[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 33, Number 13 (Monday, March 31, 1997)]
[Pages 415-417]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]
<R04>
Remarks on the Advisory Commission on Consumer Protection and Quality in
the Health Care Industry
March 26, 1997
Thank you very much. Thank you, Secretary Shalala, Acting Secretary
Metzler. Thank you both for the work you've done on this. I thank the
Commission members for their willingness to serve, those who are here
and a few who could not be here with us today. And I thank all of you
here in this audience for your interest in this profoundly important
matter.
The Advisory Commission that I announced today will help to chart
our way through a time of profound change in health care. Their task
will be focused and urgent: to find ways to ensure quality and to ensure
that the rights of consumers in health care are protected.
Since I took office, we have been committed to improving our health
care system, to making it more affordable, more accessible, while
preserving its high quality. You have heard Secretary Shalala mention
some of the things we have done together. We've worked with States to
expand Medicaid to more than 2 million Americans who previously had no
insurance. We reached across party lines to enact the Kassebaum-Kennedy
law that provides that working families will not lose their insurance
when they change jobs, increased the health care tax deduction for 3
million self-employed Americans. And now in our budget plan, we have
funds sufficiently targeted to extend coverage to as many as half of our
10 million American children who still don't have medical coverage.
We've worked to constrain costs. Just yesterday, I announced a new
effort to combat the multibillion dollar problem of fraud and abuse in
Medicare and Medicaid. Our balanced budget proposal also strengthens
Medicare through savings and overdue structural reforms.
Of course, we're not alone in this. The private sector has found
ways to rein in costs, sometimes dramatically. And in many cases,
changes in the health care delivery system have, frankly, also improved
its quality. For example, the growing recognition of the value of
preventive care, such as mammography screening, is saving and extending
lives and the quality of life. This is all very encouraging. Step by
step we have been working to expand access to health care, and today we
take the next step.
In this time of transition, many Americans worry that lower costs
mean lower quality and less attention to their rights. On balance,
however, managed health care plans, HMO's, PPO's, and others, give
patients good care and greater choice at lower cost. Still, we must make
sure that these changes do not keep health professionals from offering
the best and the most medically appro
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priate services to their patients. Managed care managed well can be the
best deal for our families. Whether they have traditional health care or
managed care, none of our people should ever have inferior care.
I am proud that the Medicare and Medicaid programs have taken the
lead in responding to the quality concerns of both patients and health
care providers, as Secretary Shalala has just described. But we're
learning the defining, measuring, and enforcing quality is far from a
simple task. There are many complicated issues. They require thoughtful
study. And not surprisingly, there are many areas where broad-based
consensus on how best to proceed does not yet exist.
That is why I decided late last year to establish the Advisory
Commission on Consumer Protection and Quality in the health care
industry. Today I am happy to introduce the members of that Commission
to the American people. They are a highly distinguished, broad-based,
and diverse group. They represent consumers, business, labor, health
care providers, insurers, managed care plans, State and local
governments, health care quality experts. Their specialties are wide-
ranging, including care for children, the elderly, women, people with
disabilities, mental illness, or AIDS. This Commission includes some of
the best health care policy minds in our Nation and a lot of people with
hands-on experience. Its task will be as challenging as it is critical.
Today, to assure that they get busy right away, I am charging the
Commission to develop a consumer bill of rights so that health care
patients get the information and care they need when they need it. Let's
assure that patients and their families: first, that the health care
professionals who are treating them are free to provide the best medical
advice available; second, that their providers are not subject to
inappropriate financial incentives to limit care; third, that our
sickest and most vulnerable patients, frequently the elderly and people
with disabilities, are receiving the best medical care for their unique
needs; fourth, that consumers have access to simple and fair procedures
for resolving health care coverage disputes with plans; fifth, and
perhaps most important, that consumers have basic information about
their rights and responsibilities, about the plans--the benefits the
plans offer, about how to access the health care they need, and about
the quality of their providers and their health care plans.
I'm delighted that the Secretary of Health and Human Services and
the Secretary of Labor will take on the task of being the Commission's
cochairs. I look forward to reviewing their first report at the end of
the year and their final report next March.
The need for this Commission is real. It is urgent. It will give us
a roadmap to help us make our way through the time of rapid change we
now see in our health care system. There are few people in the Nation
better suited to the task than the members of this Commission. And
again, let me say, I want to thank them for their commitment to serve.
And to all the rest of you, let me say one of the things--one of the
many things I have learned in the last 4 years as President, is that a
distinguished commission, broadly based with a clear mandate, can make a
profound positive difference for our country.
In the health care related areas, I ask you to think of only two.
Think of the work done by the Gulf War Commission and what we now know
that we did not know when they started to meet and work. Think of the
remarkable work done by the Commission that dealt with those who were
exposed to human radiation experiments just a few decades ago here and
the work that they have done.
There is a peculiar way in which the citizens of the United States,
when brought together around a clear mandate interfacing with their
Government and with the private sector, can do more than either the
Government or the private sector could do alone.
And so again, let me say, I'm very hopeful about this Commission. I
look forward to their progress on the consumer's bill of rights. I look
forward to all the work that they do. And I ask you to join me in
thanking them for their willingness to serve.
Thank you very much.
Note: The President spoke at 2:32 p.m. in the East Room at the White
House. In his remarks, he referred to Cynthia Metzler, Acting Secretary
of Labor.
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