[THIS IS THE PERIODIC BRIEFING FROM THE WHITE HOUSE TO ITS OFFICIALS AND OTHER SUPPORTERS OF ITS HEALTH-REFORM PROGRAM. IT PROVIDES AN INSIDE LOOK AT HOW THE ADMINISTRATION IS PROMOTING ITS PLAN. THIS ITEM WILL ALWAYS HAVE THE SAME SUBJECT LINE (WITH DIFFERENT DATES) SO YOU CAN EASILY SKIP IT IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO READ IT. -- Steve Freedkin , LIST.HEALTHPLAN Administrator] The White House Health Care Reform Today February 1, 1994 * Today, the President will address the American Hospital Association and the National Governors Associaton (NGA). The topic: Health Care and the continuing crisis. * There is a health care crisis, and nobody knows that better than America's hospitals. America's hospitals are the ones who have to treat the seriously ill when they don't get the primary and preventive care they need. They're the ones who are forced to "cost-shift" onto the bills of privately insured patients to make up for the cost of uncompensated care. And they're the ones who have been forced to hire four new administrators for every doctor in order to keep up with the mounting paperwork. * The current system makes the job of a hospital nearly impossible. With hospitals forced to scramble for reimbursement and fight the insurance company red tape, it's a wonder they still have time to provide high-quality care. * Hospitals and insurance companies have opposite missions in our health care system. The insurance companies' mission is to make money by finding the healthiest people to cover, and avoiding people who are sick or have a pre-existing condition, and the hospitals' mission is to take care of everybody. * The President will today address the nation's Governors on the crisis they face, and on the pressing need for a state/federal partnership in addressing both health care reform and welfare reform. * In the NGA's summer meeting in Tulsa, Governors from both parties adopted a resolution declaring "The American health care system is in crisis." * They are right: states have seen their Medicaid costs more than quadruple since 1980, and still the numbers of uninsured continue to grow. * For health care reform to be truly successful at the local level, states have to be free to tailor their own solutions. Under the President's approach, states will have the flexibility to design and implement their own programs within a federal framework of guaranteed private insurance. * But reform must also be comprehensive -- incremental solutions have been foisted on the states for too long, leaving them to pick up the bill for new federal mandates with little or no federal money. This time, real, lasting solutions are necessary. As the NGA themselves have stated in their health care policy statement: "The kinds of structural changes that must occur in the health care system cannot be effective unless and until every legal resident has health insurance."