Arlen Specter: “there are some who believe health care reform is dead and declared as much last Fall when Congress failed to enact…”

“there are some who believe health care reform is dead and declared as much last Fall when Congress failed to enact reform legislation. But they are wrong. President Clinton was grossly in error when he proposed health care by government mandate and massive bureaucracy. But anyone who reads the repudiation of the Clinton bill as an excuse to do nothing is equally in error. There is as much need now as there was then to correct the problems in our health care system for the 14.6 percent or 39.7 million Americans, for whom the system does not work--a group which, according to the Census Bureau, contained 1.1 million more uninsured individuals in 1993 than the previous year. As I have said many times, we can do so without big government and turning the best health care system in the world, serving 85.4 percent of all Americans, on its head. The legislation I am introducing today, the Health Care Assurance Act of 1995, will do just that.”