Bill Clinton: “The health care cost of workers' comp would be folded into the health care plan, which would save a lot of small…”

“The health care cost of workers' comp would be folded into the health care plan, which would save a lot of small business people a ton of money. Slightly more than half of the workers' comp premium is health care costs, that would be folded in. And that's a huge concern to small business people and also to people in certain targeted industries, like in my home State, the loggers and the people in the wood products industry. They have huge workers' comp bills. So that would really help. Again, I would have to know exactly how many employees the lady has and what the average income is of the employees, but they would be eligible for a discount rate. I can just tell from what you said to me, she would not pay the 7.9 percent. She would pay some lesser percentage of the payroll. But having been on the other side of it, she can understand what it's like if there is none. Let me say, there are a lot of part-time work- ers in our country today and probably will be more. Under the way the bill has been presented to Congress, if you work 30 hours a week or more, you would be insured as a full-time worker and your employer would have to pay the full cost of the premium and you would have to pay your 20 percent match. If you're under that, down to 10 hours a week, the employer could pay a proportionate amount of that, a smaller percentage, and therefore your premium would be less. And if you outran that in using the health care system because you're a part-time worker, and that would be eligible for the public subsidy. So we try not to bankrupt people who have part-time employees or discourage people from hiring part-time employees. But we think they ought to pay at least a portion of their benefits. [Dr. Firestone introduced Dr. Jack Vick, who discussed the difficulties of providing quality health care in rural areas but stated that he will continue his rural practice.]”