    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book I)]
    [January 25, 1993]
    [Pages 13-15]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks and an Exchange With Reporters on Health Care Reform
    January 25, 1993

        I want to say good afternoon to members of the press. We have just
    finished a very lively discussion about the massive task before us in
    health care. Vice President Gore and I made a strong commitment to the
    American people during the last election that we would present to the
    United States Congress, within 100 days, a plan that would take strong
    action to control health care costs in America and to begin to provide
    for the health care needs of all Americans.
        As I traveled across the country last year, no stories moved me more
    than the health care stories. As I think all of you know, many of the
    people in our Faces of Hope luncheon last week during the Inaugural were
    people who were struggling to overcome incredible adversity occasioned
    by their health care problems. We've met elderly people choosing every
    week between medicine and food; we've met people forced to leave their
    jobs to get on public assistance to deal with children with terrific
    problems; we've met countless people who can't change their jobs because
    they or someone in their family have had health care problems.
        You will all remember, at the economic conference that we sponsored
    in Little Rock, perhaps the overwhelming concern of the business people
    there, of all sizes, was doing something about the cost and the
    availability of health care. When the Vice President and I met with the
    big three auto makers and the president of the United Auto Workers, once
    again they said, if you want to do something to help rebuild the

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    auto industry, do something to control health care costs. And as Mr.
    Panetta just said again in a rather plaintive way before you came in,
    there is no way we will ever get control of the Federal budget deficit
    unless we do something about health care.
        The message is pretty simple. It's time to make sense of America's
    health care system. It's time to bring costs under control and to make
    our families and businesses secure. It's time to make good on the
    American promise that too many people have talked about for too long,
    while we have continued to spend more than 30 percent more of our income
    on health care than any other nation in the world, get less for it, and
    see 100,000 Americans a month losing their health insurance.
        As a first step in responding to the demands of literally millions
    of Americans, today I am announcing the formation of the President's
    Task Force on National Health Reform. Although the issue is complex, the
    task force's mission is simple: Build on the work of the campaign and
    the transition, listen to all parties, and prepare health care reform
    legislation to be submitted to Congress within 100 days of our taking
    office.
        This task force will be chaired by the First Lady, Hillary Rodham
    Clinton, and will include the Secretaries of Health and Human Services,
    Treasury, Defense, Veterans Affairs, Commerce, Labor, as well as the
    Director of the Office of Management and Budget and senior White House
    staff members.
        I am grateful that Hillary has agreed to chair this task force and
    not only because it means she'll be sharing some of the heat I expect to
    generate. As many of you know, while I was Governor of my State, Hillary
    chaired the Arkansas Education Standards Committee, which created public
    school accreditation standards that have since become a model for
    national reform. She served as my designee on the Southern Regional Task
    Force on Infant Mortality, was also chair of our State's rural health
    committee in 1979 and 1980, a time in which we initiated a number of
    health care reforms that benefit the people of my State to the present
    day. And on the board of the Arkansas Children's Hospital, she helped to
    establish our State's first neonatal unit.
        I think that in the coming months the American people will learn, as
    the people of our State did, that we have a First Lady of many talents,
    who most of all can bring people together around complex and difficult
    issues to hammer out consensus and get things done.
        Here in the White House, Hillary will work with my Domestic Policy
    Adviser, Carol Rasco; my Senior Policy Adviser, Ira Magaziner; and the
    head of our health care transition team, Judy Feder. I've asked all of
    them to be as inclusive as possible. And as a part of that, we are
    inviting the American public to write us here at the White House with
    their suggestions. All of them should be sent to the Task Force on
    National Health Care Reform at the White House in Washington, DC 20500.
        We will no doubt be criticized by some for undertaking something
    very, very ambitious. But as I said in my Inaugural Address, we're going
    to have to make some tough choices in order to control health care
    costs, to bring them down within inflation, and to provide health care
    for all. In order to preserve the vitality of the American private
    sector, in order to keep the American people's budget here at this
    national level from going totally bankrupt, we are going to have to make
    some tough choices. Powerful lobbies and special interests may seek to
    derail our efforts, and we may make some people angry. But we are
    determined to come up with the best possible solution.
        And in my lifetime, at least, there has never been so much consensus
    that something has to be done. We have a plan from the American Nurses
    Association, from the American Academy of Physicians, from the American
    Academy of Family Practice, from the health insurance industry itself.
    We have a plan uniting business and labor. There is an overwhelming
    knowledge that we have to move and move now. We are going to do our best
    to reform our system. We are going to do our best to meet the human
    needs of the people of this country.
        There are all kinds of problems that have to be dealt with that we
    haven't even discussed yet: access to care in inner cities and rural
    areas, coverage for little children, dealing with the AIDS crisis
    adequately, still unmet needs in the area of women's health care, the
    problem of the veterans in this country who don't have access to care,
    even as their own network goes broke. All these issues will be dealt
    with in this task force. This is going to be an unprecedented effort.
    And let me just say, in general, we're going to set up a workroom, kind
    of like the war room we had in the campaign, over

