The comprehensive health care program which will take effect in Washington state next month is a good model for the federal government, a panel of the state's health care experts said at the Kennedy School of Government yesterday.

While national health care legislation was pronounced dead for the year in Washington D.C. on Monday, the state of Washington is about to implement a sweeping state-wide program very similar to Clinton's proposal, said Sue Crystal, the state's special assistant to the governor for health policy.

Washington's "Basic Health Plan" provides "an affordable insurance package through managed care," Crystal said at the poorly-attended forum, which drew an audience of about a dozen. "And we have the 'Basic Health Plan' in every country of the state"

The Washington program, Crystal said, replaced old ways of delivering health care with a comprehensive, government-run system.

The state's reform plan provides for uniform benefits packages, preventive care and taxes on employers who don't contribute to their workers' health care coverage.

"It takes the entire health care system and attempts to restructure and reorganize it," she said.

Crystal said there was a "tremendous amount of support" for the plan throughout the state.

"We had the governor's support, the insurance commission's support, we had strong chairs... We had what I call a harmonic convergence," she said.

But fellow panelist Bernadene Dochnahl, chair of the Washington Health Services Commission, said the progressive nature of the legislation, not just its timing, allowed the reform plan to win support in the state legislature.

"A key to all this is that it's really a system reform," Dochnahl said. "All parts of the system have room to improve. The problem is that everybody is pissed off. Everybody has a slice to give up."

While the "Basic Health Plan" is already in effect throughout Washington, much of the rest of the new health care system is still in the works. The taxes on employers will be phased in slowly between now and 1997. The state has also agreed on a uniform benefits package and an insurance premium cap.

Washington Insurance Commissioner Deborah Senn said at the panel that, contrary to what opponents of health care reform say, the price tag on reform is not unreasonable.

"[Health care] has not cost the industry what it predicted," Senn said. "Medical inflation is down by half nationally; part of this is health care reform."