[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 33, Number 26 (Monday, June 30, 1997)]
[Pages 950-952]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at Mar Vista Elementary School in Los Angeles, California

June 23, 1997

    The President. Thank you. I thought Mary Mendez did a good job for a 
parent and not a professional speaker, didn't you? Give her a hand. 
[Applause]
    Hello.
    Audience members. Hello!
    The President. It's wonderful to be back in California and to be 
here in Los Angeles and to be here in this terrific neighborhood at this 
great school. Thank you very much for having me here.
    Thank you, Mayor Riordan, for your good work and your kind remarks. 
I want to thank my small Business Administrator, Aida Alvarez, who's 
here with me today. She's been speaking to the LULAC convention. But I 
brought her here to emphasize another passionate feeling of mine, and 
that is that we have to give every American a chance to live up to his 
or her God-given abilities. Aida Alvarez is the first American of Puerto 
Rican descent ever to be in a President's Cabinet. So I thought I would 
bring her today, and I'm glad she's here.
    Thank you, David Lawrence and Dr. Sharon Levine, for your great 
citizenship. And thank you, Doris Palacio, for the wonderful work you do 
here at this school. I'm very, very proud of you, thank you. I want to 
thank the people from Children's Now, the parents, the students, and the 
teachers at Mar Vista.
    Now, you know what we're here to talk about: Too many children all 
across America, too many children here in California, some children in 
this crowd today don't have health

insurance. We are here today because Kaiser Permanente is going to make a 
major change in that for you in California. We want to congratulate them, 
but even more important, we ought to be here to resolve to do better and 
not to rest until every child in America has an appropriate health 
insurance policy and adequate health care when they need it.

    The hard truth is that while America has the highest health care 
quality in the world, in many ways too many Americans don't have access 
to the best the system has to offer. You heard the good doctor outlining 
it. Today over 10 million American children, over 1.6 million of them 
here in California, don't have health insurance. Do you know what that 
means? That means nearly 40 percent of the uninsured children don't get 
the annual checkups they need and may not find those holes in the heart 
or lead problems or other problems. It means one in four uninsured 
children don't even have a regular doctor. It means too many children 
who have trouble seeing a blackboard don't get the glasses they need to 
correct their vision; that too many nagging coughs go untreated until 
they wors

[[Page 951]]

en into more serious conditions that may require costly treatments and 
lengthy hospital stays later; that too many parents actually face the 
agonizing and impossible choice between buying medicine for a sick child 
or food for the rest of their family. We must do better, and we can.
    Our economy is the strongest in the world. In the last 4 years we've 
become the number one exporter again, we've produced over 12 million 
jobs, we have the lowest unemployment rate in 24 years, and we are still 
the only advanced industrial country in the world that does not provide 
health insurance for every single one of its working families. It is 
wrong, and we have to do better.
    It is true, as you have heard, that a number of children are 
actually covered by law under State programs like MediCal, and for some 
reason their parents either don't know or don't believe they can access 
the program. We have to do better. But it's also true that nearly one-
sixth of us simply don't have health insurance. I tried hard to enact a 
plan that would give all American working families health insurance, and 
it's well known, I failed. But I'm not ashamed that I tried.
    So after we did, we sort of rolled up our sleeves and decided we had 
to try again in a different way. And we decided to try to go at this 
step by step. Last year, we passed a law which says that families can't 
automatically lose their health insurance when the parent changes jobs 
or when somebody in the family has been sick. We've begun to make it 
easier for people who are self-employed to buy affordable health 
insurance. And we have supported efforts in States all across the 
country to use the Medicaid program or, in this case, the MediCal 
program, to try to expand coverage to working families that don't have

insurance through the workplace.

