Statement by Senator Bob Dole on Clinton Signing Health Insurance Bill Advanced by Republicans

This bill includes many of the important health insurance reforms I've promoted for years and should end once and for all the Clinton prescription of big government health care... Making health insurance more affordable, more available, and portable is long overdue. The American people should ask why it took President Clinton more than three years to support these common sense reforms which he previously threatened to veto.

The health insurance reform bill contains my amendment to help make insurance more affordable and more available. My amendment Includes for the first time, boosting to 80% the tax deductibility of health insurance premiums for the self-employed; tax deductibility for long-term care insurance and expenses to encourage younger workers to plan for their senior years and for their parents' long-term care needs; and allowing withdrawals from Individual Retirement Accounts, without penalty, to pay health insurance premiums while unemployed. My amendment also takes important steps to crack down on health care fraud. Americans should have more choices in making health care decisions, That's why I fought for Medical Savings Accounts, and that's why this bill's MSA provision is so important.

This bill underscores that we can improve access to health insurance without a government takeover of the health care system. The American people know that President Clinton's advocacy of an overdose of government control on health care was presidential malpractice. They should exercise their right to a second opinion on election day.

--Bob Dole