Substantial Funding for Clinics Expected in Health Plan

By Jessica Portner

PITTSBURGH--The health-care-reform legislation that President Clinton is expected to deliver to Congress next week will likely propose that the federal government spend between $100 million and $400 million on grants to school-based clinics in the initiative's first year and "substantially more'' each year thereafter, a key architect of the clinic plan said last week.

Dr. Robert St. Peter, the coordinator of programs for children and schools at the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, told school-clinic directors meeting here that the clinic-funding proposal had just survived a top-level meeting between officials of the department and the Office of Management and Budget.

"O.M.B. has been hacking away at this, and the clinic program has survived,'' said Dr. St. Peter, a pediatrician who helped develop the school-based-clinic section of the Clinton Administration's health-care plan. "The Administration wants very much to keep this as...