Political Quotes

“Mr. President, the American people understand--whether they are Democrats, Republicans, or Independents--that our healthcare system is broken; it is dysfunctional; it is failing. We spend almost twice as much per person on healthcare--an unsustainable $13,000 for every man, woman, and child--than any other country on Earth, and yet the results of all of that spending are abysmal. While the insurance companies and the drug companies make hundreds of billions of dollars in profit, we have 85 million Americans who are uninsured or underinsured and over 60,000 people who die every single year because they can't get to a doctor when they need to. In this country, despite our huge expenditures, we don't have enough doctors, nurses, dentists, pharmacists, or mental health specialists; and our life expectancy is far lower than in most other countries, especially for working class and lower income Americans. In my view-- and I think it is the view of most Americans--healthcare is a human right, not a privilege, and we need major reforms to our current system so that every man, woman, and child in this country gets the quality healthcare they need regardless of their financial status. The responsibility for reforming our broken healthcare system rests with the administration, and it rests with many Agencies of government, including the HHS; the CMS; the FDA; and the National Institutes of Health, the NIH, which plays a very important role in the development of new prescription drugs.…”