Bill Clinton: “One of the things that I tried to do was to make sure that everybody in the country who was under a managed care plan…”

“One of the things that I tried to do was to make sure that everybody in the country who was under a managed care plan should at least have three choices of plans and would have the right to get out without penalty every year. Now, that's not a Government takeover, that's like the family and medical leave law. It just tries to set the rules of the game. I'm strongly in favor of a Federal bill to repeal the--any gag rules on providers. In other words, I believe that doctors should not be able to be kicked out of managed care plans just because they tell the patients what they need and what more expensive care options might be. If we're saving money and managing resources better, that's a good thing. If we're saving money and depriving people of care, that's a bad thing. A good place to start is to say no managed care provider can gag a doctor and kick the doctor out of the managed care plan for the doctor telling the patient, ``You need a more expensive test, you need a more expensive procedure. Your health requires it.'' Mr. Lehrer. Senator Dole? Senator Dole. Well, I don't have any quarrel with that. I think that would help. But I think what we want to avoid is falling back into this nationalized health care system that President Clinton wanted to give us in 1993. If that isn't a liberal idea, I've never heard one: 17 new taxes; price controls; 50 new bureaucracies. We'd have that trouble all over America. We need to deal with managed care. It not only happened in California, it's happening in other States that we visit too. It's a national problem, not just a State problem. Mr. Lehrer. The next question is for President Clinton, and in this section. Yes, ma'am. Yes. Participation in Electoral Process”