Political Quotes

“Mr. President, the debate which will come to a close this week has, in one sense, been going on for a year. But in another sense, it has been going on for a century. In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt campaigned on the promise of a national health insurance program. Workers, Roosevelt said, are entitled to a basic standard of protection from injury and illness. Wherever such standards are not met by given establishments, by given industries, are unprovided for by a Legislature, or are balked by unenlightened courts, the workers are in jeopardy, the progressive employer is penalized, and the community pays a heavy cost in lessened efficiency and in misery. Well, since Teddy Roosevelt said that, Presidents and Members of Congress from both parties, seeing the same costs Theodore Roosevelt saw in the failure to assure health care for all, have grappled with this issue. These attempts at reform have largely fallen short. They have foundered for many reasons: Health care is personal and complex. The timing was wrong or the politics were difficult. Leaders on all sides failed to find the compromises that would have enabled them to move forward. But the recurring theme is that time and again, reformers have failed to overcome the enormous obstacles that those who profit from the status quo have been able to erect. Because we have fallen short in the past, Americans today face a health care system that costs too much and too often delivers too little.…”