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 7, 1993 * There are many components of the Cooper approach we agree with completely. Like Congressman Cooper, we believe community rating returns insurance to a community responsibility, not an exercise in profit making and risk avoidance. Like Congressman Cooper, we believe that an increased emphasis on competition will promote efficiency, reduce waste, and lower costs. And finally, like Congressman Cooper, we believe increased cost-consciousness is an important aspect of health care reform, and a necessary ingredient for cost control. But we cannot support the Cooper bill because it does not provide health security for all Americans. We believe all Americans need and deserve health care security; this plan just doesn't provide that. * Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentson said yesterday: "Well, I think Congressman Cooper's plan certainly contributes to the debate in a meaningful way. But it has some serious problems. One of them, it does not have universal coverage. And as Erskine (Bowles) was just saying, you're going to see the cost-shifting take place, and you'll see small business bear the brunt of it. And they will have, themselves, higher costs continuing. So universal coverage is an essential. It is not there in that one." * He continued: "Another one is that they don't have the benefits defined. That is done later by some national board. And it's important that you know what you're getting before you vote on it and what kind of coverage you're going to have. I would say the third problem with it is the cap that's put on the plan, the tax cap. And what you would see is a lot of the major companies that have full coverage would be cutting back insofar as that coverage, and I think that is a serious flaw in the system." * Dr. Laura Tyson, Chair of the Council on Economic Advisors summed up the issue of jobs, during a briefing yesterday: "We've spent considerable time going over the plan, analyzing the plan very carefully, looking at all of the existing models out there for assessing these effects. We concluded that the models are highly imperfect. There is no model out there which can incorporate all of the pluses. None of the models actually incorporate any of the pluses that I mentioned in assessing the employment effects. So by doing an analysis, we've concluded the net effect on employment is likely to be very small. But you're going to have some positive employment-generating effects, you're going to have some negative employment discouraging effects. The net effect on employment is likely to be very small.