WASHINGTON - Business and labor leaders on Wednesday hailed a proposal to provide health care coverage to all Americans through a pool of private insurance plans.

A dozen years after Congress rejected a Clinton administration plan for universal health care, Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden offered a plan he said would provide affordable, private health care coverage for all Americans, except those covered through Medicare or the military.

“Employer-based coverage is melting away like a Popsicle on the sidewalk in August,” Wyden said.

Wyden, a Democrat and a member of the Senate Finance health care subcommittee, said his plan would “guarantee health coverage for every American that is at least as good as members of Congress receive and can never be taken away.”

The plan, dubbed the “Healthy Americans Act,” would provide universal coverage for no more money than the country spends on health insurance today, Wyden said.

Wyden, a veteran of the 1990s health care battle, drew support from groups that have frequently opposed each other, including Andy Stern, international president of the Service Employees International Union, and Safeway Inc. CEO Steve Burd.

Stern called employer-based health coverage a relic of an industrial economy that is long gone, and said U.S. companies “cannot compete in a global economy when we put the price of health care on the cost of our products, and our competitor nations do not.”

Stern said the health care system had failed to create jobs while adding to trade deficits and holding wages stagnant. For the nation's 46 million uninsured, “it is a failed moral policy as well,” Stern said.

Burd said his California-based grocery chain had saved millions in health care costs by emphasizing preventative care and offering discounts for nonsmokers and others with lower health risks.

Left unchecked, health care costs will soon surpass net income for many companies, Burd said, calling Wyden's proposal a bold plan to restart a national dialogue on health care.

“Working together, business, labor, government, consumer groups and health care providers can collectively solve this problem,” he said.

Mike Roach, co-owner of a Portland clothing store with eight employees, said that for many small businesses, health insurance costs are unaffordable.

Roach praised Wyden for courage in addressing the issue and said he was pleased Wyden's plan recognized that small businesses have less capacity to pay health care costs than large companies.

Roach, whose Pamplona store sells women's clothing, said he would still pay for some health care costs under Wyden's plan, but at a rate that allows him to hire more workers - or at least consider doing so without adding what he called crushing health care costs.

Wyden's plan is an outgrowth of work by the Citizens' Health Care Working Group, a 14-member panel that held meetings in 36 states and heard from 28,000 people about how to overhaul the nation's health care system.

The group, created in 2003 by legislation sponsored by Wyden and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, recommended that the government take steps to guarantee that all Americans have basic health insurance coverage by 2012.

Wyden said his new plan would allow workers to carry their health insurance from job to job without penalty. More efficient administration and more promotion of competition for health care plans, he said, would allow greater coverage while costing no more than the government is paying today for health insurance coverage.

The plan would require that employers “cash out” their existing health plans by terminating coverage and paying the amount saved directly to workers as increased wages. Workers then would be required to buy health insurance from a large pool of private plans.

After two years, companies would no longer have to pay the higher wages. Instead, Wyden said, they would pay into an insurance pool, based on annual revenues and the number of full-time workers.

At Wyden's request, the Lewin Group, a Virginia-based health care consulting firm, reviewed the plan. The consultant said the plan would reduce health spending by private employers by nearly three-quarters and save $1.4 trillion in total national health care spending over the next decade.

Increases in premium payments for individuals and families would be offset by higher wages and subsidies provided under the plan, the report said. As an example, Wyden cited a worker who earned $60,000 last year, and received about $12,000 worth of health care coverage.

The worker's health insurance would be terminated but his salary would increase to $72,000, which would cover his health care coverage. The plan would bar workers from buying a “bare-bones” health package and pocketing the savings, Wyden said.

On the Net:

Citizens' Health Care Working Group: http://www.citizenshealthcare.gov