Health Care Quotes

Mother Theresa said it is not how much we give that is important but how much love you put into doing it. So it is not just how many units of housing we create or how good our health care system is, it is that people have someone to eat dinner with and that people have someone to hold their hand when they die. That is what we are called to do and it is the love of Christ. It is relationships. ~ Shane Claiborne

Take Canada again: why does Canada have the health-care program it does? Up until the mid-1960s, Canada and the United States had the same capitalist health service: extremely inefficient, tons of bureaucracy, huge administrative costs, millions of people with no insurance coverage―exactly what would be amplified in the United States by Clinton's proposals for "managed competition" [put forward in 1993].21 But in 1962 in Saskatchewan, where the N.D.P. is pretty strong and the unions are pretty strong, they managed to put through a kind of rational health-care program of the sort that every industrialized country in the world has by now, except the United States and South Africa. Well, when Saskatchewan first put through that program, the doctors and the insurance companies and the business community were all screaming―but it worked so well that pretty soon all the other Provinces wanted the same thing too, and within a couple years guaranteed health care had spread over the entire country. And that happened largely because of the New Democratic Party in Canada, which does provide a kind of cover and a framework within which popular organizations like unions, and then later things like the feminist movement, have been able to get together and do things. ~ Noam Chomsky

If we don't figure out a way to create equity, real equity, of opportunity and access, to good schools, housing, health care, and decent paying jobs, we're not going to survive as a productive and healthy society. ~ Tim Wise

I'm ashamed that Congress finds billions for pork-barrel subsidies but fails to find money for veterans' health care. ~ John McCain

I don't think it's government's job to find health care for people. I think it's the individual's job to find health care. ~ Ted Cruz

I believe in universal health care. And I am not afraid to say so. ~ Stephen Hawking

People aren't going to go bankrupt anymore if they have a serious illness, which was a serious issue here in the country before the Affordable Care Act. And, in fact, the expense of expanding health care for those who need the subsidy is picked up by the federal government for most of the early years. ~ Deval Patrick

While the rich reap most of the benefits of technological development, the poor bear an unequal burden of dealing with the consequences of the resulting increased pollution. The poor continue to live in greatest proximity to the sources of pollution, the infrastructure and machinery of industry. They work in the most polluted and physically dangerous workplaces. And these same individuals, living and working closest to the sources of environmental catastrophe, are also the ones most lacking decent health care. ~ James H. Cone

It doesn't matter is you call it 'Obama-care' or 'Elvis Presley care' or 'I-don't-care care.' It cannot sustain itself in its present form. ~ Alan K. Simpson

Maybe for John McCain the American dream means seven houses-and if that's your America, John McCain is your candidate. But for the rest of us, the American dream means one home - in a safe neighborhood, with good schools and good health care and a little money left over every month to go out for dinner and save for the future. Does that seem like too much to ask? John McCain thinks it is. ~ Tim Kaine

If you have health care, my plan will lower your premiums. If you don't, you'll be able to get the same kind of coverage that members of Congress give themselves. ~ Barack Obama

Rand Paul ... said national health insurance is slavery. He said, I'm a physician, and if there's national health insurance, the government is forcing me to take care of somebody who is ill. Why should I be a slave to the state? Here we're getting capitalist pathology in its most extreme, lunatic form. It is the opposite of solidarity, mutual support, mutual help. ~ Noam Chomsky

We do not see the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount and, on the contrary, the legislation significantly expands the federal responsibility for health care costs. ~ Doug Elmendorf

In my view, the lost art of listening and ignoring the patient as a human being is a quintessential failure of our health care. ~ Bernard Lown

Our system of private health insurance that fails to provide coverage to so many of our citizens also contributes to the double-digit health care inflation that is making America less competitive in the global economy. ~ John Conyers

Capitalism can't deliver decent health care. ~ Timothy Noah

Some services are too important to leave to the marketplace. ~ Joseph Bernardin

I support health care reform in this country, but the current bills we have before us are too big, too costly, and the people who send me to Washington to be their voice are opposed to them and this process. ~ Mike Ross

