Health Insurance Quotes

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

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

When we didn't succeed at healthcare reform back in 1993, 1994, I went to work with Democrats and Republicans and we created the Children's Health Insurance Program. ~ Hillary Clinton

Every day, families in the United States face the stark choice between a roof over their heads and food on the table. Buying health insurance, owning a home, and saving up for college are just too far out of their reach. ~ Chris Van Hollen

Yeah, it's real easy to look in the mirror and be proud when you're wearing pleated shorts. And you know what's really pathetic? I don't even have any dividends to get tax-decreased. When'll they cut taxes on not-having-health-insurancends? ~ David Rees

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

If it weren't for health insurance we wouldn't need health insurance. ~ James G. Kelly

Chiropractic is health insurance. Premiums small. Dividends large! ~ B. J. Palmer

Soaring prescription drug costs have placed a tremendous strain on family budgets. They have also imposed a heavy burden on employers - both public and private - who are struggling to provide affordable health insurance coverage to their workers. ~ Susan Collins

The pill for Insurance Deficit Disorder - aspirin. ~ Brian Spellman

The typical family of four with employer-based health insurance is not the same as the typical family of four. It's better-off. ~ Timothy Noah

Practicality continues to be a challenge for me - it's at odds with being an artist. I actually had a career on stage in New York - not a brilliant career or I'd still be doing it - but I got enough work to keep my agent and my union health insurance. ~ Debra Dean

If you're healthy, if you don't get sick much, if you don't go to the doctor much or use your health insurance much, you are a genetic lottery winner. It has nothing to do with the way you live, nothing to do with doing the right things. It's just sheer luck, and you are gonna pay for that. ~ Rush Limbaugh

I'm happy that I feel a little less out of place in filmmaking than I once was - but it's almost impossible for a playwright in the U.S. to make a living. You can have a play, like I did with 'Angels,' and it still generates income for me, but it's not enough for me to live on and have health insurance. ~ Tony Kushner

The chief reason [Bill] O'Reilly is a conservative is that like all conservatives he offers no solutions for the major issues confronting those he pretends to champion--such as better wages, workable health insurance, education for every deserving child, controls on the corporate thugs that are destroying our earth, an unfettered national voice for the ordinary citizen, reform of the election laws of this country that permitted corporations to own the country and enslave the people. ~ Gerry Spence

Medicaid and the Child Health Insurance Program are the two most important safety net programs for children. ~ Irwin Redlener

Pharmaceutical companies are enjoying unprecedented profits and access with this Administration. Yet the Republicans' prescription drug plan for seniors has been a colossal failure, and over 43 million Americans wake up every morning without health insurance. ~ Jim Clyburn

[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 result was, of course, that today, tragically, more than 40 million Americans don't have health insurance, and for many, not having health insurance means they don't have access to good health care. ~ George J. Mitchell

What exactly does that expression mean, 'friends with benefits'? Does he provide her with health insurance? ~ Chuck Lorre

American Medical Association [AMA] was strongly opposed to any scheme for group practice and to health insurance ... because they are un-American. ~ Morris Fishbein

Once you do lose a job, there are not a lot of social supports for you. You lose health insurance because we have this absurd system in America where health insurance is usually tied to employment. Your income dips. And that's when you get into selling the house. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

The United States of America took a giant step toward a totalitarian socialist government when the Supreme Court voted to uphold Obamacare, allowing the individual mandate for the government to force American citizens to buy health insurance whether they want to or not. ~ Charlie Daniels

Most illegals are without health insurance, and when these workers need emergency healthcare, the American taxpayer gets stuck with the bill. ~ Spencer Bachus

Taking care of your body is insurance for your soul. ~ Toni Sorenson

I think that we have a number of different health care challenges in our country, and certainly addressing the uninsured is one, and the second is making sure that those with health insurance actually get the care that they assume they'll have available to them if they get sick. ~ Debbie Stabenow

