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Our fifth major concern is the health of our people. On the airplane coming here from Washington early this morning, I had a chance to talk at length… - Jimmy Carter
" "Our fifth major concern is the health of our people. On the airplane coming here from Washington early this morning, I had a chance to talk at length with Congressman Jim Corman about the future of our national health program. Good health for every American is one of my primary concerns, and I know it's one of yours. Again, it's a complicated question. If it weren't complicated, the problem would have been solved many years ago. We must deal with the cause of illness. This means promoting a cleaner environment and safer and healthier work places. And we will be submitting these proposals in about a week. It means helping our children avoid preventable diseases--as was the case when I was a child and, perhaps, when many of you were young-some 5 1/2 million children will be immunized over the next 30 months. Also, under our proposed Child Health Assessment Program now before the Congress, 10 million young children will be screened annually by 1982. This is five times more than are presently examined at this time to see what childhood diseases might be prevented as they approach adulthood as students. In order to make medical care available in inner cities and rural areas, we proposed legislation already that will make nurse practitioners and physicians' assistants available to help fill the gap. And finally, I'm committed to the phasing-in of a workable national health insurance system. It's certainly not difficult to guess which union has made national health insurance a national issue. Beginning many months ago, Leonard Woodcock has given me an education about the need and the possible ways for meeting it. He's a member of the advisory committee that will help design the whole system and will hold its first meeting later on this week. And we are aiming to submit legislative proposals early next year. We must move immediately to start bringing health care costs under control. If we don't--and I want you to listen carefully to this--if we don't bring the health care costs, particularly hospitals, under control, no matter what kind of health system we have in our country, the cost will double every 5 years. Now, we can't afford that. We can't afford that. Hospital costs now take 40 cents of every health dollar, and they've gone up an incredible 1,000 percent since 1950. I proposed hospital cost containment legislation that would put the brakes on these increases. Sixty other nations nave managed to come up with national health programs that meet the needs of our people-of their people. It's not beyond our own ingenuity to do the same, and I want this program to be established during my time in office. There's a lot that we can do as consumers. In many instances, medical doctors, hospitals, and others, have been very careless about how much health care actually costs. Late last month, my wife was found to have a tumor on her breast. She went to Bethesda Hospital about 2 o'clock in the afternoon. She had a long incision made, 4 or 5 inches long, and the tumor was removed. She was back home at 5 o'clock. Quite often, if doctors and hospitals want to hold down the time we spend in intensive care and the extraordinary cost of medical care, they can do it. But we, as consumers, need to help.
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About Jimmy Carter
James Earl Carter, Jr. (October 1, 1924 – December 29, 2024) was an American politician and member of the Democratic Party who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. In 1982 he established the Carter Center, as a base for promoting human rights, democracy, finding peaceful solutions to international conflicts, and advancing economic and social development, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. He was a key figure in the Habitat for Humanity project, and has been noted for his criticism of Israel's role in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
Biography information from Wikiquote
Also Known As
Birth Name:
James Earl Carter Jr.
Alternative Names:
James E. Carter
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James Carter
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James Earl Carter
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39th President of the United States
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James E. Carter Jr.
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James Earl Carter, Jr.
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James E. Carter, Jr.
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Additional quotes by Jimmy Carter
We're concerned about young people's health. We propose an $18.9 million program to immunize 5 1/2 million poor children from preventable diseases over the next 30 months, and we'll raise the number of poor children screened for medical purposes from less than 2 million last year to 9.8 million before I go out of office. I said during the campaign that the tax system was a disgrace, that it was most unfair to people with low and average incomes. We've been working now for 6 months on a tax proposal that will be simpler and fairer and will reduce the burden on the average American. But in the meantime, we have already gotten Congress to agree--the bill has been signed, it's been passed into law--to reduce taxes $4 billion with the primary emphasis on the low- and middle-income families, which means that a family that makes about $10,000 a year on a permanent basis would have a 30-percent reduction in their income tax payments. That's already been done. Walter Mondale, my Vice President, worked for years unsuccessfully, 8 years, to try to get a $100-million increase in the Title I programs for a better education for poor people, poor children. We have already proposed, and the Congress has already agreed, to increase the Title I program more than $350 million.
We obviously didn't cause the problem; it's an inherited problem that's been built up for long years. I think in the past there's been too much of an emphasis on major Federal programs when billions of dollars have been spent on helping people that didn't need the help very badly. I'm from the Sun Belt States. I think there's been too much of a channeling of Federal moneys into Sun Belt areas. I think between the downtown ghetto areas on crime control, housing development, and so forth, the funds have quite often been channeled off into the suburbs because of more highly educated people, better organized people, more able to speak loudly and who understood the complexities of Federal programs. We're trying to change that and focus the attention of the Government, whatever it is, on the downtown, urban, deteriorating neighborhoods. Another thing that we're trying to do is to concentrate on the rehabilitation of homes. I've seen this happen in Baltimore. I've seen it happen in Savannah, Georgia, and other places around the country, where with a small effort on the part of a chamber of commerce or the local officials, the banks, working with the Federal Government--that instead of seeing a neighborhood deteriorate, that existing structures can be rebuilt or renovated to make very attractive homes near the core area for executive and professional work without abandoning the central cities and moving out into the suburbs. We're trying to do that, too, with our general HUD programs.
My own ultimate goal is to eliminate the use or threat of nuclear weapons altogether. And I personally have been pleased in the last few months, at least since the summer, at the constructive attitude of the Soviet Union. We have to be very careful on technicalities and on major strategic elements of the negotiations to protect our own interests. We've got to be sure that we do have an equal or dominant position on all aspects of strategic deterrent. And I believe that we have that posture now, and I want to be sure to maintain it. We've tried to open up a new relationship with Africa. We've been successful, I think, so far. We've got a very good relationship with Latin America. I think that could possibly be wiped out overnight if the Senate fails to ratify the Panama Canal treaties, but I hope and believe that the Senate will ratify these treaties. We've got a good relationship, perhaps better than at any time in recent history, with Canada; strong, constant negotiations on a variety of items with Mexico. And we've, I think, restrengthened our position in Europe. We consult almost constantly with European Community nations and also with our NATO allies on military affairs. Harold Brown has just come back from there--well, I think he's on the way back now. The other aspect of our foreign policy, of course, extends to the Western Pacific. We are now in hard negotiations with the Japanese on trade matters, and I hope that we can resolve those differences. Japan has a very high positive trade balance. We have a very high negative trade balance. The obstacles to selling our goods in Japan are quite difficult to overcome. But Prime Minister Fukuda, I think, is negotiating in good faith. Perhaps we can have some success there. I'll be leaving Washington on the 21st, going down to Plains until the day after Christmas, and then I'll come back and leave almost immediately for a trip, beginning in Poland, that would encompass a visit to Brussels, to France, to Iran, Saudi Arabia, and India. And then I'11 come back home after about a 10-day trip. Perhaps you have some questions. I just briefly sketched a few points to arouse your interest.
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