Help the Disabled Work

Few bills epitomize good bipartisan government better than legislation introduced earlier this year by Sens. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and James M. Jeffords (R-Vt.) that would allow disabled Americans who want to work to keep health coverage under Medicaid and Medicare. The bill won broad bipartisan support. Then, caught in the ugly partisan snare of the Clinton scandal, it was allowed to die in October.

Last month, the bill seemed to revive when aides to President Clinton suggested that he would allocate $1 billion over five years in his 2000 budget to ensure that disabled Americans don’t lose the medical benefits on which their lives depend when they return to work. But when questioned about that pledge by disabled activists at an Office of Management and Budget meeting this month, Clinton aides hemmed and hawed before acknowledging that no funding had actually been set aside.

If the president is truly serious about enabling disabled Americans to retain the health benefits they are eligible for under Social Security disability, then he should say so in his State of the Union address next month, as some of his aides are now urging him to do. Prominent Republicans who have backed the Kennedy/Jeffords bill privately, from Senate Finance Committee Chairman William V. Roth Jr. to House Speaker Bob Livingston, should go public with their support.

Extending government health insurance protections to the working disabled would probably save the government money over the long term. Currently, 8 million disabled Americans of working age receive more than $50 billion a year in cash benefits from Social Security and Supplemental Security Income. Fewer than 1% of them return to work, although 72% of them want to do so, according to a recent Harris poll. In many cases they would lose Medicaid coverage and are not likely to gain affordable or adequate private insurance. If disabled Americans were guaranteed health insurance, many would return to work and pay taxes rather than exist on handouts.

Congressional leaders looking for a way to cleanse themselves of impeachment muck could start with this bill.