Bill Clinton: “Well, let me say again--let's talk about what the present law is. The present law is that there is a constitutional…”

“Well, let me say again--let's talk about what the present law is. The present law is that there is a constitutional right to abortion, but the Supreme Court has never ruled that that meant that poor women had to have equal access to it. In other words, that if the Federal Government or a State government decided not to fund abortion services through the Medicaid program, that that was legal. So the Congress for many years has said we will not specifically fund abortions unless the life of the mother is at risk. Therefore, there's no public funding for poor women to get abortion services unless each State decides to do it. Some States decide to; a majority don't. That's the law today. I want to make clear to you what we are proposing. What we are proposing incidentally affects this: What we are trying to do is to stop the two-tiered system, to put the Medicaid patients in with the employees of small businesses and hospitals and others to provide for a common private system in which people join plans that provide services, including pregnancy-related services. Some of those plans won't cover abortion. Most of them do today. But I would just say to all of you who--if you're in a private health insurance plan today, your money is commingled with everybody else's. And if those services are covered, the money goes out from a central payment place, not necessarily for a specific service. But because people have enrolled in a plan--for example, somebody enrolls in an HMO, they don't pay for a specific thing at all necessarily on a fee-for-service basis. They pay a fee for whatever services are covered. So that is part of the limit. It would be a terrible price to pay just over this issue to keep segregating all the Medicaid patients and deny them the opportunity, and deny us the opportunity, to have the benefits of everybody being in large group health care without separating this out. In other words, the whole system will be changed if you put everybody in a private system. There will still be also hospitals and doctors who, for religious or other reasons, for moral reasons, will not participate in this and will not have to in any way, shape, or form. Mr. Koppel. Mr. President, this is a curious criticism to make, but sometimes I think you're so specific in your answers or so detailed in your answers that it's a little hard to know what the answer to the question was.”