The problem with the American health-care system that it is not working for the American family. ~ John F. Kerry

I believe that how you feel is very important to how you look - that healthy equals beautiful. ~ Victoria Principal

Well, first let me say that I think health care reform is important. It has to be a priority. And our system is broken. The Finance Committee bill is the best effort yet, due in large measure to the efforts of my colleague, Olympia Snowe, but it's not there yet. It falls short. ~ Susan Collins

Medical costs are soaring because our health-care system is totally screwed up. Doctors and hospitals have every incentive to spend on unnecessary tests, drugs, and procedures. ~ Robert Reich

You can't afford to get sick, and you can't depend on the present health care system to keep you well. It's up to you to protect and maintain your body's innate capacity for health and healing by making the right choices in how you live. ~ Andrew Weil

You have to understand the way the liberal looks at something working. Their purpose here is not to provide you health care cheaply, affordably and plentifully. That's not what this is about to them. ~ Rush Limbaugh

People mistakenly assume that if I'm against government involvement in health care, I must favor an alternative where profits drive decisions and businesses take center stage.

The opposite of government isn't business. The opposite of government is voluntary.
[Health Care Without (much) Government, medium.com] ~ Russ Roberts

Today, only two groups in the United States have total immunity from lawsuits: foreign diplomats and HMOs. We believe it's time to end diplomatic immunity for HMOs. Holding them accountable is the only way to guarantee that you get the health care your family deserves. ~ Tom Harkin

It seems to me the mark of a civilized society that certain privileges should be taken for granted such as education, health care and the safety to walk the streets. ~ Alan Bennett

I believe, unlike people that are totally free-market, laissez-faire fundamentalists, that there is an important role that the government can play - one, in providing public goods, whether it's education, health care, or other things, and two, supervising countercyclical policy - stimulus, whether it's monetary, fiscal, or otherwise. ~ Nouriel Roubini

There is no question that managed care is managed cost, and the idea is that you can save a lot of money and make health care costs less if you ration it. ~ Charlie Norwood

I know how important good mental health care can be because I personally benefited from it. ~ Tipper Gore

Experts in diagnostic errors provided an answer to the puzzle that had been nagging me: How was it possible for missed diagnoses to be so common and yet not perceived by doctors as a major problem? The problem is that physicians, while generally aware that mistakes happen, greatly underestimate how often they make them. In his talks to doctors on the topic, Graber often asks how many have made a diagnostic error in the past year; typically, only about 1 percent of the hands go up. 'The concept that they, personally, could err at a significant rate is inconceivable to most physicians,' he writes. In short, they think it's the other guy. This overconfidence is not necessarily their fault: doctors simply do not get the feedback needed to gain an accurate sense of their batting average. They assume their diagnoses are correct until they hear otherwise. Since there are few, if any, health care organizations that systematically measure diagnostic error rates, they typically learn of their mistakes only from the patients themselves. ~ Maya Dusenbery

For [Stephen] Harper, a national daycare plan bordered on being a socialist scheme, a phrase he had once used to describe the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. For [Paul] Martin, whose plan would have transferred to the provinces $5 billion over five years, the national program was what Canadianism was all about. "Think about it this way," [Martin] said. "What if, decades ago, Tommy Douglas and my father and Lester Pearson had considered the idea of medicare and then said, 'Forget it! Let's just give people twenty-five dollars a week.' You want a fundamental difference between Mr. Harper and myself? Well, this is it. ~ Lawrence Martin

For an encore, I might do health-care cartoons using my own blood. That will be my last act. ~ Steve Breen

You think that somehow they didn't come after me to get rid of me because my vote is the deciding vote in the health care bill? Then, ladies and gentlemen, you live today in a world that is so innocent as to not understand what's going on in Washington, D.C. ~ Eric Massa

