Bill Clinton: “Yes. About three-quarters of all health insurance policies have what are called lifetime limits, which means if you get…”

“Yes. About three-quarters of all health insurance policies have what are called lifetime limits, which means if you get real--maybe there's an aggregate amount of $1 million, let's say, so that you could lose your health insurance under your existing policy, even if it's a good policy, if you get real sick. Now, a lot of insurance companies under the present economic setup feel like they have to do that because they're relatively small companies, they have a relatively small number of people insured, and they just don't think they can afford it. Under our system, we abolish lifetime limits and we end discrimination against people for preexisting conditions, but we don't bankrupt insurance companies writing health insurance, because we also go to something called community rating. I want to level with you about this, because some of you will pay a little more. Basically, young, single workers will pay a little bit more for their health insurance so that older people and families with preexisting conditions aren't discriminated against. But that's very important because you're going to have people in their fifties and sixties changing jobs in this environment. I met a man from upstate New York the other day who had a job in a defense company for 29 years. He was 59 years old; he changed jobs and went to work for a hospital. So we're going to go to something called community rating, which means people will be insured in very large pools, and that's how we'll be able to afford to guarantee that you will not come up against your lifetime limits. There will be no lifetime limits, without bankrupting the insurance industry; everybody will be insured in great big pools. It's much fairer. Young, single, healthy people will pay slightly more but not a great deal more, and it will permit us not to discriminate in rates against older people and people who had an illness in their family.”