President Clinton Address Summary

This is a script of the speech President Clinton made at the Congress. In the speech, he proposes his health care reform to the Congress with six chief principles: security, simplicity, savings, choice, quality, and responsibility. As to the security, he suggests a health care that is “never be taken away” and “always there”, making sure that every American can enjoy “comprehensive coverage” for their “entire lifetime.” Regarding simplicity and savings, he first criticizes that there are too many different types of insurances and too complicated rules or regulations around them; then he says unifying them into one standard is necessary, which in turn saves the costs. Moreover, he promises people who have now virtually limited freedom because

When I first found this script, I wondered whether it was directly delivered to the public or not, because in Japan, the prime minister’s speech can be seldom seen on the TV screens. However, soon, it turned out to be certainly delivered to the public because Clinton said, “the vast majority of the Americans watching this tonight,” which proves this source’s reliability as the information which directly influences the people. After I read through the script, I noticed that several points the president uses to support his plan are also used by the opponents. The first point is “bureaucracy” and “choice.” When stressing the choice of freedom, Clinton confirms that “The choice will be left to the American citizen, the worker, not the boss and certainly not some Government bureaucrat.” Nevertheless, opponents claim completely opposite things. For example, in the infamous Harry and Louise anti-commercial, the narrator says, “The government make forces to pick from a few health care plans designed by the government bureaucrats,” and Louise says, “Having choices, we don’t like no choices at all. They choose, we lose,” It obviously stimulates the image that evil bureaucrats limit the freedom of choices. Another is that, the president addresses that efficiency and quality are not conflicting and can be both achieved at the same time, saying, “We have evidence that more efficient delivery of health care doesn’t decrease quality. In fact, it may enhance it”; but, William Kristol, who made advices to the Republican leaders wrote that “And its spokesmen encourage the notion than radical change involving a sacrifice of quality and free choice is necessary for health “security”,” or, “That means tightly regulated managed health care for most people, with an emphasis on efficiency on quality.” Focusing on the claims by the both sides proves that they