If you think about it, candidate Obama, Sen. Obama, was running on sort of long-run economic issues, like restoring prosperity to the middle class, dealing with the perennial problem of health care in the United States. He talked a lot about the budget deficit, about the need to transition to clean energy. ~ Christina Romer

Why are people so supportive of him [Osama bin Laden] in many countries? Hes been out in these countries for decades building roads, building schools, building infrastructure, building day care facilities, building health care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful. ~ Patty Murray

And it was back in the mid-1980s, and as I point out in a piece, that was when we are spending about eight percent of our gross domestic product on health care. And even then, we had the impression that so much of the excessive, aggressive medical treatment that took place at the end of life was not only unnecessary but it was cruel. ~ Richard Dooling

Believe me," Dr. Tamalet summed up, "if you wanted that operation in France, you could get it"

Which is, of course, the boon and the bane of France's health care system. It offers a maximum of free choice among skillful doctors and well-equipped hospitals, with little or not waiting, at bargain-basement prices [in out-of-pocket terms to the consumer]. It's a system that enables the French to live longer and healthier lives, with zero risk of financial loss due to illness. But somebody has to pay for all that high-quality, ready-when-you-need-it care--and the patients, so far, have not been willing to do so. As a result, the major health insurance funds are all operating at a deficit, and the costs of the health care system are increasing significantly faster than the economy as a whole. That's why the doctors keep striking and the sickness funds keep negotiating and the government keeps going back to the drawing board, with a new 'major health care reform' every few years. So far, the saving grace for France's system has been the high level of efficiency, as exemplified by the 'carte vitale,' that keeps administrative costs low--much lower than in the United States. ~ T.R. Reid

We designed both our state employee health plans and the one we created for low-income Hoosiers as Health Savings Accounts, and now in the tens of thousands these citizens are proving that they are fully capable of making smart, consumerist choices about their own health care. ~ Mitch Daniels

What we have in the United States is not so much a health-care system as a disease-care system. ~ Edward Kennedy

Obesity is not a disease. It is a lifestyle affliction. It is a symptom. It is a side-effect of poor habits and it can be reversed. ~ Nancy S. Mure

The education system is where young skulls full of mush are programmed and propagandized into the system. They are highly valuable. That's why they're subsidized. You know, universities are approaching the same circumstance we have in health care. What it costs is not related at all to market forces. Meaning what it costs is not related to what people can afford. You get right down to it, how many Americans, how many families can afford 20,000, 30,000, $50,000 a year or semester to send their kids off to college? It has to be subsidized. ~ Rush Limbaugh

There is no Death with Dignity when people choose to die because health care economics and the social services system prevent life with dignity. ~ Marta Russell

There are, in human affairs, two kinds of problems: those which are amenable to a technical solution and those which are not. Universal health-care coverage belongs to the first category: you can pick one of several possible solutions, pass a bill, and (allowing for some tinkering around the edges) it will happen. ~ Atul Gawande

We've got the emPHAsis on the wrong sylLAble when it comes to crime in this country. The FBI says burglary and robbery cost U.S. taxpayers $3.8 billion annually. Securities fraud alone costs four times that. And securities fraud is nothing to the cost of oil spills, price-fixing, and dangerous or defective products. Fraud by health-care corporations alone costs us between $100 billion and $400 billion a year. No three-strikes-and-you're-out for these guys. Remember the S&L scandal? $500 billion. ~ Molly Ivins

I know that there are millions of Americans who are content with their health care coverage - they like their plan and, most importantly, they value their relationship with their doctor. ~ Barack Obama

I'm still healthy as can be. ~ Darrell Royal

Health care costs are an issue both for the government and for our larger economy. ~ Sylvia Mathews Burwell

The doctors and nurses at the Biamba Marie Mutombo Hospital are saving lives every day and helping improve health care in the DRC which has been ravaged by more than a decade of war and disease. ~ Dikembe Mutombo

