Software Vault: The Gold Collection/Software Vault - The Gold Collection (American Databankers) (1993).ISO/cdr11/wh930505.zip/5-5H.TXT

Internet Message Format | 1993-06-03 | 13KB

From @lex-luthor.ai.mit.edu:[e-mail]  Wed May  5 23:21:01 1993
Date: Wed, 5 May 1993 19:07-0400
From: The White House <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail],
Subject: President's Remarks at Ceremony for National Nurses Week

                           THE WHITE HOUSE

                    Office of the Press Secretary
______________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release                                May 5, 1993


                      REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
                AT CEREMONY FOR NATIONAL NURSES WEEK

                          The Rose Garden

4:27 P.M. EDT

         THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you very much, Ginny, for that
wonderful statement and the introduction.  And thank you, Secretary
Shalala, for everything you said.  I noticed a few groans in the
audience when you pointed out that Dorothea Dix worked for nothing.
(Laughter.)  I don't think she was suggesting that you do that, I
think she was volunteering to do that -- don't you think?
(Laughter.)

         I want to say, I knew nurses were miracle workers,
having been raised by one.  But I don't see how you staved off the
rain today.  (Laughter.)  When I first heard 100 nurses were going to
be here I thought to myself, what else can I do?  I've given up junk
food, I run every day.  What more do you want of me?  (Laughter.)
I'm doing my part.

         I want to say a special word of acknowledgement, too, to
the nurses who are in this audience who work here at the White House,
who care for me and my family and are available to the other people
who work here.  They do a wonderful job and I'm very grateful to
them.  And they're here and there and around, and I thank them for
their presence here.  (Applause.)

         I'd also like to pay a special word of tribute to your
president, Ginny Trotter Betts, for hanging it out there with us in
the election and bringing the support of the American Nurses
Association, and also for being such a forceful advocate for sweeping
reforms in our health care system.  Hillary and I very much
appreciate the work that she and the Nurses Association have done.
And I know that she's also an old friend of Al and Tipper Gore's, and
they're grateful, too, for her contributions.

         I'd also like to recognize some of the other people who
are here today, including a remarkable nurse whose presence in the
Congress is a symbol of your political strength -- Congresswoman
Eddie Bernice Johnson, from Dallas and my dear friend.  (Applause.)
She's really a tribute to the practice of good health.  I've known
her for 20 years and I look much older and she looks younger than she
did the first time we met.  (Laughter.)

         I also want to thank all the nurses who have advised our
Health Care Reform Task Force and brought such a valuable perspective
to that effort.  You've really made a difference and we're grateful
to you.

         We're here today to mark the beginning of National
Nurses Week, a time for our country to recognize the services that
you and your colleagues provide 24 hours a day, seven days a week,
365 days a year.  From inner city hospitals to rural clinics, from
the Red Cross to the Armed Services, America's nurses always answer
the call.

         Today we're reminded that our nation's 1.8 million
working nurses are the backbone of a health care system, the largest
single group of health care providers in America -- and I might add,
a group that will have to do more and should do more in primary and
preventive care if we're going to bring the cost of medical care
down.  (Applause.)

         You know better than anyone else what is wrong with this
system.  You see all the people who show up at the emergency room to
get the most expensive care too late because they didn't have a basic
primary and preventive health care package.  You see the enormous
burden of paperwork squandering more and more hours of nurses and
doctors, requiring more and more precious health care dollars to be
diverted to clerical expenses instead of to investing in the health
of our people.  Every day you see these kinds of problems as the
nation continues to wait for action on a health care front.

         I'm here today on this beginning of your week to
reaffirm to you my commitment that now is the time to do something
about health care and to do it right.  (Applause.)

         One of the most challenging things we have to do in this
city at this time is to break a mind-set that we have one problem at
a time and we'll get on it and we'll only think about that.  I
believe that this country has at least three huge problems that
relate one to the other.  One is, there are too many people who are
unemployed and too many people who are working harder with no gains
in their incomes.  And it's been that way for a long, long time.  Two
is, the cost of health care is exploding at an unacceptable rate, and
yet, too few people have coverage -- or their coverage is too
limited.  Third is, we're absolutely being consumed by a massive
national debt and a growing deficit.  And these things are all
related one to the other.

         Now, people say to me, well, we just do one thing at a
time.  Well, look back over time where that's gotten us.  People say
for a long time -- just say, well, we ought to just spend money and
give it to people and maybe that will work.  That hasn't worked.
Then for 12 years we heard the worst thing in the world is taxes;
we'll just cut taxes, especially on wealthy people, and that will
make everything wonderful.  Well, that hasn't worked out very well
either.  So the guy said to me yesterday -- said, "I know a bunch of
people who got tax cuts last year, because they used to be making
$40,000 a year and now they're making $10,000; they all got a tax
cut."

