Bill Clinton: “Yes. The short answer is yes, but let me explain. Let me try to explain. The short answer is yes, but let me try to…”

“Yes. The short answer is yes, but let me explain. Let me try to explain. The short answer is yes, but let me try to amplify it a little bit because I don't want to be misleading in any way. If we do nothing, if we walk away one more time from this health care crisis, what's going to happen is more and more employers will turn to HMO's because they have to to pay their medical bills, because the cost of medical care is going up 2 and 3 times the rate of inflation. Many of these HMO's will do an excellent job and will be widely supported and be well and warmly received. Some of them will be not so well received because people either won't want to give up their personal physicians or especially if they've had--you mentioned you had a son with a special problem--if they've had someone that required special treatment, they'll have a particular anxiety about that. Now, if our plan were to pass as it is today, here is how your situation would be different. Your employer could choose to do work with the HMO and could point out that the HMO would provide all the services required in the health care plan and could even provide a discount for it, that is, could give you a financial incentive to do it. Under our plan, every year you would be given at least three choices, at least three choices: this HMO; some other plan, let's say a PPO, a group of doctors get together and offer their services and maybe would let any other doctor, including your doctor, sign on if he would agree to give the services at the same price; and then strict fee-for-service medicine, the situation you have now. You might have to pay a little more, but your employer would still have to make a contribution. So you would have those choices. In addition to that, we are trying to set up in our plan the situation where, if someone has a specialist like you do for a special problem, if the specialist will provide the service for the same price that the HMO specialist will provide it, then the specialist should be able to provide that even if you go to the HMO. So you could maybe do the--[applause]--so you could maybe get a compromise. We're working on that. But I don't want to kid you. The employer would still have the option to pick an HMO, and that would still be a less expensive option than the fee-for-service. But you would be able to get the fee-for- service, and your employer would have to make the same contribution to that plan as he or she would to the HMO. So you would have much more choice than you have now. Right now--I think it's important that everybody understand this-- right now, most people who have insurance are insured in the workplace, and only about half, actually slightly fewer than half have any real choice of providers today who are insured through the workplace. So the amount of choice is going down. Now, as I said, there are some very, very good HMO's. New England has some very good HMO's that have done a terrific job. But a lot of people want to have the choices. Under our plan, we will promote and facilitate the growth of good HMO's because there will be economic incentives for people to compete for lower cost but higher quality medicine. But we will protect the choices people have, which are vanishing at a very rapid rate today. We're really trying to work out the specialist problem, because that's the thing people are most traumatized about. Someone has been taking care of a family member with a special problem and have to give it up; it's really tough on them.”