RETREATING POLITICIANS

President Clinton spent two weeks during the month of April on the road, conducting a series of Town Hall meetings on the subject of his health care plan. During this period, public support for it dropped steadily.

Apparently, the more people learn about ClintonCare, the less they like it. The heart of the Clinton plan is mandatory universal coverage, paid for by employers. Americans seem increasingly to view such mandates for what they are: a heavy, onerous, job-destroying tax. The latest USA Today poll of Americans finds us rejecting this idea by a margin of 63-34 percent.

It seems Americans want options in a free market, not a massive and costly new government bureaucracy. We want reforms that empower us to be in the driver's seat onb our own health care decisions. We want freedom to choose our own doctors, not to be forced to guess who's behind the surgical mask. We don't want the rationing of health care that ClintonCare would inevitably lead to.

Another leading indicator to watch: A hotly contested special election May 10 in Oklahoma's Sixth Congressional District. A long-time Democratic congressman vacated his seat to become a lobbyist. This seat, stretching from the Oklahoma City suburbs west to the panhandle, has never been held by Republicans.

Which way is the wind blowing? The Democratic nominee has been forced into one conservative position after another. Forced by his GOP opponent to take a no-taxes pledge, he has distanced himself from the Clintons; he has supported gun rights; and most telling, he has come out against employer mandates in health care.

If, after all these rightward moves, the drag of the Billary Clintons proves too much and GOP nominee Frank Lucas wins, the tremor will rumble through American politics. Keep your eye on Oklahoma 6. It could just prove the final nail in the coffin of employer mandates, the very heart of ClintonCare.

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Which Way is the Wind

Blowing? Part II

The vote on Gov. Mel Carnahan's health care bill, week before last in the Missouri House of Representatives, is most instructive. House Bill 1622 was introduced by House Speaker Bob Griffin with much fanfare and dozens of cosponsors. Breathtaking in scope, brazen in design, a virtual state version of ClintonCare, HB 1622 created nine new boards, bureaucracies and commissions to effect a government takeover of Missouri's health care delivery system. Drafted by policy wonks who had spent their entire lives in government and public health, the HB 1622 birthing process resembled the super-secret process by which Hillary Clinton's bunch of lawyers and "experts" crafted ClintonCare.

Rarely in recent Missouri history has a Governor's and a House Speaker's legislative centerpiece been so completely shredded. Remorselessly, as word got out about just exactly what kind of government takeover was being proposed, legislators heard from the folks back home. Message: Whatever the problems in health care, this kind of government takeover is a cure worse than the disease. Over a period of weeks the Speaker responded by jettisoning, one by one, the most objectionable features of HB 1622.

Even after HB 1622 was drastically stripped down, a mere shadow of its former self, a story tells the final, stunning tale. The estimable dean (1961-94) of all Missouri legislators, Rep. Gene Copeland, D.-New Madrid, informed the Speaker that he could not vote for anything like HB 1622. Listening nearby, another legislator quipped, "What if the bill number were changed?" The lighthearted quip was taken seriously. Attempting to gain distance from the odium of 1622, the Speaker changed the bill number to HB 2000.

During a night session on Tuesday, April 19, HB 2000 came to a vote on the House floor. In a Democratic-dominated House, only 60 of 97 Democrats voted "aye" on their Governor's legislative centerpiece. HB 2000 lost, 92-62. House Majority Whip Larry Thomason, D.-Kennett, whose job it is to whip Democrats into line, and who did so ruthlessly on last year's SB 380, was seen going up and down the aisles telling his members to "vote your conscience."