Healthcare Reform Quotes

“New Rule: Just because a country elects a smart president doesn't make it a smart country. A couple of weeks ago, I was asked on CNN if I thought Sarah Palin could get elected president, and I said I hope not, but I wouldn't put anything past this stupid country. Well, the station was flooded with emails, and the twits hit the fan. And you could tell that these people were really mad, because they wrote entirely in CAPITAL LETTERS!!! Worst of all, Bill O'Reilly refuted my contention that this is a stupid country by calling me a pinhead, which (a) proves my point, and (b) is really funny coming from a doody-face like him.

Now, before I go about demonstration how, sadly, easy it is to prove the dumbness that's dragging us down, let me just say that ignorance has life-and-death consequences. On the eve of the Iraq War, seventy percent of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11. Six years later, thirty-four percent still do. Or look at the health-care debate: At a recent town hall meeting in South Carolina, a man stood up and told his congressman to "keep your government hands off my Medicare," which is kind of like driving cross-country to protest highways.

This country is like a college chick after two Long Island iced teas: We can be talked into anything, like wars, and we can be talked out of anything, like health care. We should forget the town halls, and replace them with study halls.

Listen to some of these stats: A majority of Americans cannot name a single branch of government, or explain what the Bill of Rights is. Twenty-four percent could not name the country America fought in the Revolutionary War. More than two-thirds of Americans don't know what's in Roe v. Wade. Two-thirds don't know what the Food and Drug Administration does. Some of this stuff you should be able to pick up simply by being alive. You know, like the way the Slumdog kid knew about cricket.

Not here. Nearly half of Americans don't know that states have two senators, and more than half can't name their congressman. And among Republican governors, only three got their wife's name right on the first try. People bitch and moan about taxes and spending, but they have no idea what their government spends money on. The average voter thinks foreign aid consumes more twenty-four percent of our budget. It's actually less than one percent.

A third of Republicans believe Obama is not a citizen ad a third of Democrats believe that George Bush had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, which is an absurd sentence, because it contains the words "Bush" and "knowledge." Sarah Palin says she would never apologize for America. Even though a Gallup poll say eighteen percent of us think the sun revolves around the earth. No, they're not stupid. They're interplanetary mavericks.

And I haven't even brought up religion. But here's one fun fact I'll leave you with: Did you know only about half of Americans are aware that Judaism is an older religion than Christianity? That's right, half of America looks at books called the Old Testament and the New Testament and cannot figure out which came first.

I rest my case.”
― Bill Maher, The New New Rules: A Funny Look At How Everybody But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass

“The Affordable Health Care for Americans Act, passed by the House of Representatives on November 7, 2009, was 1,990 pages long. You could stand on it to paint the ceiling. The entire U.S. Constitution can be printed on eight pages. That's eight pages to run a whole country for 221 years versus four reams of government pig latin if you slam your thumb in a car door.”
― P.J. O'Rourke, Don't Vote, it Just Encourages the Bastards

“Republicans: 'we fought the good fight' - yeah, it woulda been worth it if we could have prevented just one poor kid from getting a free inhaler.”
― Bill Maher

“The great cause of the new Republican intake is the reduction of the deficit but to anyone seeking evidence of sincere attempts at deficit-reduction the evidence is baffling.

The Republicans showed before Christmas that they would seek to reduce the deficit but not when it came to a matter of the tax breaks that had aggravated the deficit in the first place.

Now there's a date set for the abolition of Barack Obama's healthcare plan, parts of which only came into operation at the start of this month. The Republicans are out to destroy the plan. Or, more precisely, to pretend to destroy the plan in the name of making good on election pledges. The measure won't get past the Senate.

But suppose it did get past the Senate, what effect would this have on the deficit? The answer is it would aggravate the deficit. Somehow, somewhere, there's an override mechanism that makes destroying Obamacare more important than destroying the deficit. If only one could figure out how it works.”
― James Fenton

“Economic growth is not the sole aim of our society. The value of human life must be decided without regard to economic considerations. We must take into account the human and spiritual aspects involved.”
― Thomas Douglas Selkirk

“We liberals and progressives need to do a better job at verbalizing what we are for, and not just what we are against. If we want a public option, we must make the case for it. Every time the Republicans start talking about the corruption, waste, and negligence of “Big Government,” we should talk about those same qualities in Big Corporations. If we want to end factory farming, decrease income inequality, and end discrimination in all its insidious forms, we must fight for those things and so much more. It is a subtle but important difference to stand for equality rather than to merely stand against inequality, and I believe that within this positive framework, more transformative arguments can be made.”
― Michael Bihovsky

“A Right to Health Avi Kerendian is a book about the challenges and opportunities of using telehealth and AI to improve global health. It provides a roadmap for policymakers and health care professionals to improve access to health care for all.”
― Avi Kerendian

