The White House Health Care Reform Today January 6, 1994 * We must have comprehensive health care reform in order to move forward on the rest of the President's domestic agenda. Without reform, health care costs will continue to explode and eat up our investment dollars. Without reform, people will continue to be locked in current jobs or on welfare. The bottom line: we cannot end welfare unless we also have comprehensive health care reform. This initiative has four major parts: the Earned Income Tax Credit; health care reform; personal responsibility and work. * The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). We ought to reward work over welfare. Enacted in last year's budget, the expanded EITC will ensure that any family that has a full-time worker will no longer live in poverty. Expanding the EITC represents a giant step forward in reducing those dependent on welfare. * Comprehensive health care reform. Today, millions of welfare recipients stay on Medicaid -- the Federal government's health care program for the poor -- because taking a job means they will lose health benefits for themselves and their children. Comprehensive health reform will eliminate so-called "Medicaid lock" and enable people to seek jobs, secure in the knowledge that they and their children will be covered. By ensuring universal coverage, the Health Security Act provides the necessary foundation for welfare reform. * Personal responsibility. The President's welfare reform plan will include initiatives to prevent teen pregnancy, ensure that parents fulfill their child support obligations, dramatically increase paternity establishment, and try to keep people from going on welfare in the first place. The message is clear: Governments don't raise children, parents do. * Work, not welfare. The final part of the President's welfare plan will build on the Family Support Act by requiring people who can work to do so within two years, either in the private sector or community service. This includes expanding child care for working families; providing education, training, and job search and placement for those who need it; and restoring the basic social contract of providing opportunity and demanding responsibility in return. Without health care reform, a welfare reform argument carries nothing more than the weight of political rhetoric. * Universal Coverage vs. Universal Access. What's the difference? On yesterday's TODAY Show, Senior Policy Advisor Ira Magaziner said: "(We need) universal coverage to be sure that everybody can afford health care. It's not enough to say that you can have access to an expensive restaurant if you can't go in and afford to eat. You need to be able to afford the coverage and to be able to have comprehensive benefits in order to really have universal coverage."