Before it was called Hillarycare - I mean, before it was called ObamaCare it was called Hillarycare because we took them on, and we weren't successful, but we kept fighting and we got the children's health insurance program. Every step along the way I have stood up, and fought, and have the scars to prove it. ~ Hillary Clinton

If I were a capitalist I would not give my employees health insurance with no deductible, which I do, including dental, and paid pregnancy leave. That's not called capitalism, that's called being a Christian and someone who believes in democracy, so that everyone should get a fair slice of the pie. ~ Michael Moore

I'm no fan of what I've seen health insurance companies do. ~ Elizabeth Emken

People who are in a position of finding out that they're at risk for some illness, whether it's breast cancer, or heart disease, are afraid to get that information - even though it might be useful to them - because of fears that they'll lose their health insurance or their job. ~ Francis Collins

No, I mean I'm sorry that you've inherited such a miserable, collapsing Old Country. A place where rich Bankers own everything, where you've got to be grateful for a part-time job with no benefits and no retirement plan, where the most health insurance you can afford is being careful and hoping you don't get sick, where -- ~ Cory Doctorow

Almost 30 years ago, I started seeking help from a counselor with a master's of social work in New York City, but we were never a good match. It was like being in a bad relationship, except the guy could actually bill my health insurance company for lousy dates. ~ Gina Barreca

Employees are shielded from being healthcare consumers because they rely on their
employers' priorities and judgment instead of their own to select insurance. ~ Archelle Georgiou

There should be no private health insurance companies operating for profit. ~ Michael Moore

If you like your health insurance plan, you can keep your health insurance plan ~ Ron Fournier

Britta wanted to try to turn a guard. Tamara thought it was idiotic.
"What are you going to do? Buy him beer and tell him about Kropotkin?"
I envisioned the conversation:
Vanguard: Wage Slave, are you aware that you are but a wire nail in the toolbox of capitalism?
Wage Slave: I thought I was a chisel.
Vanguard: No, the petit bourgeois are the chisels.
Wage Slave: What about a washer set? Can I be a washer set?
Vanguard: No, my ferret, run free! For I have unlocked your collar with knowledge!
Wage Slave: I want to be a chisel.
Vanguard pushes screaming ferret through hole in fence cut by the clippers of noblesse oblige.
"Well, maybe we could bribe him," said Britta. Tamara laughed.
"With what? Health insurance? ~ Vanessa Veselka

The point is that families today are spending their money no more foolishly than their parents did. And yet they're five times more likely to go bankrupt, and three times more likely to lose their homes. Families are going broke on the basics - housing, health insurance, and education. These are the kind of bills that you can't just trim around the edges in the event of a downturn. ~ Amelia Warren Tyagi

When I went to law school, which I put myself through for $100,000 dollars of debt, I didn't expect anybody to pay for my health insurance, which I had none of. No health insurance. ~ Megyn Kelly

I had no idea that marriage was only supposed to be between two people who wanted to get between the sheets and make more people. What ever happened to marrying for love - or to get on your partner's health insurance policy, or for presents? No one was going to buy two people in their thirties a four-slice toaster if we just continued to live in sin. ~ Jen Kirkman

The time after college and before music was really rough. I couldn't afford food. I was eating bread and butter for five months. Living in New Orleans, I couldn't afford to take care of myself. I had no health insurance. ~ Benjamin Booker

I think that what we put on our skin and what we eat, you just cannot compromise. You cannot keep on putting things that are toxic and that are going to compromise your health on your skin. Your skin absorbs. It's the same as eating. Over 60 percent is absorbed directly into your blood stream. So to me paying that little bit extra is absolutely worth it. It's health insurance. ~ Sophie Heyman Uliano

If you're self-employed, between jobs, or can't get insurance through work, you'll have access to affordable health insurance as good as Congressman Paul Ryan's. ~ Kathleen Sebelius

