Bill Clinton: “Is that right? No wonder you asked such a good question. [Laughter] That's a good question. Give him a hand. He asked a…”

“Is that right? No wonder you asked such a good question. [Laughter] That's a good question. Give him a hand. He asked a good question--[applause]. If the health care plan is not passed, more and more people will give up their doctor. And let me explain why. Most people who have health insurance, as I said, are insured through their place of work. The employers normally choose what health care plan covers the employees. More and more employers are choosing so-called managed care plans, where you make--basically you agree to pay a group of doctors and other medical professionals a flat rate, and they provide all the care they agree to provide during the course of a year. If you switch from a plan where all the employees just pick their doctor and their hospital to a managed care plan and if that managed care plan only permits the doctors, the hospitals, and the other medical providers to provide care who are enrolled in the plan, then obviously a lot of employees will have to be forced to change. That is happening today. Today, a little more than half of the American people who are insured at work are insured by plans that give them no choice. We're already at a little more than half. Now, the plan--so that's where we are now. And that trend is growing rapidly as employers try to control health care costs. Under our plan, at least every person would have access to three different types of plans: let's say a managed care plan, like the one we described, where you might have to give up your doctor but it would be lower cost; a professional organization where a few hundred doctors get together and offer health care; or continuing a fee for service medicine, continuing the old plan you've got, where you'd have to pay a little more, but at least your employer would still make the same contribution and you could pick your own doctor. So we're trying to do our best to get the benefits of managed care and the cost controls inherent in it, the market controls, and still give people some choices of their doctors. And as I said, the law requires three different types of plans, but if you look at not only the Federal health plan--California just had a small business buyers co-op that's a lot like what we're trying to set up, where they had 2,300 small businesses with 40,000 employees go in and buy insurance together. And everybody says this is a Government plan; we're just trying to do this for everybody. The State of California hired 13 people to run this plan. And they were able to lower the cost of all the businesses and employees involved and to offer them 15 different choices by simply pooling them together. That's what I want to do. I want to try to get the benefits of competition but to leave the choice of physician up to the people themselves. And I think that this is the best way to do it. If we do it, it will encourage all these plans to let all doctors provide services who will do it at the right price. That's what I want to do. The fair thing to do is to say, okay, we'll provide these services, we'll manage this plan, we'll provide these services if you'll pay this amount. Then any doctor who's willing to do it for that price, in my judgment, ought to be able to do it. [A participant asked about medical care for children in urban areas.]”