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    in the Executive Office Building. And all of the departments you see
    here represented and leaders you see represented around this table will
    be represented in that room. And we are going to work constantly, day
    and night, until we have a health care plan ready to submit to the
    Congress that we believe we can pass.
        Finally, let me say I am committed to doing this in a partnership
    with the Congress. I will ask the leadership of the Congress to work
    with me on a bipartisan basis and to do whatever we can to make sure
    that as we present the plan, we have also maximized its chances of early
    passage in the Congress.
        I thank all these people for their willingness to serve and to work
    together. I hope the American people will see just how passionately I
    personally am committed to doing something about health care reform.
    We've talked about it long enough. The time has come to act, and I have
    chosen the course that I think is most likely to lead to action that
    will improve the lives of millions of Americans.
        Q. Mr. President, can you provide universal coverage without driving
    up the deficit?
        The President. I think you can do it if you control the cost of
    health care. You have to really--let me just--I don't want to get into
    one of these things that provoke a lot of cartoons about my policy wonk
    weakness, but we're at 14 percent of our income on health care now. The
    next most expensive health care system in the world is Canada's. It's at
    about 9.2 percent of income. That is a huge difference, massive. And
    yet, every other major country with which we compete provides some basic
    health care to everybody, something we don't do. So the answer to your
    question is, in my judgment, if we do this right over the next 8 years,
    you're going to see huge savings in tax dollars and even bigger savings,
    more than twice the savings, in private dollars that will free up
    hundreds of billions of dollars literally between now and the end of the
    decade to reinvest in economic growth and opportunity.
        In the short run, our tough call will be, how do you take the
    savings and phase in universal coverage, or should there be some other
    way to pay for that? We've got some short-term calls to make. But
    there's no question that in the medium term, 5 to 8 years, you're
    looking at massive savings with universal coverage, in both tax dollars
    and private sector dollars, if we do it right.
        Q. Mr. President, do you intend to pay the First Lady for her
    efforts?
        The President. No. No. I never have paid her for her public service
    efforts. I don't want to start now.
        Q. Is 100 days hard and fast, or are you willing to be flexible on
    that if it's not quite ready?
        The President. If it were 101 days I wouldn't have a heart attack,
    but I don't want to--I want it done now. I think we know what the major
    alternatives are. What we have to do now is something nobody's done, and
    that is to meld them into the best possible legislation, taking account
    of some of the problems that exist with every course.
        And let me make one acknowledgment on the front end about this.
    Legitimate objections can be raised to any course of action in this
    area. That is, there is no such thing as a perfect solution. So whatever
    course we choose to take, somebody can say, ``Well, it's not perfect for
    these reasons.'' To that, I have two answers, and I'm going to say this
    until I'm blue in the face for this entire year until we get action.
    Number one, the worst thing we can do is keep on doing what we're doing
    now, because more and more people are falling out of the system and the
    cost is becoming more and more burdensome to those who are still bearing
    it. So whatever course we take, we will preserve what is best about
    American health care, some consumer choice and the quality of care. So
    whatever problems we have, they won't be as bad as the ones we've got
    now. Number two, this is not going to be the end of the line. Whatever
    problems are there can be fixed later. But we will never, never get
    anywhere if we stand paralyzed, because there's no such thing as a
    perfect alternative.
        Q. What factors did you consider in giving this high-profile
    position to Mrs. Clinton?
        The President. Of all the people I've ever worked with in my life,
    she's better at organizing and leading people from a complex beginning
    to a certain end than anybody I've ever worked with in my life. And
    that's what I want done here.

    Note: The President spoke at 2:02 p.m. in the Roosevelt Room at the
    White House at a meeting of the Health Care Working Group.