There is much that public policy can do to support American entrepreneurs. Health insurance reform will make it easier for entrepreneurs to take a chance on a new business without putting their family's health at risk. Tort reform will make it easier to take prudent risks on new products in a number of sectors. ~ Eric Ries

I'm sure that the standard of public morality we've helped build will force government in Canada to approve complete health insurance. ~ Tommy Douglas

The Supreme Court has never ruled that Congress can use the Commerce Clause to require individuals to engage in an activity they have chosen to avoid. Yet that is precisely what Obamacare does: It forces Americans without health insurance to purchase coverage. Such a requirement is unprecedented and unconstitutional. ~ John Cornyn

One of my big revelations was that nobody cares whether you write your novel or not. They want you to be happy. Your parents want you to have health insurance. Your friends want you to be a good friend. But everyone's thinking about their own problems and nobody wakes up in the morning thinking, 'Boy, I sure hope Sam finishes that chapter and gets one step closer to his dream of being a working writer.' Nobody does that. If you want to write, it has to come from you. If you don't want to write, that's great. Go do something else. That was a very liberating moment for me. ~ Sam Lipsyte

The majority of Americans receive health insurance coverage through their employers, but with rising health care costs, many small businesses can no longer afford to provide coverage for their employees. ~ Jim Ryun

The very worst aspect of poverty in the United States is the realization that - No one gives a shit whether you live or die.
The federal government, the state government couldn't care less. They're busy maintaining the status quo, and poverty is a big part of the economic balancing act. Hell, the economy would collapse if poverty was solved. The medical and health insurance industries; if they can't make any money off of you you're already dead to them. They couldn't care one iota if you live a life of physical pain and suffering.
And the citizens' hmmph, they're too busy stepping all over one another trying to avoid poverty.

What an insult and spit in the face of humanity to call all of this insanity civilized. ~ Brien Pittman

Billions of dollars, trying unsuccessfully to keep drugs out of the world's most porous border? One-tenth of the anti-drug budget going into education and treatment, nine-tenths of those billions into interdiction? And not enough money from anywhere going into the root causes of the drug problem itself. And the billions spent keeping drug offenders locked up in prison, the cells now so crowded we have to give early release to murderers. Not to mention the fact that two-thirds of all the "non-drug" offenses in America are committed by people high on dope or alcohol. And our solutions are the same futile non-solutions - build more prisons, hire more police, spend more and more billions of dollars not curing the symptoms while we ignore the disease. Most people in my area who want to kick drugs can't afford to get into a treatment program unless they have blue-chip health insurance, which most of them don't. And there's a six-month-to-two-year waiting list to get a bed in a subsidized treatment program. We're spending almost $2 billion poisoning cocaine crops and kids over here, while there's no money at home to help someone who wants to get off drugs. It's insanity. ~ Don Winslow

Great physicians and nurses, skilled, caring and unparalleled in their training, intervened in my life and probably saved it. I was lucky but other Americans are not. It is time to speak again and stand again for the ideal that in the richest nation ever on this planet, it is wrong for 41 million Americans, most of them in working families, to worry at night and wake up in the morning without the basic protection of health insurance. ~ John F. Kerry

First, the very idea that there should be any serious kind of health insurance for Americans (beyond tiny elites) simply did not have much reality until World War II - and it was (again) the war that gave it reality. With wartime labor scarce, wage-price controls were enacted to keep bidding wars in check. Corporations, unable to offer more pay, tried to compete with benefits instead. The modern idea of widespread employer-provided health insurance developed as a strategy to attract wartime workers, and continued in many industries after the war, especially during the boom era. ~ Gar Alperovitz

America doesn't have health insurance. ~ Joe Biden

A novelist must wrestle with all mysteries and strangeness of life itself, and anyone who dies not wish to accept that grand, bone-chilling commission should write book reviews, editorials, or health-insurance policies instead. ~ Pat Conroy

