    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
    [February 23, 1999]
    [Pages 241-243]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks on the ``Insure Kids Now'' Initiative
    February 23, 1999

        The President. Thank you very much. Let me begin by saying how very
    much I appreciate all of you here who are a part of this historic day. I
    thank my longtime friend Governor Carper
    for his generous remarks and his great stories. He almost broke my
    concentration, though. I'll spend the rest of the day trying to remember
    what my first answer was to whether there was a noise when a tree falls
    in the forest. [Laughter]
        I thank you, Governor Leavitt, for
    your outstanding leadership and your concern for our children. I'd like
    to, again, acknowledge the presence of Governor Angus King of Maine and Mary Herman;
    Governor and Mrs. Knowles of Alaska; Governor Vilsack of
    Iowa; Mrs.  Rossello from
    Puerto Rico; Mrs. Underwood from West
    Virginia. And I thank all the members of the Governors' conference who
    are here.
        There's one private citizen here I would like to acknowledge, and
    that is Bud Chiles, the son of the late Governor
    Lawton Chiles of Florida, who has been very active in this endeavor, as
    well. I thank him.
        We have a distinguished bipartisan delegation from the United States
    Congress here: Senator Hatch, here supporting
    his Governor from Utah; Senator Specter from
    Pennsylvania; Congresswoman Diana DeGette from
    Colorado; Congresswoman Anna Eshoo from
    northern California; Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee from Texas; Congressman Bart Stupak from the upper peninsula of Michigan. He is the only
    person in the room who thinks it is warm outside today. [Laughter]
        I'd also like to thank the Smith family for coming, and I hope the
    boys weren't too embarrassed to stand up. They look very healthy to me,
    and that's reassuring. [Laughter] And I'd like to thank these beautiful
    children for being here--over here, and their families. When you think
    about what this is all about, just kind of look over there.
        I want to thank the National Governors' Association. I want to thank
    Secretary Shalala, who is indefatigable. If
    I ask her to do something, sooner or later I will come to regret it--
    [laughter]--because she will do it, and I will wind up doing whatever it
    is I'm supposed to do to make sure it gets done. She is not only the
    longest serving person in her position ever, she is also the most
    energetic, and that is no disrespect to her predecessors. I have never
    known anybody with as much energy as she has, with the possible
    exception of her mother, who I understand is still winning tennis
    tournaments in her eighties. [Laughter]
        I'd also like to thank the First Lady, without whom I probably would not know very much about
    these issues. When I met her in 1971,

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    she was already obsessed with them. She took an extra year when we were
    in law school to work at the Yale Child Studies Center and the Yale
    University Hospital so that she could put her legal learning to work to
    help the health of our children.
        When you talked about our home State having 38,000 people signed up,
    we have less than one percent of the population. That means if everybody
    was doing that well, we'd already have 4 million kids signed up for this
    program, and that is in no small measure due to a group called the
    Arkansas Advocates for Families and Children, which Hillary founded over 20 years ago now. So I thank her
    for all that she has done.
        When the Congress passed the bipartisan balanced budget in 1997, it
    was a truly historic act, and most of the publicity that surrounded that
    endeavor came from the sheer relief the country felt that finally we had
    done something about the deficit. But it's important to point out that
    there were a lot of very important provisions within that very large
    law, but none more important than the $24 billion allocated to provide
    health insurance. We estimated at that time--to up to 5 million kids,
    which we estimated at that time were about half of the uninsured
    children in our country.
        It is inconceivable that a country with as much economic prosperity
    as we now enjoy, and the best health care system in the world, would
    leave 10 million--now nearly 11 million--children without health
    insurance. We know many of them are eligible for Medicaid, but their
    parents don't know it. We know there are a lot of hard-working families
    now whose incomes are too high to qualify for Medicaid, but they apply,
    or qualify, for the Children's Health Insurance Programs now that the
    States are operating around the country. But they don't know it.
        Now, we knew when we signed this law into effect--I'll never forget
    Donna Shalala telling us that, you know, we can pass this law, but we've
    already got--at that time--over 3 million kids eligible for Medicaid who
    don't sign up and don't know it. So we knew then that, to make the tree
    heard in the forest, to extend the Governor's metaphor, to make the
    health insurance program more than an empty promise, we'd have to
    somehow get the word out to parents.
        Last week--you've heard all these stories--last week I had an
    incredible experience at a health care forum in New Hampshire. I met a
    woman named Christine Monteiro, who has
    run a small business with her husband, a solar energy business, for 11
    years. And like all small businesses, she had her ups and her downs. But
    the hardest times came when her kids needed health care and they
    couldn't afford the health insurance.
        She found out about it the way we don't want people to have to find
    out about it, even though better that she found out than not. She had to
    take repeated visits to the doctor, with her child. And finally, a
    health care worker at the medical clinic told her that she might be
    eligible for New Hampshire's CHIP program. She applied immediately and
    found that her daughter's visits were all covered, and she saved up to
    $1,000 a month for a very serious illness for her child.
        Christine and her family were lucky. Not everybody, even who would
    come into a medical facility, might know. This should not be a matter of
    luck. We're here because all of us, in our various roles in life,
    recognize that we have an obligation to use every possible tool, every
    possible response, to reach more of the hard-working families like those
    you've heard about and seen today.
        Government has a role to play. Secretary Shalala talked about it.
    Our national campaign is called ``Insure Kids Now.'' We've already heard
    about the remarkable National Governors' Association effort, working
    with our administration and Bell Atlantic. The national toll-free
    number--I'm going to say it again--I like to say toll-free numbers, you
    know. There's some chance it'll get on television if I say it--
    [laughter]--one of the few things I can think of to say that is subject
    to absolutely no controversy. [Laughter] I could stand up here for 10
    minutes and just repeat the toll-free number. I'll say it again: 1-877-
    KIDS-NOW. Not hard to remember and important not to forget.
        As you've heard, because of the work of the NGA, you can get State-
    specific information. Because when the Congress set this program up in
    the Balanced Budget Act, and we strongly supported this, we realized we
    couldn't possibly design a program in Washington that would cover all
    the different circumstances that existed from State to State. So all
    these programs were set up and then approved State by State. So this is
    very, very important that we get this information out to people in the
    form in which

