Health Plan Won’t Be Too Costly, Economists Say

Nobel laureate economist Robert M. Solow said Thursday that fears that the costs in President Clinton’s health care proposals would cripple small businesses are exaggerated, even as the Clinton Administration seemed to be backpedaling on the issue.

Solow said there would be an adverse impact on small businesses, but he suggested it would be short-lived as the new system took effect. Solow, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was one of several leading economists attending a conference on monetary policy sponsored by the Claremont Graduate School.

Nobel Prize winner James Tobin, emeritus Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale University, said: “The economy can do OK, in general, whether or not the Clinton plan is passed. It’s not going to kill the economy and it’s not going to make a big difference the other way, either. It’s not a big macroeconomic issue.”