[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 29, Number 49 (Monday, December 13, 1993)]
[Pages 2540-2541]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks to Senior Citizens

 December 6, 1993

    Today we will have between 7,000 and 8,000 senior citizens going 
through the White House--just today--seeing and getting the tour and 
everything. So I'm glad you did it, and Hillary and I just wanted to 
comment and say hello to you and ask you just to take a few minutes and 
visit with us about this year and what we're going to be doing next year 
on the health care issue, because our efforts to change the health care 
system affect senior citizens about as much as any group in the country.
    And the most important things that I wanted to emphasize about what 
we're trying to do is first, we don't mess up what's all right now. We 
leave Medicare alone, the way it is, except that we add for senior 
citizens as well as for working people, a prescription drug benefit for 
the first time. When I ran for President--and I spent so much time in 
the New Hampshire area when I was running and I went to countless little 
meetings like this--the number one thing that people would tell me who 
were on Medicare is that they wanted a prescription drug benefit, that 
it was a terrible burden. So the way that this benefit will work is that 
every year there will be a $250 deductible after which everyone's 
Medicare policy will cover the drugs that they are prescribed plus a 
modest copay, a small one.
    The other thing that this does that I think is so important is to 
provide some options under long-term care. Today, there are a couple of 
problems with long-term care. One is that oftentimes people can't get it 
unless they spend themselves from Medicare down into the Medicaid 
eligibility, and then often the only option they have is a nursing home. 
So, what we want to do is to keep the nursing home option but to add in-
home care, to add community based--like boarding home--care to the 
nursing home option. And we will phase that in over a few years as we 
achieve savings from the other changes in the program. But those are the 
things that I think are very, very important to our country.
    The fastest growing group of Americans are people over 80. And we 
know that with proper medication people of all ages actually are more 
likely to stay out of hospitals, more likely to stay healthy, more 
likely to have lower health care costs over the long run. But that's 
especially true of senior citizens. We also know that with the fastest 
growing group of people being over 80, not everybody will be in the same 
condition. And more and more people will want to have the option to stay 
at home or maybe to leave for a few hours a day and be in some sort of 
community based care system. So, we think it's really important to move 
away from an undue bias on nursing homes to let people have broader

[[Page 2541]]

options. So, that's basically what this health care plan does.
    And we're going to do our best to try to pass it next year and bring 
about some real security for people who are--for younger people who 
don't have Medicare, the most important thing about it is it will give 
them a package of health care benefits that they can never lose. That's 
the biggest problem for people who are insured in the system today: they 
can lose their benefits. And about 100,000 Americans a month lose it 
permanently. A lot of Americans are insured at work, but their children 
aren't insured. There are all these problems, and those will be fixed. 
But for senior citizens, the number one benefit will be the prescription 
drugs and the change in the coverage of long-term care.

Note: The President spoke at 3:25 p.m. in the Oval Office at the White 
House.