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    it is most usable. And again, I want to thank Governors Carper and Leavitt for
    their leadership in this critical past year, and all the other Governors
    for their support.
        Secretary Shalala told you about some of the things we're doing at
    the Federal level to reach more uninsured children. But let's be frank:
    To reach them all--to reach them all--everyone who can touch the life of
    a child or the child's parents needs to be involved in this effort.
        Today we're here to announce an unprecedented commitment, from media
    to business, from the health care industry to grassroots organizations,
    all over our Nation, to inform families of these new health insurance
    options. We begin with an all-out media campaign to reach as many
    families as possible. NBC is unveiling a new primetime PSA to raise
    awareness about Children's Health Insurance Programs. Epatha
    Merkeson, one of the stars of NBC's ``Law
    and Order,'' who appears in the PSA, is here with us today. Thank you
    very much for being here.
        ABC and Viacom/Paramount will soon begin airing a PSA the First
    Lady made to inform families about
    the ``Insure Kids Now'' toll-free number. They have representatives
    here. I thank them. The National Association of Broadcasters will make
    the First Lady's PSA available to all of its member stations. Black
    Entertainment Television and Turner Broadcasting will also run the ad.
        Before I go forward, I'd like to just unveil the two PSA's here for
    the first time. Let's take a look at them.

    [At this point, the public service announcements for the ``Insure Kids
    Now'' initiative were shown.]

        The President. I'd also like to thank the representatives from
    Univision here. They will run a PSA in Spanish, made by HHS.
        And we're not stopping there: Major corporations, from Kmart and
    Ralph's Grocery to McDonald's to General Motors; from the American
    Medical Response to Blue Cross/Blue Shield Association to Pfizer, all of
    whom are represented here, will help make sure that the ``Insure Kids
    Now'' toll-free number appears on grocery bags and restaurant placemats,
    on school buses and in doctors' offices, even on the toothbrushes that
    dental hygienists give their patients. And with the help of
    organizations like America's Promise, the United Way, and a host of
    community-based groups, families will hear about health insurance from
    the people they trust the most, from teachers and principals, doctors
    and nurses, rabbis and ministers.
        Ultimately, of course, parents must take responsibility for their
    children's health. Our message must be: What you don't know about your
    children's health insurance options can hurt them. It's up to you to
    find out if your child is eligible for this health insurance. So call
    the toll-free number: 1-887-KIDS-NOW.
        Working together, we can reach those kids. Look at those kids there.
    There's over 10 million of them. They deserve to be as healthy as we
    feel today. And we can do it for them.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at approximately 3 p.m. in the East Room at
    the White House. In his remarks, he referred to Gov. Thomas R. Carper of
    Delaware, chairman, and Gov. Michael O. Leavitt, vice chairman, National
    Governors' Association; Gov. Angus S. King, Jr., of Maine and his wife,
    Mary J. Herman; Gov. Tony Knowles of Alaska and his wife, Susan; Gov.
    Tom Vilsack of Iowa; Irma Margarita (Maga) Rossello, wife of Gov. Pedro
    Rossello of Puerto Rico; Hovah Underwood, wife of Gov. Cecil H.
    Underwood of West Virginia; and actress S. Epatha Merkeson. The
    transcript made available by the Office of the Press Secretary also
    included the remarks of the First Lady.