HEALTH REFORM WATCH . . . A FADING PULSE

A stubborn group of senators labored to produce a health-care reform bill before Election Day, but it looks as if the rest of the Senate thinks it will be stillborn. The "mainstream coalition" led by Sen. John Chafee today huddled with Senate leaders on how to draft a bill that could get a filibuster-proof 60 votes. But in nearby chambers, Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kan., pronounced the effort dead. Key Democrats weren't much jollier: Senate Finance Committee chairman Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., has said the Chafee bill would harm Medicare and Medicaid. And Sen. Bob Kerrey, the Nebraska Democrat now often at odds with President Clinton, waxed cynical, saying the public fears "we're going to cook a deal in the last three or four weeks of Congress . . . to get re-elected."