[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 30, Number 26 (Monday, July 4, 1994)]
[Pages 1360-1361]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks to Medical Educators

June 27, 1994

    Thank you very much, Dr. Peck, Dr. Rabkin, Secretary Shalala. I want 
to thank also Dr. Michael Johns, Dr. Herbert Pardes, and Dr. Charles 
Epps for the work they did to bring together this very distinguished 
group of representatives from our academic health centers around 
America. And I'm sure that the press knows it, but it's not just the 
people who are up here but all the people who are here in the room have 
come from all over America, from every region of our country, in very 
large numbers, with very strong feelings about the central issue in this 
health care debate, which is whether we are finally going to join the 
ranks of other advanced countries in the world by providing health care 
to all Americans and still preserving what is best and what is excellent 
about our health care system.
    The interesting thing is that the point which is being made here 
today, which I think has not been made with sufficient clarity before, 
is that over the long run and now increasingly in the short run, the 
only way to preserve what is best about our health care system is to fix 
what is wrong with it, to provide basic, decent coverage to all 
Americans. Otherwise you will see continued incredible financial 
pressures on the academic health care centers, continued difficulty in 
providing for the health care of the people who are now in your charge, 
and eventual difficulty in training and educating the world's finest 
physicians and other health care professionals. I do not believe that 
connection has yet been made.
    I also want to thank you, particularly Dr. Rabkin, for making the 
point about rationing. The suggestion that somehow a very important 
benefit package that includes primary and preventive health care as well 
as guaranteeing access to the people who need it to America's finest 
high-tech medicine, is rationing as compared with what we have today: 
with 39 million Americans or more without any health insurance, with 58 
million who don't have any health insurance at sometime during the year, 
and with 81 million who live in families with preexisting conditions and 
often worry about accessing the health care system. The suggestion that 
somehow we don't have rationing today and we will have it if this passes 
is, to put it mildly, a stretch of reality.
    As front-line providers, you know the truth. You know the health 
care truth, and you know the financial truth. The significance, again, 
of this meeting today is this to me. I spent a lot of time in academic 
health care centers. I know that the people who run them are both 
Democrats and Republicans and independents. Maybe even some of them 
voted for the third-party candidate last time. I know that the board 
members of academic health care centers are both Republicans and 
Democrats. I know that where they serve, there is almost fanatic support 
for them among people from all walks of life. In other words, the 
American people, when they deal with you in your communities and in your 
States, put politics behind and put health care first and ask what are 
the facts? What are the health care facts? What is the state of medical 
knowledge? What is the financial truth?
    If we could just get those three questions asked and answered in the 
Congress of the United States, we would get a health care bill that 
covers all Americans. In other words, if we could have people of both 
parties bring to the deliberations of the law in Congress less politics 
and more concern for health care, the way you do and the way you force 
people to deal with you just because of what you do, we would pass a 
bill in this session of Congress, with bipartisan support, guarantees 
health care to all Americans. This surely is not a political issue.
    What I want to ask you to do today is--we're all here today 
``preaching to the saved,'' as we say at home, and hoping that through 
the magic of the media it will reach others. But I want to ask you to 
personally, personally, commit that you will speak to the Members of the 
Congress from your State of both parties and ask them to make these 
decisions based on what is good for the health of Americans, what is 
good for the economy of America, and how it will affect your institution 
in terms of health care and finances. If we can get beyond the politics 
to the reality, we can prevail here. And I want you to do that. You can 
do that. You can do that.

[[Page 1361]]

    As much as any group in America--I don't know--when I started 
talking to Members of Congress, that's the one thing I found that 
without regard to their party, their philosophy, or their predisposition 
on health care reform, they all knew that they had a medical center in 
their home State they were terribly proud of.
    And so I ask you, as we close this ceremony today, to commit to make 
a personal contact and a personal appeal to every Member of the Congress 
from your State to put politics aside and put the health care of the 
American people first.
    If we can do that, and if people understand that you represent what 
is best in American health care, and we can't preserve what is best 
unless we fix what is wrong and cover everybody, that central 
understanding will carry the American people to a victorious result.
    We need you. You have done your country a great service today. 
Please follow it up in talking firstly with the Members of Congress.
    Thank you so very much.

Note: The President spoke at 12:22 p.m. in the East Room at the White 
House. In his remarks, he referred to Dr. William Peck, dean, Washington 
University Medical Center; Dr. Mitch Rabkin, president, Beth Israel 
Hospital; Dr. Michael Johns, dean, Johns Hopkins Medical School; Dr. 
Herbert Pardes, dean, Columbia University Medical School; and Dr. 
Charles Epps, dean, Howard University Medical School.