         And what I say to you is that we don't want to just keep
trying to give people things in a system that is broken.  You can't
give people government money, you can't give people tax cuts if the
system is broken.  What we have to do is to attack all these problems
at once, and not keep giving people things, but give them the means
to take care of themselves and to create lives that are productive
and good and strong for themselves and their families, their
children.  That's what we have to do.

         That's why, yes, we have to reduce spending and increase
taxes, mostly on wealthy people who got their taxes cut in the 1980s,
to bring the deficit down.  But we also have to invest carefully in
programs that will create jobs and raise incomes, new technologies
for the 21st century and the kind of education and training that will
give people work.  If everybody in this country who wanted a good job
had one, we wouldn't have half the problems we've got.

         And then the third thing we have to do is to attack the
health care crisis, because if we don't we will never get the
government deficit under control.  (Applause.)  We will never balance
this budget, and we will never -- more importantly, we will never
provide the security that most families need and deserve in a rapidly
changing and increasingly insecure world.

         There are millions of Americans today who cannot change
jobs because somebody in their family has been sick.  There are
millions of others who have no health insurance.  There are millions
of others who have some health insurance, but very little, because
they work for small businesses who cannot afford a basic package of
health care because of the insurance system that we have in this
country.  There are untold billions of dollars being spent that
should not be spent by the people who pay the full price and more for
health care because they have to pay for somebody else's health care
who's not covered when it's too late and too expensive, or because
they're paying an unbelievable bureaucratic burden for the paperwork
burdens of this system.

         So I say to you, these are false choices.  People cannot
say to us you must choose between having a healthy country, an
employed country, a country bringing its deficit down.  We must do
all three of those things because that's the only way we can --
instead of trying to give people something that's not there to give,
empower people to seize control of their destiny and bring this
country back.  That's what we've got to do.  (Applause.)

         There will always be defenders of the status quo.  It is
easy to say, well, let's just write somebody a check.  Even easier to
say, taxes are evil, they're out to get you.

         Right now, you know as well as I do, the lobbyists are
lining up strategizing about how they're going to pick this health
care proposal to death.  But I'll tell you something -- the worst
thing we could do, in my opinion, after 400-and-something people have
worked their hearts out for months and months and months, is to take
a dive on the health care thing, to turn away from it, to deal with
the inconveniences of it.

         People say, well, it may cost somebody else some money.
Let me tell you something, all those people who don't have health
insurance today, they're being paid for by everybody else who's
paying the bill.  What about fairness to them?  Who's thinking about
them?  I'll tell you something else.  We've been reducing defense
spending quite steeply and about all we can for the last five years.
And all the savings we hope to have in the peace dividend have been
exploded away by rising health care costs and interest payments on
this deficit.

         So it is all related.  You've got to have a job
strategy.  You've got to have a deficit reduction strategy.  And
you've got to have a health care strategy.  Because if you don't have
a health care strategy, the American people can't stay well, the
American economy can't get well, and you cannot reduce the deficit to
zero in this decade.  Those things must be done together.  We cannot
be forced to make that false choice.

         And so I ask you -- you represent 1.8 million people,
who know the heartache, the heartbreak and the problems of this
system, and who also know that that which is right about our system
makes it the best in the world for those who can access it.  We are
determined to come forward to the Congress with a plan that keeps the
best of America's health care system, keeps the private provider
system, keeps a lot of choice in the system, but deals with the awful
problems that you know better than anybody.  And I ask you to commit
today not to let the special interests tell us that we can't deal
with health care; not to let the special interests spook and scare
the members of Congress away from doing what is our manifest duty to
the people of this country who are working hard and playing by the
rules and falling further behind, and instead, to give us all a
chance to do the work of a generation.

         And that is really what's being given us in this time,
in this Congress:  the opportunity to do something that comes along
once in a generation to change the whole course of America's future.
By dealing with these things together, providing security and quality
and control of cost in this health care system, bringing this deficit
down and pursuing a long-term strategy for a high-wage, high-growth,
low-unemployment economy.  And they're all together.  If you'll help
me take that message to the Congress, this will be one of the best
years the American people ever had.

         Thank you very much.  (Applause.)

         Q      Have you heard anything from Bosnia, sir?

         THE PRESIDENT:  No.

         Q      How quickly are you prepared to move once you do?

         THE PRESIDENT:  Well, let's wait and see what they do
first.

         Q      Mr. President, there is word that the parliament
has agreed to the peace agreement.  Mr. President, there is --

         THE PRESIDENT:  I hope they.  I'm waiting for a call
from Secretary Christopher right now.  Let me go take the call and
I'll give you --

         Q      And then what, sir?

         Q      Sir, what happened to your immunization program on
the Hill?  Why did you have to dog back on that?

         THE PRESIDENT:  Well, Secretary Shalala says we're going
to get a program that can immunize a lot more people.  We did the
best we could with the money we had.  I think -- you know, a lot of
these things are going to be a function of how much money we have.
But I feel pretty good about it.  I talked to her about it.  She
feels good about.  We think it's a big advance over where we are.

         Thank you.

         THE PRESS:  Thank you.

                                 END4:38 P.M. EDT