Bill Clinton: “I want to answer your question, but first I want to make sure that all the people that are watching this understand…”

“I want to answer your question, but first I want to make sure that all the people that are watching this understand exactly what question he asked. You know, some health insurance policies have very good coverage, but they have a limit to how much you can draw against the coverage. They have a lifetime cap, which, if you get a really serious illness, you could use up in one time. And your lifetime cap's gone, so even though you had a real good policy, you could never use it again. That's the question he was asking. The answer is under this plan there would be no lifetime caps. You would pay whatever you would be required to pay. If you were self- employed, you'd pay what your premium is. If you were working in a business, you would pay, if you don't have any coverage, up to 20 percent. If you have better coverage than that right now, if your employer pays everything, your employer can continue to pay everything, but there's a limit as to how much can be taken away from you under our plan. The reason there's no need for a lifetime cap under our plan is that people will be insured in huge pools, community rating pools. You know, this is an expensive thing, but aren't you glad that they got it? They have these two beautiful children now. And so, sure, they put an extra cost on it, but instead of that cost being, say, 200 or 300 or 400 people insured, there might be 200,000 or 300,000 people insured in the same pool, so that cost spread across a big group won't be that much. And there will be no caps. Our plan abolishes the lifetime caps to keep people from being financially destroyed. Mr. Atkinson. We're going back to San Diego now. Marty Levine has someone with another question for you. NAFTA [Mr. Levine introduced a small business man who expressed concern that NAFTA would cause unemployment in California.]”