Bill Clinton: “Let me say, first of all, I think when I leave, Mr. Magaziner is going to come up here. Ira Magaziner who has been the…”

“Let me say, first of all, I think when I leave, Mr. Magaziner is going to come up here. Ira Magaziner who has been the sort of leading light of our health care efforts in the First Lady's group on health care and who knows the answers to questions you haven't even thought of yet--at least questions I haven't thought of yet--is going to come up here and spend up to another hour answering any questions you have about the specifics of our plan. So I hope that those of you here who are interested will stay and continue to ask questions. He and some others who have come all the way to California with me, who are working in our health care effort, are going to stay. So we want to encourage all Americans to ask questions and to give us our ideas--their ideas. We don't pretend to have all the answers. I just want to make two points in closing. Number one, I am not interested in having this become a partisan, political issue. I am profoundly grateful to the distinguished Republican Senator from Vermont, Jim Jeffords, for announcing that he intends to be a cosponsor of our initiative. That's the kind of thing we need more of, working together. Number two, we've got to keep working on making this better, the evidence of other countries is, but you have to keep working every year. But that's why we've built this in a phased-in fashion, so that the more we learn, the more we can make adjustments and the more we can make improvements. The point I want to make, the two of you have already made out here in these questions, is if we do nothing, it will be more costly and less satisfactory than if we take steps. And finally, let me say, we have to overcome the disbelief in America. A lot of folks don't think we can do this, but that's what they said when Social Security came in. People said we couldn't do it, but we did it. I hold this health security card up all the time, but you just think, if everybody had a Social Security card and a health security card, what a better country this would be and how much better life would be for all the American people. Thank you very much.”