    [Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 30, Number 1 (Monday, January 10, 1994)]
    [Pages 3-4]
    [Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

    <R04>
    Remarks on Health Care and an Exchange With Reporters

    January 3, 1994

        The President. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this first meeting
    of 1994 for our administration, a meeting devoted to charting our course
    this year on health care. We all look back now in American history at--
    remember 1935 is the year that the American people adopted Social
    Security; 1965 is the year the American people adopted Medicare. I
    believe that 1994 will go down in history as the year when, after
    decades and decades of false starts and lame excuses and being overcome
    by special interests, the American people finally, finally had health
    care security for all.
        This will be a year when we attempt to fix what's broken with our
    health care system, keep what's right, to emphasize the program that we
    outlined of guaranteed private insurance for every American,
    comprehensive benefits that can never be taken away, and a system that
    gives people who presently don't have insurance and small businesses
    greater power to choose affordable quality health insurance.
        In the days and weeks ahead, I will be asking the American people
    and the Congress to go beyond rhetoric to fact and to ask and answer
    some simple questions: Of all the available alternatives, which ones
    guarantee health security to all Americans? Of all the available
    alternatives, which ones carry the greatest promise of reducing
    bureaucracy, paperwork, and absolutely wasted billions of dollars? Of
    all the available alternatives, which ones guarantee more choices of
    health care, not only to the patients who really matter but also to the
    doctors and the health care providers? Of all the available
    alternatives, which ones guarantee the least second-guessing of the
    doctor-patient relationship? If we can have these simple questions asked
    and answered, I believe that, together, we can solve this great riddle
    which has bedeviled our country for too many years now, strengthen our
    economy, and restore a great sense of security to the American people.
        We will do this in connection with our efforts to also dramatically
    alter the education and job training systems of the country to provide
    greater economic security and our efforts to pass a comprehensive crime
    bill to provide greater personal and family and community security.
        I am looking very much forward to this year. I want to thank the
    First Lady and Secretary Shalala and Ira Magaziner for the work they
    have done on health care. I want to welcome Pat Griffin and Harold Ickes
    to our team. I'm glad that George Stephanopoulos will be taking a more
    active role in working on the health care debate in Congress.
        Let me just say one last thing in closing. I suppose every Christmas
    and New Year's gives us the opportunity to reflect on the time we've
    just spent and the time that lies ahead. But I think it is so easy for
    us to forget here that what we do affects the lives of real people and
    that what is at stake here is not some great looming political battle.
    What is at stake here is the actual living conditions of the American
    people, whether families who work hard and do their very best to do what
    they're supposed to do are going to be able to know that their children
    will always have health care, whether we are going to be able to
    maintain a health care system and still have the money that we need to
    invest in a growing and highly competitive global economy so that
    America will be strong. And if we can keep that in mind, if we can move
    beyond the rhetoric and the smoke and the process to keep in mind every
    day that real people's interests are at stake here and that America must
    not go into the 21st century without health security for all, without a
    dramatically improved system of education and

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    training, without a new commitment to the security of our families and
    our children, I think we're going to be in good shape.
        And lastly, let me say I very, very much hope that this will be a
    bipartisan effort, that Democrats and Republicans will be working
    together and that we will resolve in the new year not to further a
    partisan interest but to further the interest of the people who sent us
    all here.
        Thank you very much.

    Health Care Reform

        Q. Mr. President, how much are you willing to compromise in view
    of--on this plan itself, in view of the strong opposition in many
    quarters and, of course, on the Hill?
        The President. Well, I think, first of all, we are going to see a
    fleshing out of all the alternatives, something that hasn't happened
    yet. The burden has been borne almost entirely by our plan, which is
    something I was willing to do. But now we need to look at the cost of
    the status quo and the cost and the consequences of the other plans and
    do what is best.
        I have said all along what my bottom line is: That we have to have
    comprehensive benefits that can never be taken away. That we cannot go
    on being the only country in the world with an advanced economy that
    cannot figure out how to guarantee health care security to all our
    people. Now, that leaves a whole lot of room for working out the
    details. We should emphasize preventive and primary care; we ought to
    emphasize efficiencies; we ought to reduce the bureaucracy; and we ought
    to do it in a way that will lower the rate in which these costs have
    been going up. But the main thing we have to do is to finally solve the
    riddle of providing health care security to all Americans.

    Whitewater Development Corp.

        Q. Mr. President, do you support the idea of naming a special
    prosecutor to investigate the Whitewater affair?
        The President. I have nothing to say about that. I've said we'd turn
    the records over. There is nothing else for me to say about that.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:15 a.m. in the Roosevelt Room at the
    White House.