Bill Clinton: “Let me answer your first question first. The reason so many people with preexisting conditions can't get health…”

“Let me answer your first question first. The reason so many people with preexisting conditions can't get health insurance is because people are so often insured in very small pools. Like, look around here, suppose there are about 60 people in this room. Suppose all of us belong to a group health insurance, and suppose we have the standard array of illnesses and problems. And a couple of us have cancer, and you have lupus, and maybe one person has HIV, and all the rest of us are healthy as can be, right? It only takes one or two people in a group that small to bankrupt the pool. But in most countries, and in a few States in America, insurance companies are required to rate people for insurance according to huge community pools with hundreds of thousands of people in them, so that the risk of your care is spread across large numbers of people. And insurance companies make money the way grocery stores do, a little bit of money on a lot of people, instead of a lot of money on a few people. So the short answer to your question is, the way to keep preexisting conditions from barring people from getting health insurance is, number one, to make it illegal and, number two, to make it possible for the insurance pools to be big enough so that they don't go broke taking people like you. The second answer is, I believe, if you look at how much money we're spending on health care, if we can redirect a lot of the money that would be saved from administrative costs and from insurance overcharges per person, because of the system we have, if we could do more preventive and primary health care, if we can, in short, maximize the money we're now spending and keep people like you in big pools, I believe there would be enough money to cover your care. If that is not true, what the Government will have to do is to develop a Government long-term care program, because you cannot abandon people who have AIDS or who have prolonged bouts with cancer. In fact, a lot of cancer survivors, as you know, are living now for 10, 15, 20 years and during most of that time, even when there's a recurrence, are serving quite productively. So I think we have to do that. I just approved, by the way, a strategy to fully fund the Ryan White Act for the care of AIDS patients over the next couple of years, because I think that's an important issue. But we'll never do it, you won't be treated right until we have a national program that covers everybody. Mr. Bonds. Mr. President, we're going to move into kind of a roundrobin here. We're going to throw it now to Seattle. Ken Schramm, KOMO. Antidrug Program Mr. Schramm. Thank you. I've got two quick questions for you here, Mr. President. The first one is from Rochelle Pinrod, who is 9 years old, has never spoken to a President before, but she has written you a letter.”