One of his signature efforts included chairing the blue-ribbon Bipartisan Commission on Comprehensive Health Care Reform in the 1990s, known as the Pepper Commission.

The United States Bipartisan Commission on Comprehensive Health Care - often known as the Pepper Commission - produced a plan last year to provide universal health insurance and extensive new long-term nursing-care benefits.

("I'm very proud - deeply proud - deeply moved - fiercely moved - about what we did on the Pepper Commission.")

The plan approved by the panel, named the Pepper Commission after its first chairman, the late Representative Claude Pepper of Florida, does not require such divestiture.

He talked of his concern for children's issues and his commitment to overhauling the national health care system and providing universal health insurance; Mr. Rockefeller was chairman of the Pepper Commission, which was established by Congress to study health issues.

The council is also reviewing a proposal by the Pepper Commission, a bipartisan group headed by Senator John D. Rockefeller 4th, Democrat of West Virginia, to replace Medicaid with a new Federal program.

By ignoring details like tax subsidies and managed care, the Pepper Commission renders many of its recommendations unenforceable.

The Pepper Commission estimated that its proposals would cost $24 billion a year in new Federal spending.

He retired from Florida State in 1989 and was later appointed to the Pepper Commission on Aging, named for the late Representative Claude Pepper, Democrat of Florida.

Mr. Gradison was a founding board member of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board and was Vice Chairman of the U.S. Bipartisan Commission on Comprehensive Health Care ("Pepper Commission").