Bill Clinton: “No, there will be no compromise on everybody being covered. There's no point in doing it if we're not going to cover…”

“No, there will be no compromise on everybody being covered. There's no point in doing it if we're not going to cover everybody. There is no point in doing it if we're not going to cover everybody. But what I want you to understand, I want every one of you to understand that there are consequences to all human behavior, including inaction. We all know that, but sometimes we forget it. If we do not act, certain things will happen. Some of you will go into HMO's and you'll be very well satisfied and you'll get good health care at lower costs. Some of you will go into HMO's and you'll lose your choices of doctors and you'll feel that the quality has suffered and you'll be frustrated and angry. Some of you will lose health coverage, because every year we lose about 100,000 people a month in the United States who lose their health insurance permanently. And every year, at some point during the year, there are over 50 million of us who don't have any health insurance. So what I want you to understand is I won't pretend to have all the answers; I don't pretend that we're right about everything. This is a complicated subject. But there are consequences to every course of action, including doing nothing. And they are quite significant, the consequences of doing nothing. It also means, to go back to the lady over there, it means no mental health coverage; it means no medicine for people on Medicare but not on Medicaid; it means no medicine for working families who have health plans that don't cover medicine now, may have kids with high medicine costs. So the one thing we have to do is to find a way to cover everyone, which means you can't lose your coverage because you have preexisting conditions. And in my judgment, it means that people who work for small businesses or who are self-employed should have access to insurance at more or less the same rates that those of us who work for Government or big companies do. I don't think people who have access to the Federal plan--which is terrific by the way; it's a cafeteria plan. Any of you who are Federal employees, you know that. I mean, we've been able to manage our costs. Some of our plans have even gone down in price this year. We have all these choices. I don't think people who work for the Federal Government who don't know anybody else or talk to them can possibly imagine the level of insecurity that grips people that don't have this level of certainty. That may be one of our problems now in Washington. But the answer to your question is, if we're not going to cover everybody, if we can't find a way to find universal coverage, there is no point in doing this. That's what I said in my State of the Union speech. I'm very flexible; a lot of people have good ideas. A lot of people have better ideas, perhaps, than I do on certain things. We may have to be flexible to pass a plan around the edges. But we have to provide coverage for everybody. Otherwise we haven't done what we set out to do.”