Bill Clinton: “Wow! It takes your breath away, doesn't it? Let me make just a couple of observations about her situation. Part of it is…”

“Wow! It takes your breath away, doesn't it? Let me make just a couple of observations about her situation. Part of it is common to millions of people in businesses large and small; part of it is--her problem--is unique to small businesses. You heard her say she hasn't had a pay raise in 3 years. There are millions of American workers who haven't had a pay raise in 3 years because of the cost of health insurance. And it is estimated that if we don't do something to bring health care costs closer to inflation, between now and the end of the decade, most of what otherwise would have gone to pay workers' pay increases will go solely to pay for more health care costs, and not for new benefits--more health care costs for the same health care. Now, that is something that is sweeping the country. Her premium, however, is unusual. You heard her--on a $52,000 salary with a $12,000 premium, that means she's paying over 20 percent of payroll and more than her mortgage payment. So under our plan, we would begin with everybody at 7.9 percent of payroll for employers and a fifth of that at the most for employees. If employers want to cover their employees, they can, but it would cut that cost in half. Why? Because she's got a small business with five employees. They're probably in a very small pool with somewhere between 50 and 200 people. And under our plan she would go into a pool with other small businesses, with self-employed people. There might be 200,000 in that buying group, which would give you the economies of scale that other people have. This is unconscionable, and it's solely a function of the size of the business. And I'll bet you anything--I haven't seen the benefit package, but I'll bet you anything it's not as good as the one that will be in the national health plan--certainly not better. But the real problem here--this small business thing is a big deal. If we don't provide discounts for very small businesses and get all small businesses in big pools, you will see that small business will continue to have a bigger and bigger gap between their premiums and big business premiums. Right now, small business premiums are between 20 and 50 percent higher than big business premiums on average and are going up at more than twice the rate of big business premiums. And yet what we want to do is encourage people who get laid off or who get restructured or the airline industries or whatever to go out and work in or start up small businesses. So that if you look at what's going to happen in the next 10 years, a higher and higher and higher percentage of Americans will be working in smaller companies. That is another reason we've got to do this health insurance thing now, because we cannot stop the trend of big companies toward downsizing and we don't want to stop this trend of people starting small businesses. I am very glad you are here because even though your circumstance is somewhat extreme in terms of percentage of your payroll, it is not unusual in the kind of problem you have, and we've got to stop it. Where is Mark Fish? [Mr. Fish explained that he and his wife were self-employed and the cost of their health insurance was exorbitant.]”