___ NOTES FROM LIST.HEALTHPLAN MANAGER ______________________ | | | 1. When writing to LIST.HEALTHPLAN, send NEW email to | | me ; *don't* write a REPLY to | | mail from the list. Replies don't reach me. | | 2. Use the appropriate command line in the SUBJECT of | | your message header. See the welcome letter for com- | | plete instructions. If you need a copy, send me a note | | with the Subject: SEND WELCOME LETTER LIST.HEALTHPLAN | | -- Steve Freedkin , List Mgr. | |_____________________________________________________________| - THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary _________________________________________________________________ For Immediate Release June 30, 1994 REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT AT SMALL BUSINESS UNIVERSAL COVERAGE EVENT The South Lawn 10:39 A.M. EDT THE PRESIDENT: Thank you so much, Brian McCarthy, for your testimony and your enthusiasm and the incredible work you've done. Thank you, Mike and Mickey, for what you have said today. Thank you, Butler Derrick, for sticking your neck out and going through this big fight. (Applause.) I thank Congressman Gephardt, Congressman Bonior, Congressman Fazio -- all the members of the House who are here today. And I want to say a special word of thanks to Erskine Bowles, the Administrator of the SBA. You know, when I asked him to do this job, I pointed out that, even though he was a supporter of mine, his primary qualification was that he was not a political appointment, he was someone who had spent a lifetime helping people to start and to expand small businesses. So when he came to me and said the biggest winners in this health reform plan will be small business, I don't understand why the NFIB is campaigning against you, I knew if we could get the truth out, the facts, we could have a day like today. I thank him for that, and I thank all of you for being here, too. (Applause.) You know, we have established again today that an awful lot of small businesspeople in this country do support universal coverage, are prepared to contribute to the health coverage of their employees, and understand that without a system that requires everybody to be involved in health care, small business will continue to get the short end of the stick. Now, there are powerful interests in this country and here in Washington who have spent millions and millions of dollars to convince the American people otherwise. Your presence here today is a sharp rebuttal to what they have tried to do. There are about 50 members of Congress here today who have felt the relentless pressure of all that organized lobbying, but instead of giving in to it they've been thinking about you and sticking up for you and standing up for you. And I think you ought to stick with them and encourage others to join with you. (Applause.) I do want to reiterate what Brian has already said. The Small Business Coalition for Health Reform now represents over 620,000 small businesses. That is the most astonishing growth in such a short time. He came up with -- he knows I love charts, so he gave me a chart to prove that. (Laughter.) But what that means is that when 4,700 small businesses a day come on board to an organization like this, those who claim to speak for small business and claim to say it would be good for small business if we continue to have the status quo do not, in fact, do it. We know that you're a young organization. You don't have television ads on the air. You don't have mass mailings going out, but you represent more real American businesses and their employees that the NFIB with their intense disinformation campaign about our health care reform effort. (Applause.) Now, I want to just try to put this in some perspective for all of you from my point of view as well as yours. I ran for president because I wanted to get the economy going again and I wanted to make government work for ordinary people again, to actually solve problems and to be a partner. I'm about to leave, on July 5th, for the so-called G-7 meeting, the meeting of the world's seven big industrial powers. And as I look back on the last year and a half, as I go into this meeting, I feel pretty good. The United States has 40 percent of the annual income of those seven countries. But in the last year and a half we've had 75 percent of the growth, generated 100 percent of all the new jobs, had three times as many private sector jobs come into this economy as in the previous four years -- 1993 had a record number of new business incorporations in America. Our investment is growing more quickly, our productivity is growing more quickly than all of our major competitors. Our exports are growing at twice the rate of the average of all of our competitors. The economy is moving again. But as I look down the road and I think about the context in which we operate, I know that the economic plan we passed last year and the budget plan we passed this year had a lot to do with that. (Applause.) We're going to reduce the deficit three years in a row for the first time since Harry Truman was President of the United States. (Applause.) This year's budget eliminates over 100 government programs, cuts 200 others, reduces domestic discretionary spending for the first time in 25 years. The other folks talked a lot about cutting spending in the deficit; we are delivering that to you. And still we have increased our investment in education, in training, in new technologies. Last year in the economic plan there was a 70 percent increase in the expensing provision for small business, which made 90 percent of the small businesses in this country eligible for a tax cut if they invested more money in their businesses. Now, I believe that this is the direction we should take. But let's face it -- if we want to see America strong and growing, if you want our deficit to continue to come down, if we want to see every year a record number of small businesses starting, we have got to find a way to deal with this health care problem. The only thing that's going up in the budget, folks, faster than the rate of inflation, is the cost of Medicare and Medicaid. That's it. We're bringing down everything else. And yet, still, those of you who cover your employees are paying for cost- shifting for people who don't cover their own, and for inadequate compensation in some of the government programs. So from my point of view, your long-term financial health and your nation's and your government's long-term financial health depend absolutely on dealing with this issue. Now, let me say one other thing. Every single group of experts who has testified before any committee of Congress has always said you have got to find a way to cover everybody in America, get them in the health care system if you want to control costs, stop cost-shifting and preserve quality. We have 100 members of academic health centers here this week saying the same thing -- saying you cannot preserve what is best about American health care, providing the doctors, the nurses, the technology, unless you fix what is wrong with it -- the financing system -- and get everybody involved. (Applause.) Now, we've been at a terrible disadvantage in this fight before right now. Because while 70 percent of the American people or more will say we are for coverage for everybody, we believe in shared responsibility. We want small businesses to get a break and be able to organize so they can buy health insurance on competitive terms. We believe people should not be discriminated against because someone in their family has been sick. Because they will say that doesn't mean we've been able to keep up support for our plan. Why? Because we've been the only kid on the block. Everybody else is out there criticizing, looking for an easy answer, and lobbing rockets at our program. You've see all those ads. They say, well, it's a government-run program. It isn't, is it? It's a private insurance program. They say we're going to ration health care. Folks, we don't ration health care -- we're rationing health care now. There are 39 million Americans without it, there are 3 million people who have lost their coverage in the last three years. And every one of you who is providing health insurance on your own is having to ration it because you can't buy it on the same terms as big business and government. (Applause.) They say that you will lose benefits if our plan passes. But the truth is our plan doesn't take anything away from anybody, it puts a floor under what you can lose and gives everybody some protection, some real protection for middle class people and for small businesspeople for a change. What's happening is today -- as you know, every year people are losing more and more -- more benefits, more choices, paying more. It's a myth. Then they say, well, our cost figures aren't right. The truth is we've got the only plan in town where the costs have been verified, validated and supported. And for very small businesses in this country, operating on a modest margin, the cost of this plan will be less than the cost of the minimum wage bill passed by Congress and signed in the previous administration. And that is the fact. (Applause.)