Bill Clinton: “Well, they would still be able to buy their insurance from you because we don't propose to abolish private health…”

“Well, they would still be able to buy their insurance from you because we don't propose to abolish private health insurance. What we want to do is to require people who do not have any insurance to buy insurance, with employers paying a portion of the premium and employees paying a portion of the premium. We want to make it possible for you to offer health insurance to small business people and self- employed people at either lower rates or more comprehensive health care services for the rates that you've having to charge now, which is something, as you know, insurance companies can't do economically now if they're insuring people in small pools. So what we've proposed is some insurance reform that will change the nature of the economics of the health insurance industry, but leave it intact. And let me just basically say what we propose to do. From the point of view of the people buying the health insurance, we want to make it possible for small business people and self-employed people to buy insurance at lower rates without inflation at 35 percent a year, which is what it's been averaging nationwide. We want to make it illegal for people to have higher rates because somebody in their family has been sick or because they're older. We want to make cutting people off illegal because somebody in their family has been sick. But we don't want to bankrupt insurance companies, so we propose to have people insured in larger pools, which will mean that smaller insurance companies will have to pool together to insure people in larger pools. But that way, it will be economical for the insurance industry to insure people, and the people will be free of these terrible problems. Right now in America, 81 million Americans out of 255 million, 81 million, are in families where there is a so-called preexisting condition, where somebody in that family has been sick, which means either they're paying higher insurance costs, they can't get insurance at all, or they can't change the job they're in, because if they do, they can't get insurance in the next job. These things are not this insurance agent's fault, this gentleman who has asked me this question. He can't help that; that's the way the market's organized. So what we have to do is to put people in bigger insurance pools and protect them from those kinds of abuses. But if they're in bigger pools, then the insurance companies, in essence, will be able to still provide those services, and they'll still be able to make a decent profit. It will change. Your business will change, but you can still be in business, because I don't propose to take insurance out of this but to change the way it works so that everybody can be insured at an affordable price. [Mr. Donovan called on Ms. Hindrew to introduce a participant in Charlotte.] School Prayer and Community Values”