I have had lots of friends who've been affected by Aids and a very good friend of mine, Oscar Moore, died of Aids and I was with him in his last year quite a bit. And of course he was a man living in a very rich culture with a wealthy family who was able to afford health care. ~ Emma Thompson

You cannot keep your plan and have Obamacare at the same time. Obamacare, by definition, gets rid of your plan and replaces it with health care run by the federal government. ~ Rush Limbaugh

Overall, female scientists have fewer resources than male scientists, just as poor people have less access to health care. But if you compare male and female scientists with identical resources, you find that the women are just as likely to be successful. ~ Alison Gopnik

People who believe in 'universal health care' show remarkably little interest - usually none - in finding out what that phrase turns out to mean in practice, in those countries where it already exists, such as Britain, Sweden or Canada. For one thing, 'universal health care' in these countries means months of waiting for surgery that Americans get in a matter of weeks or even days. ~ Thomas Sowell

If you can't afford the good food or if you can't afford health care or if you don't have a job or if your car is dangerous because you can't get it fixed and you DIE, you just lost the game-bzzzzz-thanks for playing extreme capitalism. ~ Marc Maron

Things like water and sewage systems require states in a large-scale society, but states are also a good mechanism for dealing with health care, education, public transportation, and infrastructure. ~ Cynthia Kauffman

Creative new health strategies like micro-insurance for poor people or Kangaroo care for pre-term babies are transforming health outcomes in even the most low-resource settings. Dedication and innovation are transforming health care worldwide. ~ Liya Kebede

Let us be the ones who say we do not accept that a child dies every three seconds simply because he does not have the drugs you and I have. Let us be the ones to say we are not satisfied that your place of birth determines your right for life. Let us be outraged, let us be loud, let us be bold. ~ Brad Pitt

Seven presidents before him - Democrats and Republicans - tried to expand health care to all Americans. President Obama got it done. ~ Julian Castro

Well, he's scoring in that video." "That guy wasn't guarding him. Obama is POTUS. He is mother-effing POTUS. And even if he wasn't POTUS, Obama still had that ball hanging out so far that anybody could have blocked it. You could have blocked it, Ed. That shit was as weak as the public option in health care. If Obama pulled that on me, I'd block it like some racist-ass redneck senator from Alabama. ~ Sherman Alexie

I do not write this in a spirit of sourness or personal disappointment of any kind, nor do I have any romantic attachment to suffering as a source of insight or virtue. On the contrary, I would like to see more smiles, more laughter, more hugs, more happiness and, better yet, joy. In my own vision of utopia, there is not only more comfort, and security for everyone - better jobs, health care, and so forth - there are also more parties, festivities, and opportunities for dancing in the streets. Once our basic material needs are met - in my utopia, anyway - life becomes a perpetual celebration in which everyone has a talent to contribute. But we cannot levitate ourselves into that blessed condition by wishing it. We need to brace ourselves for a struggle against terrifying obstacles, both of our own making and imposed by the natural world. And the first step is to recover from the mass delusion that is positive thinking. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

Institutions mistake good intentions for objectives. They say "health care"; that's an intention, not an objective. ~ Peter Drucker

The idea that somehow you're going to tax the 'rich' enough to pay for quality health care for every American who doesn't have it, can't afford it or stands to lose it, not to mention for all of the undocumented aliens who receive it for free now and presumably will continue to in Obama health land, is almost laughable. ~ Susan Estrich

I grew up with a lot of dinner table conversations about health care and ways in which the system was inadequate for the needs of many of the patients they took care of. ~ Risa J. Lavizzo-Mourey

Proximity to power has an unsurprising ability to mutate a politician's spinal cord into bright yellow jelly. ~ Tariq Ali

Better world. Better life for everybody, every worker. Poor kids oughta be able to go anyplace their brains will take them. Not where Daddy or Mommy's pocketbooks can send them. Everybody oughta have health care, everybody oughta have some retirement security, every American. Every one. Everybody oughta have a decent good job. That's what I believe in, and that's what I fight every day to try to achieve. ~ Richard Trumka

