Bill Clinton: “Thank you. Let's give her a hand for doing that. It was great. [Applause] I wanted her to go first to make a point.…”

“Thank you. Let's give her a hand for doing that. It was great. [Applause] I wanted her to go first to make a point. First of all, a lot of people who have MS now, because of medication and because of rigorous exercise, are finding that they can maintain very high levels of mobility for much longer than was previously the case. So here she is, at the peak of her capacity to give to society, wondering if she has to lie on to her insurer to keep her insurance, because again, this is the only country in the world where you can lose your insurance because you really need insurance. So what we have to do is to change the rules of insurance to say that you cannot lose your policy because of preexisting conditions. To do that you have to make sure that insurers can't go broke, and the way you do that is to put us all in big pools called community rating, so that any person with a severe illness still adds a very small percentage to the overall cost of the operation. It's just something we've never done that we have to do. I thank you. Marcia Calendar, where are you? [Ms. Calendar described the problems with the health care system that her family encountered when her son was diagnosed with a terminal illness. In spite of these problems, she and her husband decided to have another child, who was in the audience asleep.]”