As an athlete, I understood the value of my health insurance. I knew that in my profession, injuries were common and could happen at any time. ~ Magic Johnson

Think for a moment about what Obamacare has done: The federal government has come up with its own (ever-evolving) definition of 'health insurance,' which now includes free access to sterilization, contraception, and certain abortifacients such as the morning-after pill. ~ John Cornyn

While Free Choice Vouchers didn't fulfill my vision of a health care system in which every American would be empowered to hire and fire their insurance company, they were a foothold for choice and competition and a safety valve for Americans whose employers are already forcing them to bear more and more of their family's health insurance costs. ~ Ron Wyden

If you have health insurance, then you don't have to do anything. If you've got health insurance through your employer, you can keep your health insurance, keep your choice of doctor, keep your plan. ~ Barack Obama

If you are stuck in circumstances in which it takes Herculean efforts to get through the day - doing low-income work, obeying an authoritarian boss, buying clothes for the children, dealing with school issues, paying the rent or mortgage, fixing the car, negotiating with a spouse, paying taxes, and caring for older parents - it is not easy to pay close attention to larger political issues. Indeed you may wish that these issues would take care of themselves. It is not a huge jump from such a wish to become attracted to a public philosophy, spouted regularly at your job and on the media, that economic life would regulate itself automatically if only the state did not repeatedly intervene in it in clumsy ways. Now underfunded practices such as the license bureau, state welfare, public health insurance, public schools, public retirement plans, and the like begin to appear as awkward, bureaucratic organizations that could be replaced or eliminated if only the rational market were allowed to take care of things impersonally and quietly, as it were. Certainly such bureaucracies are indeed often clumsy. But more people are now attracted to compare that clumsiness to the myth of how an impersonal market would perform if it took on even more assignments and if state regulation of it were reduced even further. So a lot of "independents" and "moderates" may become predisposed to the myth of the rational market in part because the pressures of daily life encourage them to seek comfort i ~ William E. Connolly

We spend billions on marginal and often unnecessary procedures on people who are in the final dying process, yet we leave millions of Americans out of the health insurance system, and America's kids have the worst dental health in the developed world. ~ Richard Lamm

Quality child care, health insurance coverage, and training make it possible for former welfare recipients to get, and keep, jobs. ~ Mel Carnahan

We're trying to take a leadership role in solving the nation's health-care crisis. We want everybody in this country to have health insurance. ~ Steven Burd

One in seven Americans lives without health insurance, and that's a truly staggering figure. ~ John M. McHugh

I want to level the playing field for people who want to purchase health insurance as individuals, and that means eliminating the exemption for employer-sponsored health care. ~ Adam Hasner

Morelli beeped his truck unlocked. "If you're looking for your rent-a-cop, I told Ranger you'd be with me this morning."
"Did he make you take a blood oath that you'd protect me?"
"He asked me if I had adequate health insurance. ~ Janet Evanovich

A tremendous amount of needless pain and suffering can be eliminated by ensuring that health insurance is universally available. ~ Daniel Akaka

The Democratic Party believes that health insurance is a social responsibility of the nation. I believe that health insurance is an individual responsibility. And that's a really hard philosophy to mesh. ~ Raul Labrador

Left to ourselves, we might pick the wrong health insurance, the wrong mortgage, the wrong school for our kids; why, unless they stop us, we might pick the wrong light bulb. ~ Mitch Daniels

We actually have not required in this law that you carry health insurance. ~ Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Doesn't anything socialistic make you want to throw up? Like great public schools, or health insurance for all? ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Thanks to President Barack Obama, under the Affordable Care Act, millions more people will be eligible for health insurance, including many people with HIV. ~ Alex Newell

I believe strongly that the opportunity is here for us in America to finally have a healthcare system that we can really be proud of. But it's got to be one where everybody is involved. Everybody: consumers, employers, providers, health-insurance companies, everybody. ~ Max Baucus

