[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 95 (Wednesday, July 20, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: July 20, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                              HEALTH CARE

  Mr. SPECTER. Madam President, I had started to say that I had sought 
recognition to speak on the pending nomination of Stephen Breyer to the 
Supreme Court of the United States, but I want to make a comment or two 
about the speech just made by the distinguished Senator from Texas [Mr. 
Gramm].
  I think it is very important, as Senator Gramm has noted, to focus on 
the cost of the President's health care program. I think that a 
significant advance was made yesterday when the President said, in 
effect, that he was prepared to accommodate to the realities and find a 
plan which worked toward the goal of comprehensive health coverage but 
had some flexibility.
  I have long shared the President's objective of comprehensive health 
care for all Americans. I agree with what Senator Gramm has pointed 
out, that the complexity of the President's plan and the absence of 
choice from the essential ingredient of freedom was an underlying 
weakness. I think it was depicted graphically by the chart which my 
office prepared, showing at a glance 105 new agencies, boards, and 
commissions created by the President's plan and new tasks for some 47 
other agencies, boards, and commissions, so that the new bureaucracy 
was absolutely overwhelming.
  I think we are now on a track where many of us have been headed for 
some time on health care, as outlined in the legislation I introduced 
on the first day of the Congress, January 21, 1993, S. 18: to retain 
the American health care system as it provides the best coverage in the 
world for 86.1 percent of the American people and to target the 
problems of coverage for the 37 million now not covered; portability, 
that is, coverage on a change of jobs; coverage for preexisting 
conditions; and cost containment to hold down the spiraling cost.
  I believe that all of us in the Congress have a very heavy duty in 
the course of the next several weeks and we should not--I repeat, not--
be rushed to judgment as we will legislate on a subject where none is 
more important to the American people, health care, virtually a $1 
trillion industry, 14 percent of the gross national product.
  I do hope we can craft a program which will serve the interests of 
America, which will retain the essence of our current system, the free 
enterprise system, and which will target and fix the specific problems 
of that current system.

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