Women know the financial, social and physical costs of not having access to basic health care. ~ Martha Plimpton

Making sure that health care is affordable for every American. I think that is very, very important. ~ Kendrick Meek

If the government controls your health care, the government controls you. Obamacare was never about health care. It was about government power, dependency, and control. ~ Monica Crowley

In 1995, world military spending totaled nearly $800 billion. If we redirected just $40 billion of those resources over the next 10 years to fighting poverty, all of the world's population would enjoy basic social services, such as education, health care, nutrition, reproductive health, clean water and sanitation. ~ Oscar Arias

Our health care system is the finest in the world, but we still have too many uninsured Americans, too high prices for prescription drugs, and too many frivolous lawsuits driving our physicians out of state or out of business. ~ Judy Biggert

I say we must have a movement that brings those troops home and launch a crusade to transform our school buildings, we launch a crusade to see to it that every citizen has adequate and affordable housing, we launch a crusade to make universal health care. We need not soldiers anymore in the world. We've had enough of them in western history. ~ James Lawson

The story of the Western world since 1945 is that, invited to choose between freedom and government 'security,' large numbers of people vote to dump freedom every time - the freedom to make your own decisions about health care, education, property rights, and a ton of other stuff. ~ Mark Steyn

Somewhere along the way these countries [EU] redefined the relationship between government and citizen into something closer to pusher and addict. And, once you've done that, it's very hard to persuade the addict to cut back his habit. Thus, the general acceptance everywhere but America is that the state should run your health care. A citizen of an advanced democracy expects to be able to choose from dozens of breakfast cereals, hundreds of movies at the video store, and millions of porno sites on the Internet, but when it comes to life-or-death decisions about his own body he's happy to have the choice taken out of his hands and given to the government. ~ Mark Steyn

Make no mistake, a 'yes' vote on the Democrats' health care bill is a vote for taxpayer-funded abortions. ~ John Boehner

Never under any circumstances take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night. ~ Dave Barry

Take care of your health, that it may serve you to serve God. ~ Saint Francis De Sales

It's not logical that we boast the most advanced and powerful internationally integrated economy in the world, then claim organizational incompetence and poverty when it comes to creating and funding a national health care system for all Americans. ~ Jesse Jackson, Jr.

The President's policy proposal, known as 'chained CPI,' would re-calculate the cost of living for Social Security beneficiaries. That new number won't keep up with inflation on things like food and health care
the basics that we need to live. In short, 'chained CPI' is just a fancy way to say 'cut benefits for seniors, the permanently disabled, and orphans.' ~ Elizabeth Warren

Each one of these decisions, even when they were ultimately reversed, set recovery efforts back further. Is this all a masterful conspiracy to make sure Puerto Ricans are too desperate, distracted, and despairing to resist Wall Street's bitter economic medicine? I don't believe it's anything that coordinated. Much of this is simply what happens when you bleed the public sphere for decades, laying off competent workers and neglecting basic maintenance. Run-of-the-mill corruption and cronyism are no doubt at work as well.

But it's also true that many governments have deployed a starve-then-sell strategy when it comes to public services: cut health care/transit/education to the bone until people are so disillusioned and desperate that they are willing to try anything, including selling off those services altogether. And if Rosselló and the Trump administration have seemed remarkably unconcerned about the nonstop relief and reconstruction screw-ups, the attitude may be at least partly informed by an understanding that the worse things get, the stronger the case for privatization becomes. ~ Naomi Klein

Seeing modern health care from the other side, I can say that it is clearly not set up for the patient. It is frequently a poor arrangement for doctors as well, but that does not mitigate how little the system accounts for the patient's best interest. Just when you are at your weakest and least able to make all the phone calls, traverse the maze of insurance, and plead for health-care referrals is that one time when you have to - your life may depend on it. ~ Ross I. Donaldson