For those that are working part time, in small businesses, or who are unemployed and do not currently have health insurance, we want to make sure that you are covered. ~ Valerie Jarrett

But I can tell you what I believe: When tens of thousands of innocent souls have perished in Darfur-when 11 million children are without health insurance-when our colossal debt subjects our economic future to the whims of Asian bankers-no one can tell me that faith demands this Senate spend its time arguing over a handful of judges. No one with those priorities can use my faith to intimidate me. ~ John F. Kerry

I intend to talk about race during this election in the South because the Republicans have been talking about it since 1968 in order to divide us. And I'm going to bring us together. Because you know what? You know what? White folks in the South who drive pickup trucks with Confederate flag decals in the back ought to be voting with us and not them, because their kids don't have health insurance either and their kids need better schools too. ~ Howard Dean

We ought to follow through on an idea that was first proposed by President Clinton to allow people over the age of 55 who are not eligible for Medicare into the Medicare system, at cost, and below cost for those who can't afford it. That takes care of a significant number of the people who don't have health insurance. ~ John Edwards

I think first and foremost everybody should understand that Canadians are strongly committed to the system of universal health insurance, to the principle that your ability to pay does not determine your access to critical medical service. ~ Stephen Harper

Does the U.S. Constitution stand for anything in an era of government excess? Can that founding document, which is supposed to restrain the power and reach of a centralized federal government, slow down the juggernaut of czars, health insurance overhaul and anything else this administration and Congress wish to do that is not in the Constitution? ~ Cal Thomas

On the most recent battles on health insurance reform, the women led the battle to end gender discrimination by the insurance companies [where] women paid more and got less of a benefit, and also the whole issue of prevention. ~ Barbara Mikulski

We should work to de-link health insurance from employment so if you lose your job, your health insurance goes with you and it is personal, portable and affordable. ~ Ted Cruz

Opportunity expands when there is excellence and choice in education, when taxes are lowered, when every citizen has affordable, portable health insurance and when constitutional freedoms are preserved. ~ Mitt Romney

Look, if you have somebody who doesn't have health insurance, who doesn't have a doctor or dentist, and in order to deal with their cold or flu or dental problem, they go to an emergency room - in general, that visit will cost ten times more than walking into a community health center. ~ Bernie Sanders

Furthermore, we believe that health care reform, again I said at the beginning of my remarks, that we sent the three pillars that the President's economic stabilization and job creation initiatives were education and innovation - innovation begins in the classroom - clean energy and climate, addressing the climate issues in an innovative way to keep us number one and competitive in the world with the new technology, and the third, first among equals I may say, is health care, health insurance reform. ~ Nancy Pelosi

What was still preventable in the 1980s would, in a couple decades, become manifest; what once was treatable would become deadly. I'm not sure my immediate family's brushes with death when I was a kid-mom's hemorrhage in childbirth, Grandma's collapsed lung, Dad's chemical poisoning-would be survived today. Mom would have been less healthy going into labor, Grandma would have been sent home too soon for lack of insurance, Dad would have been given a cheaper and less effective treatment. The morality rate for poor rural women, in particular, has risen sharply over my lifetime. Health insurance had been around for a long time, of course, but the power of that industry had swelled up fast, transforming access to care and all the costs that come with it. ~ Sarah Smarsh

I resist thinking of myself as a teacher. I think of myself as a writer who has pulled a fast one and hoodwinked this institution into giving me a job and health insurance. ~ Vijay Seshadri

And in terms of their crown jewel legislative achievement: who knew that when asked, 'will government impose a new federal mandate requiring middle class Americans to buy health insurance whether they can afford it or not?' The answer would be 'Yes we can!' ~ Artur Davis

If it's really so wonderful that both partners have to work to make a living to pay for their house, for health insurance, someone is obviously going to get the short end of the stick. ~ Eric Braeden

