THE WHITE HOUSE
       
                     Office of the Press Secretary
       
       _____________________________________________________________
       For Immediate Release                         August 17, l994
       
       
                       REMARKS BY THE FIRST LADY
                       AT CDF/HEALTHRIGHT EVENT
       
       
                MRS. CLINTON:  Thank you very much.  Thank you,
       Senator Dodd, and I particularly want to thank Senator Dodd
       for making children's health the first issue that the Senate
       addressed.  And Senator Riegle -- I want to thank Senator
       Riegle for making it an issue when the Senate Finance
       Committee was doing its deliberations.  Both of these
       Senators have consistently spoken out on behalf of children,
       and I am very grateful to both of them and want to thank
       them.  
       
                I know we've already heard from five wonderful
       witnesses about what is happening with children in their
       families.  And I see before me many others who could stand
       and tell their stories as well.  I would like, though, to
       introduce and to have stand the mothers of the children who
       are here. 
       
                I know we've already been able to meet Kathy and
       had a chance for her to talk about all of Jennifer's needs
       and how wonderfully Jennifer is doing in the face of all of
       those health problems and those 2 million dollars' worth of
       bills.
       
                But I also would like Rakeia's (phonetic) mother to
       stand, if she would.  And I also -- I cannot resist adding to
       Rakeia's story that -- what a state we have come to when a
       child, playing in one of our parks during a summer day, goes
       to play with sand and is hit by a bullet that strikes the
       glass that -- I don't know how many of you, as children,
       played -- but we used to spend hours with containers, filling
       them with sand and dumping them and making different objects
       with them.
       
                And I think about all of the time that I spent in
       parks and around sandboxes, and it is just extraordinary --
       unbelievably unacceptable -- that any child, anywhere in our
       country, would be playing in a park and have to cope with a
       stray bullet, and then be left with medical needs that cannot
       be met in a society that permits that to go on.
       
                So I certainly hope that -- in addition to your
       sharing your story about the needs for continuing health care
       that you're not receiving, I hope your story will stiffen the
       spine of those of us in this country and in this Congress who
       want to do something about crimes like that. 
       
                And Asha (phonetic), your mother is here, too,
       isn't she?  Would you stand up, as well?  Thank you very
       much.  
       
                Now, one of the great challenges that parents face
       when they have beautiful children, like Asha or Jennifer,
       with chronic conditions, is how they're going to meet their
       health needs on a daily, weekly, yearly basis.
       
                But particularly with something like diabetes --
       and I understand several of your other children have some
       ongoing health problems -- any possible economic change, any
       loss of a job, any layoff strikes terror much deeper than
       what is usually struck in most families, because the loss of
       health benefits is a matter, often, of life or death.  And
       it's also a problem when you have a disease like diabetes,
       that when a child gets older and is uninsurable, parents have
       to worry about that as well.
       
                I just don't understand why we add to the emotional
       trauma that comes with caring for a child who is ill the
       financial trauma and challenge that we often layer on top of
       that because of the insecurity about health care.
       
                As both Senators have said, and as Secretary Benson
       so well said, "It is not only the right thing to do to take
       care of health care problems, it is the economically smart
       thing to do as well."
       
                I have been in hospitals where adults with diabetes
       have not had the proper care.  They end up becoming very
       sick.  They sometimes have to face amputation of one of their
       limbs, usually a foot or a leg.  They then become much more
       expensive than if we had been able to take care of their
       health needs as they had gone along.  So this is a classic
       case where we are not investing in what we need to by taking
       care of children's needs. 
       
                And I want to thank you and your mother for coming
       here to help explain that to people.  Thank you very much. 
       And I bet Jessica's mother is here, too.
       
                And I hope everyone could hear Jessica, because she
       was so soft-spoken and so eloquent in what she had to say
       about her mother and her brother.  Because what Jessica was
       really saying is that if you're uninsured in this country,
       which means you are working, because, as she said, her mother
       is trying to support herself and Jessica and her brother on
       her own and not go on welfare, which would give her medical
       insurance.
       
                But if you are on your own, very often -- more
       often than we care to admit -- as Jessica said, sometimes
       people in hospitals are ugly to you because you don't have
       insurance.  Nobody likes to talk about this, but it needs to
       be talked about.  
       
                There are too many people, and there are far too
       many children who do not get the care they need to have. 
       Because when they show up at the emergency room, the first
       thing they're asked is, "How are you going to pay for your
       medical care?"  And if they cannot answer that with,
       "Insurance," or with a Medicaid or a Medicare card, they
       often go to the end of the line.
       
                And Dr. Koop, with whom I have traveled around the
       country talking about health care, frequently says, "If you
       are uninsured in America, you are three times more likely to
       die from the same medical problem as someone who is insured."
       
                And I have had the painful experience of talking to
       parents and grandparents whose children were turned away at
       emergency rooms, sent from hospital to hospital because they
       did not have insurance, and who either got much sicker or, in
       several instances, died because of that.  So Jessica's story
       about what happened to her brother because her mother chooses
       to work, chooses to pay taxes, chooses to try to be
       independent to take care of her children, puts her and her
       children at a disadvantage.
       
                There cannot be a worse indictment of a country
       than to say parents who work are going to be penalized when
       others who don't work will have their children's health needs
       taken care of.  That needs to be fixed, and it needs to be
       fixed now.  
                And finally, Ian, is your mother here, too?  Would
       you stand?  Thank you very much. 
       
                What Ian talked about, with the kinds of medication
       that he needs, and the blood tests that he needs, and the
       costs of all of that, is a very frequent problem.  Because he
       can be kept functioning well and performing in school and
       doing what he needs to do as long as he is properly medicated
       and that medication is properly supervised.
       
                And what we find so often with children who have
       the kind of medical situation Ian does or children with
       asthma -- children with other problems that can be maintained
       -- is if they get proper medical care, they're fine.  They
       can function well.  They can be absolutely involved in all
       sorts of activities.
       
                But so many of them, if they're either uninsured or
       if they're parents' insurance don't cover all of the costs,
       then the chances are that they will go without the kind of
       regular care that they need, which causes problems, then, in
       the conditions that they have.
       
                If we stop and think about Senator Riegle's story
       or the stories that any of us could tell, I think that it's
       absolutely clear there is not one of us in this room, who's a
       mother or a father, who would not want to do everything we
       could for our own child and to make sure that child had
       whatever medical care was needed.  And yet we make the job of
       being a mother or a father very, very hard for too many
       parents today.
       
                And it is my hope that, finally, the United States
       can join the ranks of other countries, because every problem
       you heard about -- every problem you heard about -- would be
       taken care of without the anguish and the cost to parents in
       most of the advanced countries that we compete with every
       single day.  They have figured out how to take care of
       juvenile diabetes, how to monitor chronic conditions, how to
       deal with the problems of making sure every child gets the
       health care that is needed.
       
                So I hope that our country will make good on its
       primary obligation, and that is to take care of our children. 
       And I'm proud to be with two United States Senators who
       understand that we should treat every child as though that
       child were our own, because none of us knows what may happen
       to our own children.  And we owe it to ourselves, as well as
       every parent, to make sure that every child has the kind of
       health care they need.  So please help us achieve health care
       reform this year. 
       
                                  END
       
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