Bill Clinton: “The answer is, I am going to try to health care reform again this year. Obviously, the American people made a judgment…”

“The answer is, I am going to try to health care reform again this year. Obviously, the American people made a judgment, or at least the Congress did, and I think the American people did--that this was such a big issue, they didn't want me or anybody else to try to put together a program that purported to solve it all at one time. So I think we'll have to go back and take it a piece at a time. My own view is that this is something--you need to know about this, by the way--the entire problem with the Federal deficit in 1995, 1994, 1993, now since our budget has come in, is interest on the debt and health care costs. Everything else is going down. Last year we reduced spending on both defense and domestic spending overall for the first time in 25 years. The deficit's going up because of interest on the debt and health care costs. So we have an interest in doing that. The second thing you need to know is that your country is the only advanced country in the world where there are a smaller percentage of working families with health insurance today than had it 10 years ago. That is not true in any other advanced country in the world. So we have to do it. We have to--we should do it by reforming the insurance system, helping people when they're unemployed not to lose their insurance, giving incentives to cover children, and helping families with disabled kids or with parents who want care other than nursing homes and where that would be a cheaper, more affordable thing to do. Let me give a little--go ahead, in the back there. I'll take a couple more. Go ahead. Yes, go ahead. [Laughter] You're great. You know, when they're here, they all stand up if I point in the general direction. [Laughter] Scholarship Grants”