    We recently had a Presidents' Summit of Service in Philadelphia in 
which I said that the era of big Government may be over but the era of 
big challenges is not, and that citizens and Government had to do more 
to work together to give every child a fair chance at living out his or 
her dreams. And we said there are five things that we ought to do: One, 
give every child a safe place to grow up. That's one of the things that 
I talked to the mayors about, doing more to keep our kids out of trouble 
and keep our streets and our schools safe and drug free. Two, give all 
of our children world-class education, put computers in all the 
classrooms, teach all the kids to read, open the doors of college 
education to all young people. We can do that. I'm proud of the fact 
that this balanced budget agreement I reached with Congress, in addition 
to what it does on health care, has the biggest increase in Federal 
support for education in over 30 years. And we are going to pass it and 
bring it here to the schools of California. The fourth thing we promised 
to do was to do everything we can to see that every child in this 
country has a mentor. And we're doing our part there, trying to mobilize 
through AmeriCorps volunteers a million people to help make sure all of 
our kids can read, whatever their native tongue, read independently by 
the time they're in the third grade, so they can do well and go on and 
create a good future for themselves.
    And we said that every child should have a healthy start in life, 
something all citizens must take responsibility for. That's what Kaiser 
has done. Again I say, I cannot thank Kaiser enough, not only for doing 
this, but for challenging other people in the same line of business to 
do the same thing, 50,000 kids here, 50,000 there, pretty soon you're 
talking about a lot of families with healthy children. And we've got to 
do that.
    But even as Kaiser does its part--you heard what they said, one of 
the things they're going to do--how are they going to get 50,000 kids 
insured every year with $20 million a year? That's $400 a child. That's 
less than most of you can buy health insurance for. How are they going 
to do that? They're going to get more kids in the existing MediCal 
system; they're going to work out partnerships; they're going to work 
out sliding fee arrangements, so that people who can afford to pay 
something, but not the ongoing commercial rates, can pay what they can 
afford to pay. A lot of families would gladly do that if they could just 
get some insurance coverage.
    And what does that mean? That means that Government has to do its 
part, too. Telling citizens they have a

responsibility will never relieve the Government of its respon

[[Page 952]]

sibility to work with citizens who are doing the very best they can to make 
us one country where everybody's got a chance to raise healthy children.

    So I want all of you to know that the balanced budget agreement that 
I reached with the leaders of Congress and that passed with overwhelming 
bipartisan majorities in both Houses includes the largest investment in 
children's health care since the Medicaid program was enacted in 1965, 
the largest investment in over 30 years, designed to bring to millions 
and millions of children health insurance coverage that they don't have, 
to work with companies like Kaiser Permanente, to work with States, to 
work with local communities to make sure that we do not leave these 
children and their families behind. And we have certain standards. That 
budget agreement is now being written into law, and here's what we're 
trying to do.
    First of all, the coverage ought to be meaningful. It ought to cover 
everything from check-ups to surgery so that children get the care they 
need. Second, we ought to make sure that coverage is affordable. People 
who can pay something ought to pay it, but they ought to be able to buy 
affordable health insurance. If people are out there working full-time 
and doing the best they can, they ought to be able to have the dignity 
of knowing that they can take care of their children. People should be 
able to succeed at home and succeed at work in the same way. And the 
third thing--and I don't expect--this won't concern a lot of you, but 
for people like Dr. Lawrence and me, it's a big headache--we've got to 
make sure that this money actually goes to uninsured children. We cannot 
simply see the money replacing money that already goes from Government 
or from private insurance or from charities to health insurance. We have 
to draw this bill in a way that this new money actually insures more 
children. And I want you to know, we're going to work hard to do all 
those things.
    Let me just say to the young children here, you are growing up in a 
very hopeful time for America. Our economy is the healthiest in a 
generation. Crime and welfare are down. America is the world's leading 
force for peace and freedom and prosperity.
    We have two great challenges--we have many, but there are two great 
challenges. First, look around this crowd today. The first is the one I 
talked about in San Diego just 9 days ago. We have got to prove that we 
can be the first truly equal, fair, harmonious, multiracial democracy in 
history. We have got to prove that we can do that. And the second thing 
we have to do is to make sure every child has a chance to live out his 
or her dreams. We cannot leave any of our children behind in physical 
isolation because they don't have decent health care, or their streets 
aren't safe, or their schools aren't adequate. We can't. We can't afford 
that.
    And this health care initiative today is very important, not only 
because of the children that will be covered, not only because of the 
challenge that others will have to meet, not only because of the energy 
it puts behind what we're trying to do in the Congress for millions of 
children but because it makes a statement about what it means to be an 
American on the edge of the 21st century. We're not going to leave our 
children behind. That's what this is about.
    So again I say, thank you to the educators; thank you to the health 
providers; thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thanks to all of you. Remember what 
we're here for today. If your child needs health insurance, try to get 
him in this initiative. But as a citizen, don't give up until every 
child in America has the health care that he or she deserves.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 5:08 p.m. In his remarks, he referred to 
Mayor Richard Riordan of Los Angeles; David Lawrence, chief executive 
officer and chairman, Kaiser Permanente; Sharon Levine, leader of the 
Kaiser Permanente pediatric unit; and school principal Doris Palacio.