The White House
Health Care Reform Today
November 15, 1993
- Last week, the American Association of Retired
Persons said that President Clinton's Health Security Act
was "...the strongest and most realistic blueprint to date
for achieving our goals."
- In their release, AARP said: "Our members express
their strong desire for enactment of meaningful health
care reform, without the partisan bickering that has
choked much of America's legislative process."
- AARP board chair, Judith Brown said: "We urge
every American to ask their elected representative to
enact a plan that assures every American comprehensive
benefits -- including long-term care and prescription
drugs -- that can never be taken away. The status quo is
the most expensive and most threatening course before us.
Those who profit from the status quo are often the ones
behind misleading scare campaigns."
- First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton challenged the
people of Ohio to stand up and speak out for health care
reform. During stops in Cleveland and Marietta last
Friday, the first lady said: "If you stand for reform
we'll get it done in 1994. If you don't fight for it, we
can't."
- The President's chief health care policy advisor,
Ira Magaziner, told a Connecticut audience over the
weekend that there were many parallels between the attacks
being mounted on the President's plan and the attacks made
against President Roosevelt when he proposed Social
Security legislation. He said those attacks sound very
similar to the ones being heard today...that health care
reform will ruin the country and that it was socialism.
Today, he said, it is difficult to imagine a time when the
elderly were kept in poorhouses.