Political Quotes

“I came to the Senate floor earlier today to speak about the nomination of Don Berwick to run the CMS and talked a little bit this morning about the area in which he specializes, which is how to lower the cost of the American health care system by improving the quality of care; that it is a win-win and to call it rationing is incredibly misleading and raises a legitimate question about whose side somebody is on who wants to attack this kind of reform of the health care system. An estimated 80,000 patients per year develop catheter-related bloodstream infections, or CRBSIs. . . . About 30,000 patients die as a result, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, accounting for nearly a third of annual deaths from hospital-acquired infections in the United States. So 80,000 people get hospital-acquired infections in their blood from the catheters that go into them when they are in a hospital. Of those 80,000, 30,000 die, and that is about one-third of the annual deaths from all hospital-acquired infections, which means about 90,000 Americans die every year from hospital-acquired infections. This article goes on to say those deaths are preventable.”