Newsgroups: alt.politics.clinton,sci.med
Subject: ==> Clinton Speech to Am. Nurses Assoc.
Supersedes: <92283.214456U56503@uicvm.uic.edu>
Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago
Date: Sunday, 11 Oct 1992 17:23:02 CDT
From: <U56503@uicvm.uic.edu>

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Information in the public interest which does not imply that it
is the opinion of UIC.  Contact 75300.3115@compuserve.com for
further information.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Remarks Governor Bill Clinton
Address to the American Nurses Association
Pittsburgh, California
August 15, 1992


Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you. Thank you very much.  Thank you
ladies and gentlemen for being here.   We're keeping ourselves
healthy getting our quota fresh air for the day.  I want to thank
Genna Trotter Best, Barbara Lumpkin, and Judy Martin-Hollind for
the support of the nurses of America and for this historic
endorsement.

I want to thank all the people who are here today but know two in
particular, who are friends of mine.  First, your Congressman,
George Miller and the Congressman to be, Wendell Williams.
I ask you to remember that this country can not get a good national
health plan without a president committed to it.  And a Congress to
vote for it.

This endorsement is especially meaningful to me because I am the
first child in three generations of my family not to become a
nurse.  My grandmother, God rest her soul, and my mother, may think
I have finally arrived today.


Ladies and gentlemen, the crisis we face in health care has a
deeply human face and a stark economic reality.  The truth is we
can not make America, the place it ought to be for all our people,
until we finally join the ranks of other advanced nations and
provide a basic package of comprehensive but affordable health care
to all Americans.

And the truth is we can never get our government's budget deficit
under control, restore the health of our manufacturing economy,
rebuild small businesses of American and have a thriving, growing,
productive society until we can join the ranks of our competitors
with an affordable package  of health care for all.

In no state is the health of the American people, the health of the
health care system and health of the economy, more clearly evident
than in California today.  The interrelationship of these problems
has lead California to an eleven billion dollar state budget
deficit occasioned by a twenty-five percent drop in state revenues
and continued exploding cost of a fractured over-extensive,
entirely too bureaucratic health care system.

You heard Gina refer to this, but I want each one of you to focus
on this as Americans.  While the average American is working harder
for lower wages than they were making ten years ago, we are
spending thirty percent more of our income on health care than any
other nation in the world, thirty percent more.  And yet, over
thirty five million of our fellow Americans have no health
insurance.  Each year more small businesses stop insuring their
employees because they can't afford it.  And more and more larger
businesses evade insurance by hiring more part-time and temporary
employees.

This is an occasion for sympathy for everyone.  For only the United
States Government refuses to help its business community in
controlling health care costs.  Only the United States Government
throws the small business community and the manufacturing sector to
the wolves.  And tells them to figure out how to handle it.  And
then, they are put into the position of being the bad guy with
their own employees.  And a feudal attempt to avoid paying, for
that is the ultimate lesson we all pay for the system we have one
way or another, anyway.

If we don't pay in higher insurance costs, and higher worker's
compensation costs;  we pay in higher taxes and bigger deficits; in
increasing social security, and in massive costs in the out years
for every child that is born with birth weight with an unavoidable
mental or physical problem.   We'll all pay for that.

(Inaudible).....eventually get some kind of health care but only
when its too, too expensive; the cows out of the barn and the bills
passed onto the rest of us.

Only the United States...only the United States waste as much money
as we do on the organization of insurance, the proliferation of
paperwork, and the regulation of the government of  health care and
the way that it adds billions of dollars to the cost of health
care.

Very few countries do what we do and say we're going to pay more
for more services whether they're needed or not; whether they're at
the appropriate level or not; whether they could have been provided
at lower cost at an earlier stage by people who would properly be
trained to provide them, like nurses and nurse practitioners.

The other day, my opponent in this election, Mr. Bush said that I
wanted to give the American people a health care system that had
the compassion of the KGB and the competence of the House Post
Office.  I would argue today my friends, that's exactly what we
have---the most inefficient system in the world.

We must find a way to keep what is good about our system and change
what is not.  What is good is that we have a lot of wonderful
providers--nurses, doctors, hospitals, other professionals-- who
are out there trying to help the people who come within there
purview and we should retain the best features of that.  We should
give more power, not less power to our consumers to make judgments
about their health care and their lives.  But we should enable them
to make judgments at cost that we can all afford.  That's what the
American Nurse's Association has tried to do with their health care
plan.

In the first hundred days of our Administration, Al Gore and I will
send to the United States Congress an attempt to pass a program
that finally will bring America in line with the rest of the world;
with a plan for a comprehensive, affordable health care, for every
citizen in this country as a right, not a privilege.

