Bill Clinton: “I feel the same way about my wife. [Laughter] First, let me thank both of you for coming. And let me say that this is…”

“I feel the same way about my wife. [Laughter] First, let me thank both of you for coming. And let me say that this is another one of these areas where I think a change can offer enormous hope and deal with the problems that you have outlined, but where we'll also have to take some disciplined, different action that will require some people to do more. And let me describe that. Most small business people, both employers and employees and people who are self-employed, do have some kind of health insurance. But it often provides inadequate coverage or has astronomical deductibles or, in any case, costs a fortune. You said that your premiums, I think, quadrupled in 3 years, from '89 to '92. Now, during that time the cost of health care was going up at about 2\1/2\ times the rate of inflation. But that would not lead to the amount of increase you had. You had that increase because you owned your own business and you were probably in a very small pool of people, probably 100, 200, 300, something like that. Under our plan, two things would help you. You would be in a very large pool with a community rating--the same thing that would help your sister and family--and also as a self-employed person, because you'd still have to pay relatively more, you'd get 100 percent tax deductibility for your premiums instead of 25 percent today. So it is almost certain that your costs would go down. It is certain. Your costs would go down. Under our system, what would happen to you is if you developed your own consulting business, you would become like Mable. You'd have 100 percent deductibility for your premium, and you'd be able to buy into a very large pool, just as if you were an employee in a company that had 5,000 people insuring its own employees. Now, the flip side of that is, the only way we can make that work is for the small business people today who don't provide any insurance coverage at all to their employees to make some contribution to the health care system and for the employees to do it. Now, it will be better than the present system because we're going to lower premiums for small businesses by putting them in big pools. I just explained that. We also propose to provide a subsidy to keep the premiums even lower for several years for the employers that have low- wage employees and therefore are very low-margin businesses. So we're going to try to help there. But you have to understand that all the employers in the country who don't provide any insurance to their employees, they basically are getting a free ride in some ways from the rest of you because if their employees or they show up at the hospital, it's there. It's just like driving on the road without paying a gas tax. I mean, the infrastructure is there. The clinics are there. The hospitals are there. The tests are there. The nurses are there. And until everyone is willing to make some contribution to his or her own health care, and until we get all the employers in the system even at a modest rate, we won't have a fair system where we can apportion the costs fairly, and we can keep everybody else from being overcharged. So that's one of the most controversial parts of this program. But it is true that a lot of small businesses simply could not afford to get into the insurance market today without going broke. That's absolutely true. And since most jobs are being created by people like you who are starting small businesses, we know we can't afford to do that. But it's also true that a lot of big businesses can't afford to hire anybody else and always work their people overtime or hire part-time workers because they can't afford health insurance premiums because they're paying too much. It's also true that a lot of people who work for employers that have health insurance never get a raise anymore because all of the money is going to the health insurance premiums. I don't want to pretend that this is all going to be easy, but it seems to me that it is a fair thing to say: Everyone in America should make some contribution to his or her own health insurance. And all employers should make some contribution, but if they have a very low margin, we're going to subsidize them for several years while we work into this system. And if we do that and give you 100 percent deductibility and you 100 percent deductibility and put you in great big pools, then more Americans will live without the kind of blackmail that you just outlined. I think it is the only fair way to work it. It's the only way any other country has solved this problem. And I don't think we can reinvent this wheel. You've heard a little about this already because of the so-called preexisting condition problem, but there are literally millions of Americans who are locked into the jobs they're in. This is a very tough thing in a country where job mobility is important, and the average young American going into the work force will change jobs eight times in a lifetime. To be locked into a job at a time when many people who've lost a job here can tell you, you don't get that same job back, you have to get a new job, is a very, very hazardous thing. Judy Dion and Shelly Cermak are here to tell us about this problem with our health care system that's come to be known as job lock. They're from Maine and Maryland. Judy and Shelly. [The participants read their letters.]”