Bill Clinton: “Well, first of all, I have been, frankly, pleased by the constructive response that the leadership of the AMA has taken…”

“Well, first of all, I have been, frankly, pleased by the constructive response that the leadership of the AMA has taken to this point. As you know, it is a very different response than has been taken to any other health care initiative in the 20th century, different than their response to Medicaid or Medicare or to previous efforts at universal coverage. And I would hope they would do what the leadership has been doing, which is to explain what they want and where they differ and to keep working with us. Let me say that I'm also very impressed and gratified by the response that a number of the other physicians' groups have had, the family practitioners, the pediatricians, and others who have been much more uniformly supportive. There are a couple of things that I would expect are driving the debate at their meeting. First of all, there are some groups of specialists who disagree with our proposal to shift the Federal investment in medical schools to encourage more family practitioners. But I don't see how anyone rationally could object to that since we are only turning out about 15 percent of our graduates in family practice, and we need more than twice that, looking ahead. Then there are those who feel so strongly that fee-for-service is the right way for doctors to be reimbursed that they object to the fact that our plan would require a fee-for-service option to be given to everybody who doesn't have insurance now but would also require other options as well. To that, I would respond that those folks don't have any health insurance at all now and this will make it possible for them to get some, and some will choose fee-for-service. Moreover, among those who do have insurance, every year fewer and fewer and fewer of them have that option. So, we're not accelerating a process that's not already well underway. We're simply trying to cover everyone on more or less equal terms, and we're going to at least give people the option to choose fee-for-service, which is something many people who are already covered don't have. So, I would hope they would consider those things and continue the dialog.”