Bill Clinton: “Thank you. Your problem is similar to hers. And if I were guessing, I would guess, since you're self-employed and she is…”

“Thank you. Your problem is similar to hers. And if I were guessing, I would guess, since you're self-employed and she is in a small business and you both have family coverage for one child, but your premium is over $8,500 and hers is $12,000, my guess is, whoever your insurer is has done a better job of getting you in slightly bigger group than she has so you can spread risk. Let me tell you, now, I've hesitated to say this in the past because, even though our books are out and have been published, what our family premium winds up being to start--this health insurance program-- depends in part on what the ultimate package of benefits are. But I think I can say roughly that a family package which would be the same price starting out for everybody, whether they were self-employed or not, would be about at least $4,000 cheaper than you're paying. And again, all that we would do is--I'd have to see the deductibles and the copays, but you'd save about $4,000 which means yours could go down about $8,000 to get a very good package of preventive and primary and comprehensive benefits. How could we do that? Because we have the most expensive insurance system in the world. No other country has got 1,500 insurance companies writing thousands of different policies, imposing literally tens of billions of dollars in paperwork benefits, and putting people in such small groups that company really could go broke with one bad illness. So we're just going to have to force people to rate everybody the same in a broad community basis and put people into big pools, so if something happens, God forbid, to you or someone in your family, you won't bankrupt your insurance carrier because you'll be in a big pool, not a little pool. But now, if you were working for a company with 6,000 employees, you could get the coverage you've got now for $4,000 a year less today, maybe even less than that given what they're covering. In addition to that, if you're self-employed, today, as you know, your policy is only 25 percent deductible. Under our plan it would be 100 percent deductible for both you and your wife, which would make a big difference. So it will help. Now I want to talk a little bit about the criteria by which insurers make these decisions. Where is Susan Berardo? [Ms. Berardo described her problem with insurance coverage for a bone marrow transplant.]”