Contrary to the assertion of our opponents, it will not be a
bureaucratic nightmare, it will be less bureaucratic than the
present system and will save tens of billions of dollars by
mandating insurance reform so that people can change jobs even
though they got a sick family member and so that we will be insured
in broad, large pools, not small, expensive groups.

There will be a basic package of benefits that must be included in
everyone's coverage so that we can simplify the billing that, now
is a headache for every hospital and doctors office in America.
The United States of America today, with many places have a nurses'
shortage.  Clerical employment in hospitals is going up four times
the rate of health care giver employment because of the crazy
bureaucratic nightmare of our financing system and we're going to
have to simplify it.

We must stop rationing health care on the front end by putting more
clinics out in inner cities and rural areas and making basic health
care accessible to all Americans.

We must give people incentives...strong incentives to join health
care groups so that their health care can be managed and they're
not paying more for each particular system so that we can control
the cost of health care and give people up front service when they
need it.  We need to stop this crazy system we have now which is
loaded on the back end, instead of the front end of the health care
need and which spends too much money on things which are
unnecessary.  We've got to manage this system better and we can.
We know how to do it.  There are people in America doing it today.
We can take the best of our free enterprise system with an
organized framework established by the national government and turn
this system around.

And let me say one other thing.  Down at Houston next week, our
opponents are going to say that this will take a big tax increase.
Well, let me say, everyday you're paying a tax increase for health
care.  Everyday the rising cost of health care is breaking your
back.

What I want to do is not lead with a big tax increase, but lead
with a costs control; lead with the insurance reform; lead with the
managed care; lead with reducing the cost of drugs and technology;
lead with squeezing the unnecessary costs out of the system.  And
then, if there is money to be paid by those employers who offered
no insurance coverage, for example, now, it would be at a far lower
rate than they would have to pay under this system.  And people
would be ask to pay based on their real ability to pay not based on
a system that is out of control, inhumane, running a muck, and
making money only for middle people, instead reinvesting money in
the money in the health of American citizens.  We are going to
change this system.

Ladies and gentlemen, you must decide in this election whether you
have the courage to try new ideas, leave the old ways and make
America competitive and healthy, and vital and diverse and strong
in the Post Cold War Era.

Nothing can be done...I will say it again, nothing can be done to
really bring this deficit under control; to really make our economy
health again; and make the country more humane again unless we are
willing to acknowledge that we don't have it right on health care,
other countries have done better and we're going to have to do what
has to be done to provide affordable health care to all Americans.

And when they tell you...when they tell you next week, it can't be
done in Houston, you just remember this:  In Germany, look at the
carpenters back there--the working people that's for us--in
Germany, for the last six years, the cost of health care has been
kept under inflation and the average manufacturing worker makes
twenty percent more than the average American; works a shorter work
week; gets a four week paid vacation a year, and has affordable
health care.  Don't tell me it can't be done.

And when they tell you it can't be done in America, look at Hawaii
where they have the guts to require insurance reform a few years
ago and where they put money into basic health clinics.  And well,
you may say, they're all rich and healthy.  But that's not true.
Twenty percent of the people in the Hawaiian health care system are
poor, native islanders who come there to get health care and health
insurance are fifty percent below the American national average and
they cover ninety-eight percent of the people who live there.
Don't tell me it can't be done.

Don't forget whose being hurt on this.  Don't forget all the people
who don't have long term health care and who are forced to spend
themselves into poverty and put themselves into institutions
instead of being able to stay at home with nursing care and
personal care and pay only a percentage of their income because we
don't have a system.

I met a woman the other day who had seven children.  She had a
fifty thousand dollar a year job and she had to quit that job and
get on welfare because one of her kids was so sick, nobody would
pay the bill unless she got medicaid.

I met a woman the other day with a college degree, dying to go to
work but she had a beautiful young child with spindibifida and no
one would hire her so the only way she could take care of her child
was to stay on welfare so she could get medicaid.

I met a young couple the other day with three children and the
youngest child had cerebral palsy and they could not be insured
through the mother's health insurance plan.  She worked for a small
community non-profit organization with twenty employees.  And their
choice was to fire that woman and put her family into the streets
or raise their premiums for each employee two hundred dollars a
month.  Is that the kind of choices Americans are to be making?

And do you want that kind of choice when insurance companies today
only put eighty-four cents on the dollar into health care as
opposed to ninety-five cents in all of our competing countries and
we're squandering sixty billion dollars a year on insurance profits
and administrative costs alone?  Do you want that kind of system?

You just have one choice.  And Al Gore and I need your vote.  Thank
you very much.  And God Bless you.


Newsgroups: alt.politics.clinton