 could be the year it comes to fruition.

“This time it will be different because we can already see the status quo deteriorating,” she said.

Joined on the stage by two Republican members of the Maine delegation — Sen. William Cohen and Rep. Olympia Snowe — who could end up voting against the administration’s plan, Clinton debunked the alternative proposals by claiming only the president’s initiative would provide full and comprehensive coverage.

For example, the system proposed by Rep. James Cooper, D-Tenn., would provide for a government board to decide the level of benefits and deductibles.

“Where I come from, that’s called buying a pig in a poke, and I don’t think the American public is going for it,” Clinton said.

Managed by regional alliances, the Clinton plan would guarantee coverage for all Americans by Jan. 1, 1998. Employers would pay 80 percent of premiums under the new system, which the administration claims would save $500 billion over five years.

For most residents, though, the primary change will be that access is not only cheaper, but also easier to come by, the first lady said.

After choosing a plan from a menu offering various services and doctors, a resident would simply take a health care card to a doctor or hospital and get treated. Afterward, the resident would fill out a single form.

“It is not only the right thing to do, it makes good economic sense,” Clinton said.

Mitchell, whose office organized the forum, repeated his vow that health care reform would be passed in the Congress this year, largely because of the first lady’s efforts.

“Mrs. Clinton knows the subject as well as, if not better than, most members of the Senate,” Mitchell said. “I believe that before this year is out Congress will enact and the president will sign such a law.”

Maine, meanwhile, will continue its march toward establishing guidelines for a universal access system so that it will be in place when the federal law takes effect.

“I really thought her visit gave a lot of momentum to the state effort for health care reform as well as the national one,” said Sen. Dale McCormick, D-Monmouth, one of the architects of the state effort. “I think that people in Maine are still not going to stand for delays.”

Although dissent over the Clinton plan was, at most, an underlying theme during the upbeat Orono forum, Snowe said that at least both sides can agree that change — in whatever form — is necessary.

“Yes, there are differences, but more importantly there are solutions,” Snowe said.

After the town meeting, Clinton met with small-business owners and attended a reception at University of Maine President Frederick Hutchinson’s residence before visiting a housing complex for the elderly in Portland.

“We need to take care of older Americans. We need to preserve and improve Medicare,” she said in Portland, citing the plan’s provisions for prescription drug benefits and help in financing long-term care in home and community-based settings.


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