John Doolittle: “I would like to jump in and say that under the Clinton socialistic medicine plan it mandates universal health insurance…”

“I would like to jump in and say that under the Clinton socialistic medicine plan it mandates universal health insurance coverage. The Cooper socialistic medicine plan, I guess I will call it, and they call it Clinton lite because it just takes longer to get there, but their goal is universal health care insurance. I challenge the very assumptions of those plans. Universal health coverage would be a disaster for the taxpayers of this country. If you remember the long lines that formed when the Government passed out the free cheese, that is an illustration of what is going to happen with universal health care coverage. When this becomes free you are going to have massive increases in utilization, and we are going to completely blow apart the forecasts made by the administration. Even the Congressional Budget Office representing the Democrat-controlled Congress came out today in today's Washington Post and said that the Clinton administration is vastly underestimating the cost of its own plan, that indeed it will increase the Federal deficit by $74 billion in the first 6 years. It is not going to improve the deficit picture; it is going to get much worse, and this is from the Congressional Budget Office. I just think we need to make that point. We do not seek, we do not desire universal health care coverage. This will be the financial ruin of this country, and we have to challenge I think some of the very basic assumptions of the President's plan.”