From Mail-Server@lex-luthor.ai.mit.edu  Thu Sep  2 23:24:55 1993
To: Clinton-News-Distribution@campaign92.org
Date: Thu, 2 Sep 1993 18:43-0400
From: The White House <75300.3115@compuserve.com>
Subject: President's Remarks in Photo Op with Nobel Prize Winners

                           THE WHITE HOUSE

                    Office of the Press Secretary

_____________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release                               September 2, 1993

                       REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
        IN PHOTO OPPORTUNITY WITH 1992 NOBEL PRIZE RECIPIENTS
	     
                            The Blue Room

4:11 P.M. EDT

	     THE PRESIDENT:  Ladies and gentlemen, I am here this 
afternoon to honor these winners of the 1992 Nobel Prize.  I take 
great pride in their being recognized and their lifelong efforts to 
contribute to science and technology and to better the human 
condition.
	     
	     Dr. Gary Becker received the Nobel Prize in Economic 
Science for his expansion of economic analysis to aspects of human 
behavior that had not before been analyzed with economic principles 
of our other social science disciplines.  For example, in the 1950s, 
Dr. Becker made a groundbreaking proposal by concluding that racial 
and ethnic bias could exist only where markets were not fully 
competitive.  Dr. Becker currently is a Professor at the University 
of Chicago.  He is to my immediate left.
	     
	     To my right are Drs. Edmond Fisher and Dr. Edwin Krebs.  
They are joint winners of the Nobel Prize in Physiology of Medicine.  
In the 1950s they discovered a cellular regulatory mechanism that 
controls a variety of metabolic processes.  The Nobel selection 
committee stated that this discovery, and I quote, "concerns almost 
all processes important to life and opened up one of the most active 
areas of scientific research."  Dr. Fisher and Dr. Krebs are 
Professors at the University of Washington in Seattle.
	     
	     To my left, Dr. Rudolph Marcus received a Nobel Prize in 
Chemistry for his mathematical analysis of the cause and effect of 
electronics changes among molecules.  The Nobel committee said that 
this work helped to explain many complicated chemical reactions, 
including photosynthesis, that are fundamental to life's processes.  
Dr. Marcus currently is a Professor at the California Institute of 
Technology.  He told me that it took 20 years to actually prove the 
theories that he developed.  And I told him that I was beginning to 
think that being President was more and more like being a scientist.  
(Laughter.)
	     
	     We are very proud of these Nobel Laureates.  I salute 
their successes and their contributions, not only as President but 
clearly on behalf of all the American people.  And I thank them and 
their spouses for coming to the White House today. 
	     
	     Thank you very much.
	     
	     Do you any of you want to give a speech?
	     
	     What does it feel like to win a Nobel Prize?
	     
	     DR. KREBS:  A big surprise.
	     
	     Q	better if it could be your economic policies, Mr.
President.  (Laughter.)
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  You got me, but at least it's more 
people-centered.  (Laughter.)
	     
	     Q	  Might you ask Dr. Becker whether your health care 
plans are economically feasible?
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  He probably wants to read it first. 
	     
	     DR. BECKER:  I haven't seen them yet.  I'm looking 
forward to it.  But clearly we need a great deal of reform in the 
health care area.  So I'm looking forward with anticipation to see 
what they're like.
	     
	     Q	  Will a sin tax be part of that, sir --
	     
	     Q	     my segue.  (Laughter.)
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  I'm against sin, aren't you?  
(Laughter.)
	     
	     Let me say one thing, since we've got -- since you asked 
Dr. Becker the question.  There has been an assumption in all these 
-- in many of the business articles about the health care plan that 
it was necessary because too many people don't have health insurance 
and in any given two or three year period about one in five or one in 
four Americans will be without it.  But the assumption is that it 
will be a job drain.  That assumes that we will pile costs on top of 
what is already the most expensive system in the world by a good long 
ways.  
	     
	     I believe that this will be a job generator if we 
implement it sensibly and gradually and over time we slow the rate of 
growth of health care costs.  Right now we have to compete with other 
countries that are spending under nine percent of their income on 
health care and covering everyone with outcomes and life expectancy 
and health that are as good or better than ours, and we're over 14 
percent.  If we don't change we'll be up to 19 percent by the end of 
the decade without covering everybody and with no improvements in the 
present problem.  
	     
	     So my judgment is that if we do this right, it will be a 
job creator.  So I think you have two things here -- we have better 
health care and more security for American families and a better 
economic environment over the long run.
	     
	     I've already talked more than I meant to.  Maybe I'll 
win a Nobel Prize for that theory.  (Laughter.)
	     
	     Q	  Is the assumption about costs on top incorrect, Mr. 
President.  
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  I don't know what the assumption is.

                                 END                    4:16 P.M. EDT

