THE FOLLOWING IS ONE IN A SERIES OF PERIODIC BRIEFINGS FROM THE WHITE HOUSE TO ITS OFFICIALS AND OTHER SUPPORTERS OF ITS HEALTH-REFORM PACKAGE. IT PROVIDES AN INSIDE GLIMPSE OF THE ADMINISTRATION'S STRATEGY. The White House Health Care Reform Today October 5, 1993 * Opponents of reform are starting to sharpen their attacks. Over the next few weeks, we expect the full-scale scare tactics of the opposition to roll out. They will tell Americans about how much more they'll pay and all the benefits they'll lose. They will call our modest controls for slowing down runaway health spending too draconian and warn it will lead to rationing. And they'll paint a phony picture of a big, bureaucratic, heavy handed, government run system. While we welcome debate over policy differences, scare tactics are a different matter. When scare tactics are used, swing the spotlight back on the accuser. Bet it'll be someone who profits either from the status quo or benefits from playing the politics of fear. The fear-mongers are attempting to paint their hysterics with the patina of truth by couching them in terms of specific numbers --as in the charge that cropped up over the weekend that the President's plan would create a new federal bureaucracy of 50,000. Let's treat such stuff like what it is, folks: garbage. * Here's the straight story on the "bureaucracy" issue: The President's proposal seeks to eliminate bureaucracy, not create more. The role of government in the new system is to set the rules, guarantee security and quality, then get out the way and let the private sector go to work. Existing systems that function like health alliances are astoundingly unbureaucratic: the California Public Employees Retirement System organizes and oversees a free-choice, consumer-responsibility market for nearly a million families among 44 health plans with fewer than 100 staffers; the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program runs a consumer-choice market among hundreds of health plans for millions of federal workers and retirees with fewer than 300 staffers. As Ira Magaziner says, "If the National Health Board has 100 employees, it will have too many." You get bureaucracy with micromanagement, and micromanagement -- by both the government and private insurers -- is what the President's proposal seeks to move away from. * A total of 2 million more Americans were without insurance at the end of 1992 than at the end of 1991, according to new data released by the Census Bureau yesterday. That figure doesn't include the millions of Americans who were without insurance for a period of time when they were in between jobs or without a job. If the President's Health Security plan passes Congress, all Americans will have a comprehensive package of benefits that can never be taken away.