Utah's two senators both launched attacks Thursday against the health care reform bill of Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell that is supported by President Clinton.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, a member of a Republican team looking at taxes in health bills, charged that the Democratic bill is loaded with hidden taxes.Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, - leader of a Republican team looking at employer mandates - attacked the 1,400-page bill as too voluminous, too rapidly changing and trying to do too much too fast, which he worries could damage rather than help health care.
Hatch said an example of "stealth" health taxes in the Mitchell bill is an assessment of 1.75 percent on all health insurance premiums.
"This tax will raise $75 billion over the next 10 years and will be paid directly or indirectly by everyone" through either higher premiums or lower wages, he said.
Hatch said another example is "a complicated 25 percent tax on health insurance plans whose premiums grow above a `targeted growth rate."'
He said the Congressional Budget Office estimates it would raise $70 billion and would apply to most health plans.
Bennett told the Senate he started to read the 1,400-page bill, "which I confess was a wonderful cure for insomnia." He said it was so incoherent it could not be understand.
And before he had read much more than 100 pages, Mitchell had issued a complete rewrite. "I will forgo reading the new version," he said, adding he suspects it will quickly be replaced amid political fights, too.
He noted that James Madison had warned in the Federalist Papers against "laws so voluminous they cannot be read . . . so incoherent they cannot be understood . . . (or that are) revised before promulgated."
Bennett said those who say vast health care reform "must be done between now and the time we go to recess . . . is in my view irresponsible, and I do not want to be part of that irresponsibility."
He urged Congress to pass only pieces of reform it knows are necessary and will not hurt Americans.