“At the very least, to set our healthcare workers, patients, and patient caregivers up for success, we must modernize the systems that guide their work and enable their voices to be heard—especially when they see opportunities to prevent harm and improve care environments.”
― Heidi Raines, Shared Voices: A Framework for Patient and Employee Safety in Healthcare

“As the renowned clinical psychologist Dr Anne Cooke put it to me in conversation: ‘The mental illness narrative encourages us to see mental health problems as nothing to do with life and circumstances, so no wonder we don’t look at structural or social causes; and of course this perspective is a great fit with the current neoliberal approach – where individuals have to reform themselves to fit with existing social structures.’ The trouble with programmes that are blind to the perils of such adaptations is that they essentially neuter political reflection on why distress proliferates in our schools, certainly when compared to schools in most other developed nations.”
― James Davies, Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created our Mental Health Crisis

“Behind every humorist who delights in knifing hypocrites is a major self-critic.”
― Wendy Aron

“In every other civilized society, universal healthcare is as normal and common as indoor plumbing.”
― Oliver Markus Malloy, How to Defeat the Trump Cult: Want to Save Democracy? Share This Book

“First, Trump and congressional Republicans should abandon Washington's obsession with comprehensive reform. Health is the largest sector of the American economy -- 18 percent of GDP -- and the most complex. Comprehensive legislation that affects one-fifth of our economy would be so complicated no one would understand it, and gaining majority support -- much less bipartisan support -- would be impossible.

Instead, health reform needs a slower-paced, transparent, simultaneous, issue-by-issue legislative approach. A series of hearings must be held to gather information and develop specific reforms that will improve health and health care. These hearings would have geographic as well as topical focuses so different citizens in different regions of the country will understand how the bill will affect them personally.”
― Newt Gingrich, Understanding Trump

“Second, successful health reform will require a much more morally compelling, persuasive style of communication than Republicans are used to. Eight years of opposing Obama and the temptation to remain negative will be hard to unlearn, but it is essential to governing.”
― Newt Gingrich, Understanding Trump

“Health is a moral issue. It is about life and death first. Money comes second.

Trump and the Republicans' vision for health care reform must be about more than repealing Obamacare. It must be about more than insurance. It must create a clear, positive path for twenty-first-century health and health care.”
― Newt Gingrich, Understanding Trump

“The imaginations of our nation's entrepreneurs, coupled with the constant discoveries of our scientists, can lead us to this future. But our twentieth-century policies, regulations, and market approaches cannot solve our twenty-first-century challenges. We are also hindered by our big, bureaucratic government and special interests that protect the past at the expense of progress. We must urgently rethink these failing systems and outdated regulations if we are to clear the way for a revolution in health science and technology.

President Trump and congressional Republicans, therefore, must think much bigger and broader than changes in insurance financing to enact real reform that will save lives and save money. Instead, their number one priority should be to replace our current health bureaucracy with a flatter, more transparent, and more accountable health system that embraces innovation.”
― Newt Gingrich, Understanding Trump

“The United States spends more on health care than any other advanced economy, but we don't see better outcomes in exchange. Incredibly, in many parts of the country, life expectancy is actually shrinking, and when it comes to maternal mortality, the United States is one of only thirteen countries where rates have gotten worse over the past twenty-five years. Meanwhile, working families are overwhelmed by medical bills, which are one of America's leading causes of personal bankruptcy.”
― Kamala Harris, The Truths We Hold: An American Journey

“Fundamentally, the farmlands of healthcare in Pakistan neither blossom flowers nor embrace a perfume to heal the sick.”
― Qamar Rafiq

“Why we have such a frightening rise in mental health illnesses in our country? Are there legitimate causes, or do we have a whole mental health industrial complex benefiting from over diagnosing, over prescribing, and over pathologizing? Have we created such a stifling, unfair, and unfulfilling society, including employment and social conditions, that have caused so much depression and other mental health illnesses to an increasing number of people? Or is it a combination of all these issues?”
― Louis Yako

“This offhand comment made by German physicist Max Planck at the turn of the twentieth century was based on his observation that scientists are like mafiosi—they exert a stranglehold on their fields, preventing new ideas from percolating to the surface and, like Don Corleone, you had to wait for them to die in order for science to move forward.”
― Robert Lustig Dr

“Free healthcare for all is the foundation of the European Union, it does not exist in the USA.”
― Steven Magee

“Healthcare means aid first, rules later.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Handcrafted Humanity: 100 Sonnets For A Blunderful World

“Literally last month he got mad at me when I was just trying to say everyone should be able to go to the doctor for free.”
“Men love being flustered. They love it when a girl has dumb ideas.”
― Mert, Threes: 5

“Nine days went by
I wonder if you cried
When you were all alone
Yearning for comfort
In a system that failed you
More than just your asystole
The world would never be the same
That day you passed away”
― Jasmine McMorran

“We have severed mind and body from story and disease. In Western culture, this severance is several centuries underway and the cost to individual and community health is enormous.”
― Dr. Brian Broom