The White House
Health Care Reform Today
October 7, 1993
- There are many components of the Cooper approach
we agree with completely. Like Congressman Cooper, we
believe community rating returns insurance to a
community responsibility, not an exercise in profit
making and risk avoidance. Like Congressman Cooper, we
believe that an increased emphasis on competition will
promote efficiency, reduce waste, and lower costs. And
finally, like Congressman Cooper, we believe increased
cost-consciousness is an important aspect of health care
reform, and a necessary ingredient for cost control.
But we cannot support the Cooper bill because it does
not provide health security for all Americans. We
believe all Americans need and deserve health care
security; this plan just doesn't provide that.
- Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentson said yesterday:
"Well, I think Congressman Cooper's plan certainly
contributes to the debate in a meaningful way. But it
has some serious problems. One of them, it does not have
universal coverage. And as Erskine (Bowles) was just
saying, you're going to see the cost-shifting take
place, and you'll see small business bear the brunt of
it. And they will have, themselves, higher costs
continuing. So universal coverage is an essential. It
is not there in that one."
- He continued: "Another one is that they don't
have the benefits defined. That is done later by some
national board. And it's important that you know what
you're getting before you vote on it and what kind of
coverage you're going to have. I would say the third
problem with it is the cap that's put on the plan, the
tax cap. And what you would see is a lot of the major
companies that have full coverage would be cutting back
insofar as that coverage, and I think that is a serious
flaw in the system."
- Dr. Laura Tyson, Chair of the Council on Economic
Advisors summed up the issue of jobs, during a briefing
yesterday: "We've spent considerable time going over
the plan, analyzing the plan very carefully, looking at
all of the existing models out there for assessing these
effects. We concluded that the models are highly
imperfect. There is no model out there which can
incorporate all of the pluses. None of the models
actually incorporate any of the pluses that I mentioned
in assessing the employment effects. So by doing an
analysis, we've concluded the net effect on employment
is likely to be very small. But you're going to have
some positive employment-generating effects, you're
going to have some negative employment discouraging
effects. The net effect on employment is likely to be
very small.