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REMARKS BY THE FIRST LADY
AT THE 1994 C. EVERETT
KOOP NATIONAL HEALTH AWARDS
October 18, 1994
Thank you so much. Thank you so much Dr. Koop. He
has been an inspiration and wise counselor during these past twenty
months and I am so grateful to him. He has more good ideas every day
than most of us have in a year and it takes a lot of energy to keep up with
him. What we are doing here today is celebrating another of his very good
and important ideas that has taken shape as the C. Everett Koop National
Health Awards. I also want to thank Carson Beadle, President of the Health
Project and Dr. Mary Jane England, the chair of the Work Side Programs for
the Health Project and President of the Washington Business Group on
Health, which was one of the groups that was helpful to us as we tried
to shape the direction of health care reform. I also want to
acknowledge Dr. Jim Freeze, and Dr. Reed Tuckson, and others of you that
have been involved in this movement for health awareness, for prevention,
for wellness, and then for all of you who are involved in the day to day
way with the management of disabilities in the work place and the kind of
practical problems that you encounter in the work that you must do in order
to assist your employees and also try to do the best that you can with
your employers challenges in the health care field.
I think that it is so important that groups such as this
and groups that are represented here continue to recognize that
changing and improving the health care system is a shared responsibility at
all levels of our society. There are obviously things that we as
individuals can and should do to take better care of ourselves. And things
that we can and should do together collectively to improve our health and
well being. Also, to continue efforts to reform our health care system.
Many of the companies honored here today and represented here have been
leading the way in attempting both to encourage individual responsibility
and to work out ways collectively to manage many of the health care
challenges that we know so well. And they have proven that there are ways
that costs can be cut and peoples health can be improved. They are not
mutually exclusive goals. One of the hardest issues that I felt that we
confronted in the last twenty months in our efforts to educate the public
about health care was presenting what intuitively too many people
seemed like an inherent contradiction. And that is that we can make better,
more efficient use of our health care dollars not only without sacrificing
the quality of health care but in many instances actually improving the
quality of health care. I know Dr. Koop and others said that at least a
million times, and I felt like I said it at least a trillion times, but it
was still very difficult for people to grasp.
In our system we have spent so much money and we have spent
it in so many ways that have not enhanced the quality of health care, but
have instead fed the paper work hospital, the bureaucracy of our financing
system, and many people could not recognize what it would mean to more
efficiently deliver the health care dollar. But that's why the President
and I are so grateful to groups like the Health Care Project, and the
companies that are represented and honored today. They do in many important
ways stand not only for bringing together what appeared to be mutually
inconsistent goals in our efforts for health care reform, but they also
greater cooperation and understanding between the public and private
sectors and emphasize the importance of preventive health care. We have
tried very hard and will continue to do so to make the point that the
government is already involved in the health care system. You all know
that, you are on the front lines. I must confess that I was continuously
amazed that so many of our fellow citizens did not know that.
I would be asked often and occasionally with Dr Koop at my
side why the President wanted the government to run the health care system.
And I would say that is not at all what he is recommending. He wants there
to be better incentives in the private sector and a more efficient market
place so that health care can be delivered better at higher quality to all
Americans. And someone would usually follow up and say well that's not
what I heard and that is not what I read and we do not want the
government in health care. And I would say let me ask you this do you know
anything about Medicare? And they would say what does that have to do with
anything. Well Medicare is a government financed health care system but the
government does not tell you what doctor to go to. And that was just one of
the many examples of how there is this confusion about what the
government already does and what the possibilities for better cooperation
and more efficient of allocation of resources might be.
We are particularly pleased that companies such as the ones
that were honored here today are making it clear there are many things we
can do within this system even absent reform that will make a difference in
peoples lives and will make a difference in the cost of health care. So I
hope that as you continue this conference and as you learn more about what
you need to be able to do in the work place and how you can contend with
the challenges that you are facing. You will also continue to focus
some part of your energy on what we can do to improve this system and solve
the problems that are not going away. Individual companies will be able to
obtain and sustain for some period of time perhaps some kind of competitive
edge within the existing system. The underlying problems of the way we
finance health care, the underlying problems of cost shifting, and the
underlying misallocation of literally billions of dollars that do not go
directly to health care but instead to the paper work health care system
will continue to plague us and undermine your best efforts and the rest of
our country's best efforts to have a health care system that provides high
quality health care at an affordable cost to every American. I believe this
should continue to be our goal, and it ought to be what will work for
both the individual and the business and government levels.
I hope that you will bring your ideas and suggestions to
the fore front, and your place of employment, your place of practice,
and with those who will make decisions in the future about how we can
actually achieve the kind of health care reform that will be good for all
of us. Thank you very much. | 
