Bush Urges States to Act on Health Care : Medicine: The issue is the centerpiece of the National Governors’ Assn. conference. Democrats fail to turn up the pressure for federal involvement

SEATTLE —  President Bush Sunday pledged to cooperate with the nation’s governors, gathered here for their summer meeting, in their efforts to find state solutions to the nationwide problems of soaring costs and limited access to medical care.

Meanwhile, however, Democratic governors after a partisan struggle failed to amend a proposed National Governors’ Assn. policy statement to put more pressure on the White House and Congress to develop a program that would assure more Americans of satisfactory medical care at affordable prices.

“Your draft policy calls for comprehensive state reforms,” Bush told the governors over a two-way satellite hookup from the summer White House in Kennebunkport, Me. His remarks reached the states’ chief executives as they were thrashing out details of a policy statement on health care, which is the main order of business at the conference.

If the governors adopt a policy based on state innovations, the President said: “We want to work with you. We’ll do our best to remove federal obstacles to state-designed solutions.”

The White House has good reason to welcome the governors’ participation on the issue. The Bush Adminstration has proposed no initiative in this area and left the field to the Democrats, who have introduced a number of legislative proposals--all of which would involve a larger role for the federal government.

“The congressional debate has been over how far the federal government should go in dealing with this problem,” said Lanny Griffith, the White House aide in charge of intergovernmental relations, who is monitoring the governors’ discussions here.

“We want to encourage a lot broader range of ideas on the health care issue,” he said in an interview. “What we want to do is see more people at the table before we decide to address the issue.”

Griffith conceded that “some cynics” might conclude that the Administration views the governors’ involvement in the issue as a way to put off facing a problem it is reluctant to confront, but he vigorously denied this.

It was just such a suspicion that apparently prompted Democrats on the governors’ 15-member bipartisan task force drafting a proposed health care policy to seek an amendment Sunday.

The key change they wanted was in a section that originally set a deadline of “the end of this century” for development of “a system that makes health care affordable and available for all Americans.”

The amendment, introduced by Florida’s Gov. Lawton Chiles, would have added the phrase “no later than Jan. 1, 1994,” as a deadline for the federal government and the governors to act on the problem.

“This amendment asks for a willing partner in the federal government and an immediate start to negotiating a partnership,” Chiles said.

“Without this language,” said Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, Democratic leader on the task force and a potential presidential candidate in 1992, “the federal government doesn’t necessarily have a time certain to do anything.”

Republicans complained that the deadline was unrealistic and would discourage the states from seeking new approaches to the problems.

“If there is a deadline, the states will just sit back and see what Congress does,” said Republican Gov. Carroll A. Campbell Jr. of South Carolina, whose substitute for Chiles’ proposed amendment was carried in a vote that followed party lines.

The Campbell amendment dropped the deadline and instead added the phrase: “Congress and the President shall immediately begin working with the governors to achieve this system.”

The association is expected to adopt the amended policy statement at its final meeting Tuesday.