[Charles Fishman, editor] Please Distribute 10/08/92 THE ESSENTIAL CLINTON: HEALTH-CARE [Because of her example, fighting against breast cancer] "I'm so committed to making sure every American gets the health care that saved my mother's life--and that women's health care gets the same attention as men's." THE VISION --------------------------- "Mr. Bush has done next to nothing to solve the health care crisis. I will make sure health care costs don't rise faster than your income. He won't. I will take on irresponsible drug companies and insurance companies. He won't." [George Bush] "won't even implement the recommendations of his own Commission on Aids. But I will." "He won't give mothers and fathers the simple chance to take some time off from work when a baby is born or a parent is sick. But I will." "George Bush won't guarantee a woman's right to choose. I will." "I have a plan for fundamental change and real reform. George Bush has a last minute political proposal." "health care is a right, not a privilege." THE BUSH RECORD --------------------------- Since 1980, health care costs have tripled, going from $2,500 to $7,500 for an American family. [Health Care Finance Authority, Office of the Actuary] In 1990, 35 million Americans were uninsured. Each month, under George Bush, 100,000 people have lost their insurance --mostly workers who lose their jobs or benefits. [Current Populations Reports, Bureau of the Census] In fact, George Bush's inaction has let health care costs climb to $800 billion in 1992. They now add $1,230 to the price of an American car. Over the next five years, they'll account for more than half the growth of the federal deficit." "The large inducements [in Bush's plan] for insurers . . . would increase the already horrendous administrative costs of the current system." [Henry Aaron, Brookings Institute, House Energy and Commerce testimony, 7/29/92] "Mr. Bush expressed no sense of urgency about the health care crisis until last November, when the voters of Pennsylvania spoke out loud and clear for a national health plan and elected Harris Wofford to the Senate." [New York Times, 8/2/92] "The Medicare cuts required by Bush's proposals would increase private sector health costs--and cost 2.2 million jobs." [Kenneth E. Thorpe, UNC Working Paper, 8/31/92] THE CLINTON ALTERNATIVE --------------------------- The Clinton/Gore plan will improve quality, expand choice, and control costs through a strategy of competition within a budget. This strategy is supported by leading consumer groups, including the American College of Physicians, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Nurses Association, and a broad range of businesses--from Bethlehem Steel to Xerox--that belong to the National Leadership Coalition on Health Care. "We're already spending 30 percent more on health care than any [other] country in the world. We can control costs but, to do it right, you have to control costs for everybody: the people who are buying insurance and the people who are getting health care from the government. . . . You have to give people incentives to get care early--primary preventive care, instead of late, when it's too expensive." "The VA health system is already in trouble after years of inadequate funding. . . . Wards have been closed and services limited. Equipment isn't being bought, and technology is not being modernized. . . . Mr. Bush wants to go back on that historic commitment Americans have made and veterans have trusted for decades; I don't." "I want a disciplined national system to control all health care costs, so that we can get the waste out of the system and the profiteering out of the system, not just hurt those who are most vulnerable." "we cannot do these things unless at last, at last, we follow the lead of the other advanced nations of the world and provide basic affordable health care to all Americans, and control the costs of the health care system we have." THE PRESCRIPTION --------------------------- "Every year . . . budgets all over America face bankruptcy because of the rising cost of health care, and we are spending 30 percent more of our income than anybody else and getting less for it, because we're spending more on insurance, on regulation, on paperwork, on drugs, on unnecessary equipment, on procedures that don't have to be done, and because we don't provide what we need more of, which is primary and preventive health care for people in the cities and in rural areas in this country." "We have too much of the same things and too little of others. So we spend more and we get sicker. And none of this will change unless you vote to change the presidency. We'll never get a national health care strategy without a new administration in Washington." ENDORSEMENTS: ---------------------- Families USA (Washington-based consumer health advocacy group) From Newsday, October 2, 1992: "A panel of five Republican and Democratic health officials from previous administrations found, after studying the Bush and Clinton health plans, that while Bush's plan would save $31 billion from expected spending by the year 2000, Clinton's plan would save $211 billion. By 2005, Bush's plan would save $46 billion while Clinton would save $481 billion, the group said. "The analysis, conducted by Lewin-ICS, a bipartisan health-economics firm used by both political parties, also found that Clinton's plan would virtually eliminate the uninsured by the late 1990s, while Bush's approach would leave 27 million Americans priced out of the health insurance market."