Obamacare was very attractive, particularly to those without health insurance. ~ Mitt Romney

Today we have a health insurance industry where the first and foremost goal is to maximize profits for shareholders and CEOs, not to cover patients who have fallen ill or to compensate doctors and hospitals for their services. It is an industry that is increasingly concentrated and where Americans are paying more to receive less. ~ Dianne Feinstein

If I brought groceries the way I buy health insurance, I'd eat a lot better - and so would my dog. ~ Phil Gramm

But this book is about something else: what goes on in the lives of real people when the industrial economy goes south. It's about reacting to bad circumstances in the worst way possible. It's about a culture that increasingly encourages social decay instead of counteracting it. The problems that I saw at the tile warehouse run far deeper than macroeconomic trends and policy. too many young men immune to hard work. Good jobs impossible to fill for any length of time. And a young man [one of Vance's co-workers] with every reason to work - a wife-to-be to support and a baby on the way - carelessly tossing aside a good job with excellent health insurance. More troublingly, when it was all over, he thought something had been done to him. There is a lack of agency here - a feeling that you have little control over your life and a willingness to blame everyone but yourself. This is distinct from the larger economic landscape of modern America. ~ J.D. Vance

Anywhere you have extreme poverty and no national health insurance, no promise of health care regardless of social standing, that's where you see the sharp limitations of market-based health care. ~ Paul Farmer

It is important for women to have a choice, to have an opportunity to plan their families, because if they don't, the Republicans have said this is an ownership society. You are on your own, and they're going to begrudge that child everything, from WIC to a Pell Grant to health insurance. ~ Gwen Moore

In Indiana, the Affordable Care Act will raise the average cost of health insurance in the individual market by an unaffordable 72 percent. ~ Mike Pence

The most common criticism of the spread was that it detached policy debate from the real world, that nobody used language the way that these debaters did, save perhaps for auctioneers. But even adolescents knew this wasn't true, that corporate persons deployed a version of the spread all the time: for they heard the spoken warnings at the end of the increasingly common television commercials for prescription drugs, when risk information was disclosed at a speed designed to make it difficult to comprehend; they heard the list of rules and caveats read rapid-fire at the end of promotions on the radio; they were at least vaguely familiar with the 'fine print' one received from financial institutions and health-insurance companies; the last thing one was supposed to do with these thousands of words was comprehend them. These types of disclosure were designed to conceal; they exposed you to information that, should you challenge the institution in question, would be treated like a 'dropped argument' in a fast round of debate - you have already conceded the validity of the point by failing to address it when it was presented. It's no excuse that you didn't have the time. Even before the twenty-four hour news cycle, Twitter storms, algorithmic trading, spreadsheets, the DDoS attack, Americans were getting 'spread' in their daily lives; meanwhile, their politicians went on speaking slowly, slowly about values utterly disconnected from their policies. ~ Ben Lerner

Why are you willing to flip hamburgers, sell health insurance or babysit three obnoxious brats when all you get for your exertions is a few pieces of coloured paper? People are willing to do such things when they trust the figments of their collective imagination. Trust is the raw material from which all types of money are minted. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

Well, there are about 10 million children that aren't covered by health insurance. About 3 million qualify for Medicaid but don't get it, so we're going to reach out and bring more of those kids into the Medicaid program. ~ Franklin Raines

Let's run the experiment. ~ Chris Hayes

The reason Gov. Romney passed Romneycare as governor of Massachusetts in 2006 was because many Republicans viewed health care reform, mandates and all, as a way to inoculate against Democratic charges that Republicans didn't care about people who lacked health insurance. ~ Ari Fleischer

The thing they're trying to stop is 30-million people getting health insurance. That's the substance. ~ Chris Hayes

The single best thing we can do is expand competition. Let people purchase health insurance across state lines. If you want to expand access, what you want to do is increase choices and drive down cost. ~ Ted Cruz