Bill Clinton: “Well, we propose to make up that difference in two ways: first of all, by raising the cigarette tax and, secondly, by…”

“Well, we propose to make up that difference in two ways: first of all, by raising the cigarette tax and, secondly, by achieving other savings in Government programs. Then we ask the very biggest businesses in the country, who are going to get a big reduction, most of them, from our health care plan because we're going to spread the cost more evenly throughout the country, to pay a small amount of money into a program that will support the subsidies for small business and continuing medical research. This will work because of the competitive pressures to hold health care costs down if we get everybody in the system. That is, I think that it's hard for most Americans to realize this, but we're already spending about 40 percent more of our income, as a percentage of our income, than any other country on Earth. And yet we're the only country that doesn't require everybody to have some health coverage. So it seems to me that the simplest way to do it is to just take the system we have, which is an employer-based system that over 80 percent of the Americans are covered by, and just extend it to everybody. But in order to do it, because we have so many small employers, you've got to give them a discount. And I wouldn't do this in this way if I weren't convinced that it would help the economy in the medium term and over the long term. We can't do anything that will run unemployment up. This will balance out the scales, in my judgment, and help more small businesses create jobs. Keep in mind, most small businesses are giving health insurance now and paying 35 percent or 40 percent more than bigger business and Government. And as a consequence, that undermines their ability to compete. They can't get fair rates. And the proposal we have, I will say again, will cost small business considerably less than the minimum wage increase that President Bush signed a couple of years before I became President. High School Reunion [A participant from Park Ridge, IL, was introduced.]”