the President and Mrs. Clinton deserve credit for bringing health care to the center stage in Congress. And while there is widespread agreement that reform is long overdue, achieving reform that constrains health care costs, preserves…

When the government says ``This is the package and you will pay a percent of payroll for this package,'' then the employer is in a very different situation than he is today. For example, in Connecticut we have been through very hard times…

And the associated health bureaucracy in the Health and Human Services Department, HHS. That tells you that this is not all that easy and that it costs a lot.

And you know this issue that you bring up about the subsidy structure that both the Clinton plan and the Stark proposal provide is very important. It recognizes that small businesses for the most part cannot afford to provide health…

We often talk about the job loss associated with the employer mandate, but this is, in my estimation, the most serious and most deadly consequence of an employer mandate. By turning health benefit costs into a set percent of payroll…

Let us give a more vivid picture of this. This company has built a beautiful facility. They have 24 full-time people who do nothing but manage health benefits, provide exercise classes, stress management classes, wellness activities for…

In other words, the companies the gentleman is describing are investing real dollars in health care cost control, in prevention, and wellness, and getting their employees involved, and early intervention and all those things to make for…

I firmly believe that this Congress has the ability and the will to put on the President's desk a bill that will prohibit insurers from excluding people for preexisting conditions. That is a proposal that I introduced in 1991. My Democrat…

Of course, the good news is, and I thank my colleague from Michigan for joining me tonight, I appreciate it very much to talk about the implications of the employer mandate. Because the bad news is that the employer mandate is still a…

That's right. The uninsured rate, my colleague, is 8 percent. Connecticut's is 7.6 percent. For one-half of 1 percent why is it necessary to impose on the employers of Connecticut a mandate that you know will cost jobs in the short term…

How would I improve Medicare? I would improve Medicare by allowing all Medicare patients in all States, not just 15, to have access to the Medicare Program that is a managed care program, and for the same premium gives you prescription…

As the Member of this House that introduced the first insurance reform bill, I know a good deal about pooling, and I can tell you that that pool is large enough so we can keep the low cost premiums of large pools, the low administrative…