This is the text of a keynote health care policy address by Larry Agran delivered on November 13, 1991 in Laguna Hills, CA. Permission is granted to quote from or reprint the speech, as well as to upload it to other BBS's, as long as the text remains unaltered in any way. Agran for President 92 P.O. Box 159 Irvine, CA 92650 (800) 727-9425 CompuServe 76150,1170 GEnie AGRAN92 Prodigy KBVR23A Peacenet agran92 REMARKS OF LARRY AGRAN CANDIDATE FOR THE 1992 DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION LEISURE WORLD/LAGUNA HILLS, CALIFORNIA NOVEMBER 13, 1991 Two hundred and four years ago, the framers of our Constitution did more than lay out the mechanics of how our new national government would work. They delivered to us a philosophy of government as well. They believed that government had an affirmative role to play in making life better for the American people. That's why, in the Constitution's Preamble, they stated clearly and unequivocally that our national government was duty- bound -- in their words -- "to PROMOTE the General Welfare." In remaining faithful to this constitutional mandate, I want to speak to you tonight about matters of the General Welfare. Specifically, I want to speak with you about matters of health, education, and human services -- and what must be done to advance the interests of the American people in each of these areas. But I also want to speak with you about a President -- President George Bush -- who quite obviously doesn't care at all about these issues. Worse yet, when it's politically expedient -- when his pollsters tell him to do so and when the television cameras are turned on -- he says things he clearly does not believe. He makes promises he knows he'll break. From time to time he PRETENDS to care about the American people and their problems. But then the real George Bush emerges as he abandons millions of Americans to wretched conditions of everyday life that citizens of conscience find utterly appalling. It is a harsh but I think a fair judgment to say that President Bush is irredeemably indifferent to human suffering. He thinks we forget things, but we don't. In 1988, presidential candidate George Bush tried to put a human face on the mean- spirited Reagan-Bush years when he told the American people that he was personally anguished -- the word he used was "haunted" -- by the sight of homeless families, including little children, shivering on the streets of America. Trying to distance himself ever so slightly from his mentor, Ronald Reagan, George Bush said he wanted to be President of a "kinder, gentler" America. Well, President Bush, now about to enter his fourth year in office, need only look outside his White House window to confront the insincerity of his own words. There are more poor and homeless families than ever. And rather than a kinder, gentler America, President Bush has created an angrier, meaner America. Like his predecessor, he pursues policies calculated to make his rich friends richer, while making the rest of America poorer. He has at once created -- and now tolerates -- human suffering on a scale not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s. For these reasons alone, it's time to elect a new President in 1992 and restore the American government to its people. If there is any doubt about what Ronald Reagan -- and now George Bush -- have done to America, consider this inventory of human devastation they've brought us. * By conservative official count, more than 33 million Americans -- one in eight of us -- live in poverty; 13 million children are mired in poverty. The ranks of the poor have grown by more than two million in just the past year. * Today, one in every four newborns is poor; two in four if they're children of color. * Tonight, like every night, five million children go to bed hungry. * Three million Americans are homeless. * The rate of teenage pregnancy is higher in the United States than in any industrialized country in the world. * There are 8.5 million Americans who are officially unemployed -- with millions more not even counted. * Two million Americans have exhausted their unemployment benefits this year, and an estimated 3.5 million Americans face long-term unemployment. * 37 million Americans have no health insurance whatsoever and more than 100 million Americans are just one major illness away from economic ruin. I say to you tonight -- just as I have said to groups small and large across this land: it is absolutely immoral that in an American economy of vast aggregate abundance all this needless human pain and suffering is permitted to continue. I announced my candidacy for the Presidency because I want to help in whatever way I can to replace George Bush's callous indifference with the kind of moral leadership worthy of a great democracy and worthy of the American people. Do you remember in 1988 when George Bush confessed he had trouble grasping what he called "the vision thing"? I have no such trouble. I can see the possibility and the promise of a brighter American future. I can see it clearly, and I believe you can see it too. I call it the New American Security -- security for the American people in the 1990s and beyond that is measured not by the force of our military weaponry abroad but by the strength of our society here at home -- the strength of our economy, our social institutions, our cities, our towns, our neighborhoods and our families. This New American Security I envision includes a specific policy for health, education, and human services. It's an 8-point policy that I want to describe for you tonight and that we can bring to the American people starting on Inauguration Day, 1993. FIRST, the New American Security I have in mind would once and for all put in place a