CRISIS IN AMERICA: NATIONAL HEALTH CARE REFORM REMARKS BY GOVERNOR BILL CLINTON LITTLE ROCK, AR 8/3/92 Ladies & gentlemen, I want to read a brief statement, then I will be happy to answer any questions you have. Yesterday President Bush talked about the "Grand Canyon of difference that defines us on health care." Maybe we are in a canyon because you can't be hear the hallow ring of that rhetoric. For 12 years, the president has said little and done nothing about health care. And his words make no more sense today than they did almost 3 decades ago. Yesterday he compared our common sense effort to control health care costs to the police state tactics with the K.G.B. and in 1964, he called President Kennedy's plan for medicare socialized medicine. Mr. Bush displays no passion for solving the medicare crisis, but when someone else has the idea for making health care available and affordable he goes ballistic. For the past dozen years, he's done nothing while health care costs have risen like a patient's fever chart. The average cost of individual health care costs rose from $1000 to $3000 a year -- but he did nothing. Our country's annual spending on health care increased in the decade of the 80's until last year from $250 billion to $809 billion but he did nothing. Thirty five million Americans, mostly workers and their families have no health insurance, another 35 million don't have adequate coverage, millions more live in fear that they'll have to pay more for less insurance or lose their insurance completely -- he's done nothing. Health care costs today are breaking our family budget and our federal budget. You can't be serious about cutting the federal deficit unless you do something to get a handle on health care costs, but he's done nothing. And rising health cost has become a drag on our economy. Over the past dozen years, health care cost has become the number one cause of bankruptcy and labor disputes. I used to say that health care costs add $700 to the cost of every American made car but now that figure is $1,086. Asking Americans to compete in the world economy without doing anything about the health care crisis is like expecting our track stars and gymnasts to compete in the Olympics wearing led ankle weights. Mr. Bush has done more to get us out of the health care crisis than he's done to get us out of the economic crisis. Yesterday, the New York Times reported and I quote, "Mr. Bush expressed no sense of urgency about the health care crisis until last November when the voters of Pennsylvania spoke out loud and clear for a national health plan and elected Harris Wofford to the U.S. Senate." Even now while our health care system is in critical condition, Mr. Bush is prescribing the same old placebos. What he calls a health care plan does next to nothing to provide health insurance to every American and nothing to control health care cost. Health care cost is expected to reach 1.5 trillion dollars by the end of the decade. The average family health insurance will cost $14,000 by the end of the decade, doing next to nothing to control these costs as Mr. Bush proposes is throwing away the costliest health care proposal on the table in America today. I got a plan to control cost and provide affordable quality health care to all Americans. First, let's get rid of the fear tactic. I want to preserve what's best in our system. A family's right to choose the private doctors and hospitals who provide the world's best medical care and the American ingenuity that produce the world's most advanced medical technology. We got to nurse the system back to health and make it work for all Americans. To begin with we got to take on the major culprits of health care cost increases that have nothing to do with health care itself. The vast insurance cost, the bureaucracy cost and the government regulation cost associated with our present system which is the most inefficient in the entire world. We have to have insurance reform. We have to require insurance companies to go back to insuring people in broad community groups, say that people can not be dropped or denied coverage for pre-existing health conditions so that millions of Americans will be able to change jobs again. Second, to control the spiralling cost of bureaucracy which is going up for most hospitals at 4 times the rate of the hiring of direct health care givers. We have to have a basic simple package of comprehensive benefits which must be provided at a minimum by private employers or by the government. That will save tens or billions of dollars in health care billing procedures. Third, we have give people strong incentives to engage in managed competition, to get into groups that provide a comprehensive basis health care package that moves away from the incentives to provide fee for services that drive cost up. Fourth, we have to have targeted spending limits on a state basis. Fifth, we have to do something about the spiralling cost of drug and medical equipment that are rising at a rate far in excess of inflation. Here in Arkansas, we know alot about this because our senator, David Pryor has proposed some very innovative solutions to bring drug prices back in line with inflation. Next, we got to put a basic set of health care clinics out in the cities and rural areas of this country where there are not enough primary and preventive health care services. And finally, we need an aggressive program of health care education in the schools and in the work place. These are the kinds of things that will hold down health care costs, save tens of billions of dollars and enable us to phase in universal coverage. Rising health care cost is the greatest single burden for American businesses both large and small. Rising health care cost and the shrinking availability of coverage are the greatest single fear for millions of Americans families. I think it is amazing that at a time when our health care system is in critical condition, causing rampant insecurity and worry and heartbreak to Americans all over this country. Providing the single biggest cause of our budget deficit and threatening to wreck our attempts to become competitive in the global economy that this administration resists every, single attempt to bring the American system in line with what our competitors are doing. The German system over the last five years kept health cost under the rate of inflation while our cost went up by more than twice the rate of inflation. Mr. Bush does not have a plan of treatment. It is time to stop the politics of blame and fear mongering and he should step aside and let an administration govern that will finally tackle this health care crisis in a serious way once and for all,for the benefit of the American people and the safety and security of longterm health of the American economy. End of Remarks