Bill Clinton: “Well, first of all, let's go back. If you look at all the studies, there was a study by the Lewin Group, which were…”

“Well, first of all, let's go back. If you look at all the studies, there was a study by the Lewin Group, which were mostly health care folks who had been in and out of Government, many of them were in the Reagan and Bush administrations. And the Lewin study said that a majority of American employers and employees would pay the same or less money for the same or greater health care, that people who do not have any health coverage at all or people who have very, very limited, like catastrophic policies with very high deductibles, would pay more. But under our plan, we put a ceiling of 7.9 percent of payroll for full-time employees on all employers and then lowered that all the way down as low as 3.9 for smaller businesses with average payroll below $24,000 a year. So there are a whole series of discounts available for private insurance there. Let me just say, the flip side is that if you look at how much America as a nation is spending on health care, we spend 14.5 percent of our income on health care. Canada spends 10; Germany and Japan spend less than 9. Now, about half of that gap is due to the fact that we spend more on medical technology and medical research than other countries, and we wouldn't change that for the world, I don't think. About half of it is due to the fact that we are more violent and have higher AIDS rates than other countries. We would change that if we could. But we can't in this health care bill. Now, if you take that out of the way, the rest of this system's costs that are out of line with any other country in the world are solely due to the crazy way we finance health care and the fact that not everybody has coverage, so you've got massive cost shifting in it. So I just refuse to believe that we're the only advanced country in the world that can't figure out a way to provide health care for all of its citizens. Germany has absorbed Eastern Germany, taken that enormous burden, kept health care costs under 9 percent, and their unemployment rate is still almost exactly what ours is. So we know that this can be done. And the congressional process is started now. There's been an awful lot of misinformation about this plan, but as I said, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office just issued a report which estimated that there would be no net loss in jobs, in fact, would probably be a net gain in jobs, if our plan passed. So I would urge you to read it carefully, if you have suggestions about what you think is wrong with it, to let us know what you think is wrong with it. And we'll be glad to look at those things. The only bottom-line commitment I have is that the United States should not go on being the only country in the world with an advanced economy that can't figure out how to give some form of guaranteed private health care to all of its working people. Poor people get it, and other people get it. Most people who don't have it are the working poor. And so I think that we have to find a way to do that. And I believe that our plan is the most cost-effective, most reasonable way to do it. But we're going to have 4 or 5 months of congressional debate. And as I said, what I wish you would do if you have a concern about this is get someone to analyze it who particularly--maybe a doctor or someone who has no necessary ax to grind, tell us what you think is wrong with it or how you think it can be improved, and that can become part of the ongoing debate. I mean, California has an enormously large congressional delegation that will be in a position to have a big impact on how this ultimately comes out. I don't want to do anything I thought would cost jobs. I think this will gain us jobs. I think that if we pass this bill, the percentage of our income going to health care 5 years from now will be markedly less than it will be if we don't. And I think, therefore, we will have more jobs in America as a result of controlling health care costs and providing guaranteed health care than we will if we don't do it. And my evidence is all the other countries in the world that have done it are spending less money on health care.”