Government health care changes the relationship between the citizen and the state, and, in fact, I think it's an assault on citizenship. ~ Mark Steyn

Over and over again, I hear from Oregonians that we need real health care reform that provides every American with access to quality, affordable care. ~ Jeff Merkley

Since the 1960s, there has been a tremendous expansion of the resources available to pay for health care. ~ Phil Bredesen

With more than 1,300 sites of care, VA operates the largest integrated health care system in the county. ~ Bob Filner

We don't have enough people going into those fields and there is a high burnout rate in some health care professions, so it is very important that we get more people into the pipeline right now. ~ Dave Obey

Health care confronts us with a difficult test. We have never corrected failure in something so deeply embedded in people's lives and in the economy without the pressure of an outright crisis. ~ Atul Gawande

Participatory Medicine is a model of cooperative health care that seeks to achieve active involvement by patients, professionals, caregivers, and others across the continuum of care on all issues related to an individual's health. Participatory medicine is an ethical approach to care that also holds promise to improve outcomes, reduce medical errors, increase patient satisfaction and improve the cost of care. ~ Bertalan Mesko

Providing health care is like building a house. The task requires experts, expensive equipment and materials, and a huge amount of coordination. ~ Atul Gawande

Thankfully, President Obama has stood firmly behind women's health care issues by supporting coverage for contraception and reaffirming commitment to organizations like Planned Parenthood. ~ Felicity Huffman

Every year, thousands of startups are founded - not only in technology, but increasingly also in health care, education, and energy. ~ Mike Krieger

So was it a political mistake for Obama to put so many eggs in the health-care-reform basket? Well, a negative decision from the Supreme Court will certainly make it appear so. ~ Eric Alterman

[The GOP] must decide soon where they stand on the issue of socialized medicine. President Clinton threw down the gauntlet in his State of the Union address, when he proposed guaranteeing health insurance for at least half of the 10 million American children who have none. ~ Tony Snow

The body is wiser than its inhabitants. the body is the soul. the body is god's messenger. ~ Erica Jong

A DIFFERENT KIND OF CHECKLIST If we want our kids to have a shot at making it in the world as eighteen-year-olds, without the umbilical cord of the cell phone being their go-to solution in all manner of things, they're going to need a set of basic life skills. Based upon my observations as dean, and the advice of parents and educators around the country, here are some examples of practical things they'll need to know how to do before they go to college - and here are the crutches that are currently hindering them from standing up on their own two feet: 1. An eighteen-year-old must be able to talk to strangers - faculty, deans, advisers, landlords, store clerks, human resource managers, coworkers, bank tellers, health care providers, bus drivers, mechanics - in the real world. ~ Julie Lythcott-Haims

One thing governors feel, Democrats and Republicans alike, is that we have a health care system that, if you're on Medicaid, you have unlimited access to health care, at unlimited levels, at no cost. No wonder it's running away. ~ Mike Huckabee

I'm against big bureaucracy in Washington making health care decisions. I just have an aversion to bureaucrats. But it's not just government bureaucrats. I don't like HMO bureaucrats and insurance company bureaucrats either. ~ Gary Bauer

So there was President Obama giving his bazillionth speech on health care, droning yet again that 'now is the hour when we must seize the moment,' the same moment he's been seizing every day of the week for the past year, only this time his genius photo-op guys thought it would look good to have him surrounded by men in white coats. ~ Mark Steyn

The numbers matter: underreporting of Lyme disease obscures the true burden of the illnesses, on individuals as well as on health-care systems. It also makes it harder to convince Congress to fund research. ~ Michael Specter

You go to Scandinavia, and you will find that people have a much higher standard of living, in terms of education, health care and decent paying jobs. ~ Bernie Sanders

I think Barack Obama and his team believe that the federal government is best prepared to handle virtually everything in our lives. I mean, they're socialists in every respect of the word and I think they'd like to take over everything in our lives if they could, including health care. ~ Mark Neumann