The CBO report specifically confirms that the long-term effect of the President's plan will be to reduce the Federal deficit. While there are differe… - Ted Kennedy

To help finance a bill, the pharmaceutical industry has agreed to lower prices for seniors, not only saving them money for prescriptions but also saving the government tens of billions in Medicare payments over the next decade. Senator Baucus has agreed with hospitals on more than $100 billion in savings. We're working with Republicans to make this a bipartisan effort. Everyone won't be satisfied—and no one will get everything they want. But we need to come together, just as we've done in other great struggles—in World War II and the Cold War, in passing the great civil-rights laws of the 1960s, and in daring to send a man to the moon. If we don't get every provision right, we can adjust and improve the program next year or in the years to come. What we can't afford is to wait another generation.

Mr. President, this afternoon, in testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee, the Congressional Budget Office submitted its detailed views on President Clinton's Health Security Act. CBO is usually a quiet place, but in recent months it has been the quiet at the center of the storm, as all sides in the health care debate have awaited CBO's analysis of President Clinton's Health Security Act. Now, CBO's verdict is in, and after all the ideological smoke dissipates, it will be clear that CBO's analysis is a solid vote of confidence in the administration's plan. The plan is sound economically. The numbers add up. The CBO analysis concludes that the plan will provide health security for all Americans, and bring health care costs under control. No reputable study has concluded that any of the opponents' plans will reach those goals--not the Cooper plan, and certainly not any of the Republican plans. There is a health care crisis today because too many families have no insurance and because health care costs are out of control. The President's plan deals effectively with these two basic issues. It guarantees coverage for every American. And it brings health care costs under control. It means that the economy will grow, our living standards will improve, and America will be able to compete more effectively in the international marketplace.

Now we’re into the period of the ’70s, and we’re trying to think about how to go through—We go through a whole series of different maneuvers over a very considerable period of time. We’re trying to see how we can build a coalition and how we can expand the breadth of our support. One interesting phenomenon during this period of time is that Wilbur Mills, who was the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, an enormously powerful position, was interested in running for President. No one gave him much of a chance, but he thought that the way to do it was to be for national health insurance, and so this opened up—To have the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee being your ally on this was a very significant and important opportunity. He and I got along fine. I had never been all that close to him, but he respected my brother Jack, and they had some mutual friends. So we had this sort of dance, trying to get him into the program. He wouldn’t go for the single-payer program and through all of this period, we’re sort of adjusting and changing. The Republicans, even when they came our way later on, were always sort of holding back and always tipping the tide to the industry—and the industries that were most effective were the insurance industries and hospitals—during the series of debates. We suffered a very serious setback as we started to move ahead in the early ’70s, with the loss of—Walter Reuther was killed in an airplane crash. And also by the fact that Wilbur Mills got himself in trouble.