Subject: Waxman Spearheads Counterattack Against Cut Back of Health Care
Date: Published: 10/10/88 57 lines
Source:  Wall Street Journal.  Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. 

    Politics and Policy:  
    Waxman Spearheads Congress's Counterattack
    Against Reagan Effort to Cut Back Health Care
    ----  
    By John E. Yang
    Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

    WASHINGTON -- When President Reagan signs the
 welfare-overhaul bill this week, he'll also be signing into
 law a $430 million, five-year program to expand Medicaid to
 former welfare recipients who enter the work force.
    Only a year ago, the Reagan administration argued that
 such an expansion of the federal health program for the poor
 was too costly.  But officials were ultimately persuaded that
 it would bring them closer to their goal of getting what they
 see as welfare loafers off the dole and onto private
 payrolls.
    Who persuaded them?  None other than Henry Waxman, a
 liberal California congressman whose political priorities
 could hardly be more different from Ronald Reagan's

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    For all Rep. Waxman's legislative skills, though, he
 occasionally falls victim to overconfidence.  Once he brought
 to the floor an Indian-health bill under a procedure that
 required two-thirds approval by the House, confident that he
 had paved the way for easy passage.  He fell five votes short.
 Another time, he offered legislation that would have allowed
 terminally ill cancer patients to receive heroin as a
 painkiller, never considering the political position he was
 asking his colleagues to take:  Fearful of being seen as
 favoring legalization of the narcotic, they voted him down by
 a landslide margin.
    Despite such setbacks, Mr. Waxman is already forging a
 health-care agenda for 1989 and beyond.  So far, he has
 introduced legislation to set up a program to help pay for
 the long-term care of the elderly and has begun to hold
 hearings on drug price increases.  He also favors legislation
 prohibiting discrimination against people who test positive
 for the AIDS virus.  And he says he would love the opportunity
 to work with a Michael Dukakis administration on legislation
 that would require minimum health insurance benefits for all
 U. S. workers.
    But he also remains unfazed by the prospect of a George
 Bush victory.  "I don't want to think of four more years of
 playing defense against an administration," he says.  "But if
 we have to, we will."

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