Bill Clinton: “Well, I think, you know, if you go back and look at the history of health care, I think there are two things that are…”

“Well, I think, you know, if you go back and look at the history of health care, I think there are two things that are different. One is, there is almost unanimous consensus that the cost of continuing on the present course is greater than the cost of change. With health care costs rising at more than twice the rate of inflation and rising much faster than that for small businesses, with more people losing their coverage every month so that we're paying more for less health care, with the range of choices available for Americans dropping dramatically and the administrative cost to the system escalating at a breathtaking rate, that the cost of going on is greater than the cost of change. I don't think that there has ever been that much consensus before. The second thing is, I think you've got all of the people trying to work together now. If you go back through the whole history of the 20th century, you can find times when Republicans wanted to do something about health care and Democrats didn't, some when Presidents wanted to do something and the Congress didn't. There's one example when, early in this century, when the American Medical Association wanted to have a national health care bill and the labor movement didn't. I mean, these things have been flip-flopped. If you read the history of health care, it's like people, you know, passing each other in the night. And I think now you've finally got everybody in the country focused on it. So I think we have a moment in history when we can seize it and move forward if we can maintain this determination to stay in touch with the real problems of our people and with this sort of spirit that we have now of working together. Taxes”