Bill Clinton: “Well, I have two things to say about it. Number one is, the Federal Government's not going to manage this program. Under…”

“Well, I have two things to say about it. Number one is, the Federal Government's not going to manage this program. Under our program, if my program passes, the private sector will manage it. The only thing the Federal Government will do is two things basically. We will require everybody to have health insurance and employers and employees to share responsibility for it. That includes good primary and preventive benefits. We will then say that insurance has got to be what it used to be when it started: You can't cut people off because somebody in the family got sick; you can't charge old folks too much if they're still working and they're healthy; and small business people and farmers and self- employed people have the right to be in big buying groups so that they can get the same kind of deal that Government employees and that big business employees get today. That's not a big Government business program. Let me give you one example, sir. The State of California just set up a small business buying group with 40,000 businesses in it. And the businesses that entered actually got a reduction in their health insurance costs by going into the buying pool. And there was no big Government bureaucracy. They hired 13 people to run the insurance buying and handle the paperwork for these 40,000. So I don't want the Government to run it.”