Bill Clinton: “Yes, but that's what's happening today. I mean, the truth is that as we've tried to control the costs of Medicare and…”

“Yes, but that's what's happening today. I mean, the truth is that as we've tried to control the costs of Medicare and Medicaid, particularly Medicare, by holding down costs, you see dramatically increased numbers of procedures. What we want to do is to remove the incentive for having large numbers of procedures by having big blocks of consumers pay for their annual health care needs in a block, so that you won't have so much fee-for-service. I would also point out to you that one of the big problems we've had with doctor costs going up is that doctors are having to negotiate their way through the mine field of 1,500 separate health insurance companies writing thousands of different policies, having to keep up with it in ways that no doctors anywhere in the world but our doctors have to deal with. We've already had the American Academy of Family Practice and a lot of other doctors groups have endorsed our plan. The AMA has been quite interestingly supportive in general terms. They say they want to see all the details. They believe there ought to be universal coverage. Dr. Koop has agreed to come in and sort of moderate this discussion. But we had a couple hundred doctors here yesterday, most of whom were extremely supportive. And let me just give you one big reason why. This is the flip side of the argument you made. In 1980, the average doctor was taking home 75 percent of the money generated by a clinic. In 1990, the average doctor was taking home 52 cents on the dollar, 52 percent of the money generated by a clinic. Twenty-three cents on the dollar increase in the amount of money the doctor was having to spend on people, basically to do clerical work in the clinics. The Children's Hospital at Washington told us last week that the 200 doctors on staff there spent enough time in non-health-care-related paperwork every year because of the administrative cost of this system-- a dime on the dollar more than any other system in the world--to see another 500 patients each a year, 10,000 more kids a year. So, a lot of doctors are going to feel very liberated by this because they are going to be freer to practice medicine, and the incentives to churn the system just to pay for all their paperwork will be less. Yes, sir. Mr. Strauss. Time for one more question.”