comprehensive national health care plan that is now decades overdue. We need a new President who will state clearly and without qualification that health care is a right and not a privilege. On Inauguration Day, 1993, the President should summon to the White House all the key health policy players -- representatives of health providers, health insurers, consumers, and leading Members of Congress, and tell them this: you have 90 days to agree upon a law that will reform our entire health care system. It must provide universal coverage for all basic benefits. No one can be left out. Wherever possible, coverage will be employer-provided. Where there is no employment linkage, our national government will arrange for coverage and payment consistent with the ability to pay. The crazyquilt of inefficient and wasteful health insurance firms must be replaced by a single, non-profit payor or a very limited number of payors using standardized, simplified forms and procedures. Competitive market mechanisms and regulatory cost control measures must be incorporated to protect against gouging by disreputable health-care providers. There must be an emphasis on health maintenance and disease prevention. The national health care system that emerges should incorporate the best features of the German, Canadian, and Swedish systems. But it should be a uniquely American plan that also draws on the strengths of our own medical technology and the commitment of our own health care community. If I were President, I'd then tell the key players in health care policy to either agree on legislation and have it ready for passage within 90 days or else I'll prepare the legislation and send it to Congress myself. I'd also tell them that I'm ready to go on national radio and television to turn the American people loose on every Member of Congress, on every special interest, and on anyone and everyone blocking the way to immediate health care reform. And I'd say to them, just as I say to you tonight: I'm bound and determined to see comprehensive national health care legislation signed into law by July 4, 1993. SECOND, closely tied to our national health care plan will be an explicit commitment to reproductive choice. This means writing a federal law that recognizes and protects the fundamental privacy right of a woman to choose. It means providing for universal access to sex education and family planning services. It means ample public funding to ensure that the availability of choice to the young, the poor, and the middle class as well. Make no mistake about it: the right to choose includes the right to a safe, legal abortion in every community in America. And this, in turn, requires a President with the backbone to stand up to anti- choice fanatics and vigilantes wherever they appear -- in Congress, here in Orange County, California, or in Wichita, Kansas. Let me add one more word about this matter of choice. I believe I speak for the vast majority of Americans who favor choice when I say that we yield to no one in our love of life and in our love of children. That's why we believe that every child should be a wanted child, every household a nurturing household. THIRD, to underscore our commitment to children and families, we must ensure that all pregnant women have access to pre-natal care and well-baby care. This means providing generous funding of supplemental nutrition programs for all low-income pregnant women, as well as for infants and children. FOURTH, as a matter of sensible social policy, we should be fully funding programs of proven effectiveness, like Headstart. We should also be guaranteeing to working parents the availability of quality, affordable child care in every community in America. FIFTH, a genuine commitment to families means the strengthening of family support services to help young victims of neglect, abuse, abandonment and homelessness. The best policy here is effective early intervention -- in the finest tradition of American social work. The nation's chief social worker and strongest advocate for the rights of children should be none other than the President of the United States. In this connection, I have something to report that is at once very promising and very disturbing. There is a United Nations Convention -- a treaty really. It's called the Convention on the Rights of the Child. This Convention protects children from parental abuse, drug trafficking, discrimination, and sexual exploitation. It pledges that each nation will do its very best to provide health care and to free children from illiteracy and poverty. So far, 129 countries throughout the world have signed or ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It became international law on September 2, 1990. Only five major nations have refused to sign this international treaty. The five major non-signatory nations are Iran, Iraq, Libya, South Africa -- and the United States of America. I can promise you this: if I were your President, I'd not only sign the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child; I'd secure quick Senate ratification. And I'd make sure that the provisions of this pioneering treaty are observed and implemented -- promptly and effectively -- right here in our own country, because America's children deserve nothing less. SIXTH, we need a national commitment to education that consists of more than a self-declared "Education President" who refuses to provide the material resources to improve the quality of America's public schools. Educational reform in America should begin with $15 billion in direct aid to public education. According to a U.S. Conference of Mayors report I organized in 1988, this aid -- sent to each and every public school district at a rate of $375 per student per year -- would allow the nationwide hiring or rehiring of 400,000 teachers, teachers' aides and support staff. It would allow us to reduce class sizes dramatically, pay teachers better, and offer in-service training to help teachers be even more effective classroom educators. In short, this kind of direct aid to public education would give teachers and students alike the chance they deserve to make our education system work again. SEVENTH, we need progressive policies to provide genuine support for workers and working families. This begins with a national commitment to full-employment -- productive, rewarding work at good wages. In this regard, our minimum wage laws must be amended. A minimum wage shouldn't be a poverty wage. The minimum wage should be a "family wage" -- enough for a full-time worker to support an average family at a level ABOVE the poverty line. In addition to providing for health care as part of a national health care plan, employers should also be required by federal law to provide family leave so that workers can care for newborns and for family members, including elderly parents, who may be ill or otherwise in need. And instead of the grudging one or two weeks' vacation per year that is the American norm, national policy should encourage movement toward four, five, or even six weeks' vacation a year, as is so common in Western European countries. Income maintenance must be the cornerstone of national policy for American families and workers. This is both possible and essential through a national government once again committed to full employment -- and prepared to back up that commitment with useful, rewarding public sector jobs that involve millions of people in rebuilding the cities, towns, and neighborhoods of America. Those who cannot work or who are temporarily unemployed should be regarded as national resources -- not as throwaways. We should thoroughly reform our unemployment insurance system and the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program in order to include ample opportunities for education, job training, and self-improvement that leads to self-sufficiency. EIGHTH, as people grow older, our national policies should encourage maximum independence. That, after all, was the original idea of Social Security -- independence and dignity. If we are to remain faithful to the founding principles of the Social Security program, monthly benefits must of course be fair and generous. But, beyond this, health care benefits -- ranging from minor matters to long-term care -- should be generous as well. It's simply wrong for anyone to have to face declining health with the fear of becoming an economic burden to others. In fact, our Social Security system should encourage and financially support home care wherever desirable, and it should be a system that provides for day care facilities and respite care to relieve spouses and children who have become caretakers. There you have it -- an eight-point program for progress in matters of health, education, and human services. It's a program that's not only desirable -- it's within our reach. How will it be paid for? Through a long overdue and fundamental change in national priorities. The Cold War is over. It ended in the mid- 1980s. But to anyone who had any doubts, it was clearly over in November, 1989 -- when ordinary citizens, people like you and like me, using hammers and chisels and their bare hands, tore down the Berlin Wall. Democracy surged across Central and Eastern Europe and even into the Soviet Union itself. We all knew that the world had changed forever. And yet, here at home, nothing changed at all. The President kept proposing and the Congress kept approving $300 billion per year Cold War military budgets, even though the Cold War had long since ended. It was as though, like Rip Van Winkle, the President and the Congress slept through it all. The truth of the matter is that we now can -- and MUST -- cut our military budget in half. Now that the Cold War is over, we can cut the military budget by $150 billion per year -- and not over a period of 10 years or longer as other candidates propose, but right now. We need a President who'll order the removal of all U.S. forces from Europe and Japan; who'll cancel dangerous and outrageously expensive weapons systems like the B-2 bomber and Star Wars; who'll order an end to nuclear weapons stockpiles by 90 percent or more; who'll bring about a Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty; and who'll cut all foreign military aid to dictators. We could do all of these things, save $150 billion per year in military spending, and still have the strongest and most modern armed forces on the face of the Earth. We'd have something else, too. We'd have the resources -- at least $150 billion per year -- that we desperately need to begin rebuilding our own society. We'd have the means to create a New American Security that raises the standard of living and enriches the quality of life for everyone. We'd put people to work repairing our infrastructure, opening child care centers, reopening libraries and public health clinics. We'd put people to work building affordable housing and rehabilitating entire neighborhoods. We'd put still more people to work reclaiming our environment and educating our children. We'd enlist our finest scientists and engineers and turn their skills towards the design and construction of a modern mass transit system for all of Southern California and then for other regions of the country as well. We can do all these things and more -- but only if we have the courage and determination to put the Cold War behind us, to reorganize our national priorities, and to take control of our own country once again. I'm ready. I hope you are too.