Quayle Issues Call for Health Care Changes

Vice President Dan Quayle told an audience of hospital workers and patients Monday that “the time is ripe for a change” in the nation’s system of health care.

Declaring that “all Americans need affordable health insurance,” Quayle said the best solution is President Bush’s system of vouchers that will include “tax deductions for the middle class to make private insurance more affordable.”

The vice president’s remarks at Penrose-St. Francis Hospital here capped a busy day of campaigning that included “Victory ‘92” rallies and fund-raising appearances in New Mexico, Colorado and South Dakota before an overnight stop in Rockford, Ill., where he will begin a bus trip this morning.

In Clovis, N. M., Quayle appeared in his shirt-sleeves to tell a steamy gymnasium filled with thousands of screaming high school students, “This election is about your future, about our country’s future, about who can create the jobs and the opportunity for Americans.”

“Times are bad, times are difficult,” Quayle said at another stop, in reference to the sluggish economy and high unemployment rate. “But they’re not as bad as we’re being told. This still is the richest country in the world, and one that many people in Poland, the former Soviet Union and other countries would love to live in.”

And at an outdoor rally in downtown Colorado Springs, he reiterated a theme that the election of Gov. Bill Clinton would mean higher taxes, while “George Bush and I will hold the line against taxes and spending.”

In his remarks about health care, he stressed the same theme. “Our opponents are offering a government-run (health care) system . . . paid for with higher taxes,” he said.

By contrast, he said, “we will provide universal access for all Americans. The Bush Administration will make that happen by providing vouchers worth up to $3,750 per family to low-income citizens for private insurance. States will develop a basic health insurance plan for those who have vouchers.”

Quayle continued that “a health insurance tax deduction of up to $3,750 per family would be available to each family with incomes up to $80,000.”

Health insurance costs are going up at twice the rate of inflation, he told his hospital audience, and “if nothing is done, by the turn of the century the average American family will be spending approximately $12,000 a year for health insurance.”

Medical costs for the federal government, he said, have grown “from about $19 billion to over $239 billion in the last 22 years. So the deficit would look much different had those costs been kept under control.”