include only the health care related parts of the speech. -- Steve Freedkin ] THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary ______________________________________________________________ For Immediate Release June 22, 1994 REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT AT DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE GALA Washington Hilton Hotel Washington, D.C. 9:09 P.M. EDT THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. [...] [Recalling a conversation Clinton had during one of the bus trips in his campaign for the presidency:] There's no way that TV ads could convey what we saw in the eyes of a woman on the side of the road in the Middle West one night who told us that her husband and she had been married for 35 years, and he had been having increasing difficulty holding on to jobs because of the decline of the economy and, finally, he had taken a job paying just over $5 an hour, and they had lost their health insurance and she was ill. And she did not know what to do, but she was absolutely sure that they had worked hard and played by the rules. [...] Now we're working on health care. First, the other side said there was no crisis. Then there was a crisis but we needed a bipartisan solution. I said, fine; here's my plan, you tell me how we going to change it, but we've got to cover everybody. Then they started running ads saying I was trying to give health care to the government, which wasn't true. But I went out and listened to people, and I said, well, maybe it is too bureaucratic. So we changed it some more, and took out some of the mandatory provisions and made it more flexible to try to make it more responsive. And then a Republican Congressman from Iowa named Fred Grandy stood up and told the awful truth that he and his colleagues had been given marching orders to do nothing to cooperate to try to solve the health care problems in this country. The Governor of Florida was in here today, talking about how he had a bill in Florida that was not mandatory, but would made the situation better; that had the support of every organization in his state. And it still died the in Senate of the state of Florida because there's a 20-20 split between Republicans and Democrats. And with all the interest groups saying, please do something about health care, every last Republican senator still voted against it so they couldn't say he did anything on health care. Now, in the Senate Finance Committee, there are a couple of Republicans who have worked on health care for years, who are trying to come together and reach some accommodation. And I can tell you they are under withering pressure. But, folks, those people who say, let's just cover 90 percent and forget about it, it won't work. It won't work. Three million working Americans have lost their health insurance in the last three years. We are going backwards. We are the only country in the world with an advanced economy that has not figured out how to cover everybody. Read the article in The Washington Post today about the German health care system. The German health care system today takes up a smaller percentage of the income of Germany than it did two years ago. It's about 8.5 percent. Our health care system costs us 14.5 percent of our income, and we still can't figure out how to cover -- we're not even at 85 percent anymore. And all the solutions that say, well, let's just not make any tough decisions and go up to 90 percent cost you a double- ton of money in taxes, subsidize the poor -- most of whom already can at least get Medicare -- and do not one single solitary thing for the working middle class, 80 percent of whom are those who don't have insurance and who are terribly insecure. I'm telling you, we have got to face this problem and face it now. Harry Truman tried to get us to do it 50 years ago and we didn't do it, and we've been paying for it ever since. (Applause.) Let me say that any time you quote Harry Truman now, the Republicans stand up and clap, and everybody says, gosh, I wish we had him around; it's too bad we don't have anybody like Truman anymore. Let me tell you something, folks, I came from one of those families that was for him when he was living. (Laughter and applause.) And a lot of the people that brag on him today wouldn't have walked across the street to shake his hand when he was in office -- (applause) -- because he stood up for ordinary people and he told extraordinary truths and he tried to get us to face the problems of our time. Now, in retrospect, we can see that he did a good job. [...] END 9:36 P.M. EDT