OXYGEN, PLEASE

By LAURENCE I. BARRETT WASHINGTON

Bill Clinton did such an elegant job of escorting his health-care package into the nation's political parlor -- first with his speech to Congress last - month, then with his wife's testimony there soon after -- that Americans can be forgiven for believing their President was ready to pass a new law. Now it looks as if what he really had ready was an outline, a schedule and a conviction that good intentions could make up for missing details. The White House, which promised to send health-reform legislation to Capitol Hill by early October, is nearly three weeks late. The latest goal for unveiling a bill was this week, but the White House will miss that one too. The result of this tardiness is that Clinton's opponents are scoring points in the nascent debate, while a growing number of Americans are left with the impression that the Administration cannot translate its grand vision into workable policy. It does not help that the Administration keeps making embarrassing revisions to its original health-care budget. Just last week, the White House was forced to acknowledge that its plan will be more expensive than anticipated -- by as much as $21 billion over five years. That followed the disclosure days earlier that the White House miscalculated by several billion dollars the cost of subsidies for covering early retirees and for assisting small businesses. ''I don't know how they can put up a bill they can defend,'' says Congressman Jim McDermott, a liberal Democrat and author of a rival proposal. Meanwhile, conservatives in Washington and on the radio talk-show circuit are raising basic questions about the very existence of a detailed plan. In fact, there is a broad program, and constituencies that oppose it are using the current void to make their case. The Health Insurance Association of America and its grass-roots allies last week began running a TV commercial that shows a couple studying a summary of the plan. The husband concludes that the goal of setting a national ceiling on health-care spending could end up cutting off benefits to individuals. The wife, looking stricken, replies, ''There's got to be a better way.'' Such ads are having an effect. Immediately after Clinton's September speech, a Washington Post poll showed the public approved his ideas 56% to 24%. A follow-up survey last week found the spread is 51% to 39%. While the White House frets about such slippage, promoters of competing plans see an opportunity. Congressman Jim Cooper of Tennessee, a conservative Democrat who has been studying health care for years, has introduced his managed competition act. Like the White House plan, Cooper's would subsidize coverage for the poor, establish a base-line benefits package and create insurance cooperatives. It would also prevent discrimination against people considered bad insurance risks. But unlike Clinton's program, Cooper's would not compel employers to provide coverage, only encourage them to do so with tax incentives. Cooper's proposal differs from Clinton's in another important way: it has significant bipartisan support. It is sponsored by 50 members of the House, including 22 Republicans; in the Senate eight moderate Republicans and Democrats are writing an almost identical version. So far, only a single Republican in either chamber, Senator James Jeffords of Vermont, has endorsed the Clinton model, while more than 200 Congressmen and Senators have already chosen to support alternative bills. The longer legislators are forced to wait for Clinton's, the more they will be tempted to sign up elsewhere.