The American Spectator

Inskeep: Mr. President, we’re talking about health care. I want to move to a question about health care in the United States. President Bush has been talking about making improvement of health care in the U.S. a top priority. I wonder if you have any advice for him.

Clinton: Well, I don’t know if I have any advice for him, but I think that what we tried to do back in ‘93 and ‘94, still has some relevance. The real problem was that we didn’t have any money ‘cause we had a big deficit so we couldn’t provide universal coverage without some sort of employer mandate.

Inskeep: Also couldn’t build enough political support for a specific solution in ‘93 and ‘94.

Clinton: Yeah, well, that was because we had big opposition from the health insurance companies. I think people now see that for what it is. We are spending 16 percent of our income on health care. No other country spends more than 11 [percent]. We spend more on the last two months of life than anyone else. And we also have a lot of defensive medicine because malpractice insurance is so expensive. If we had more self-insurance in big pools, we could also bring that price way, way down.