John Kerry Quotes

I have profoundly mixed feelings about the Affordable Care Act. What I love about it is its impulse. It attempts to deal with this intractable problem in American health care life, which is that a significant portion of the population does not have access to quality medical care.

We, of course, need to improve our failing healthcare system, where costs are skyrocketing and 1 in 3 Americans doesn't have the healthcare that they need. Can't afford it, even with their insurance.

We need to fight the plague of the uninsured the way we have fought other threats to our way of life and our basic values.

Everybody acknowledges that the current path we're on is unsustainable, not just for the people who don't have health insurance but for those who do.

I see the insurance issue, the coverage of people for healthcare in our country as a huge moral issue. The richest country in the world to have 47 million people without health insurance is ridiculous.

America enjoys the best health care in the world, but the best is no good if folks can't afford it, access it and doctor's can't provide it.

There is just no reason why the richest nation in the world can't provide health care to all its people.

One in seven Americans, including more than 8 million children, does not have even basic healthcare coverage.

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.

In the Affordable Care Act, Congress provided access to medical care for nearly 30 million uninsured Americans. Access is critically important, but offering access to an already broken system won't provide a lasting cure. We need to ask and answer the underlying question: Access to what?

The provision of healthcare in America has been a major policy issue for many decades. From the establishment of Medicare & Medicaid to the Affordable Care Act, we have struggled to find a solution for not just providing access to healthcare - but also becoming a healthier population.

America is supposed to be the richest and most powerful nation and we don't have health care for everybody.

There is no reason why anyone in this country should be lacking health care when America has the resources right now. It would not cost much more than what we are paying right now. As a matter of fact, Americans are paying for a universal standard of care. They are just not getting it because it is all about corporations making a profit. It is not about people. Support Medicare for all.

We have never seen health as a right. It has been conceived as a privilege, available only to those who can afford it. This is the real reason the American health care system is in such a scandalous state.

If, in fact, the GOP doesn't like any form of health care reform, what do we do with those 40 to 60 million uninsured?...When they show up in the emergency room, just shoot 'em! Kill them!...Do we have enough body bags? I don't know.

It's a disgrace that we have millions of people who are uninsured.

I happen to believe that health care is an imminent crisis. It is.

I mean, everybody should have access to medical care. And, you know, it shouldn't be such a big deal.

Health care in America, despite all you hear, still offers us citizens one of the most efficient and highest quality systems in the world. But it's expensive, and it's only getting worse.

Healthcare reform is a paradigmatic case. It is self-evidently necessary and inevitable and has been on the agenda for 35 years, and the political class seems completely unable to respond to it.

I am all for using business - public and private - to expand healthcare coverage.

Presidents and speakers for over 100 years had tried to pass affordable care for all Americans. It was challenged over and over. The Supreme Court declared it constitutional.

People are ready to say, 'Yes, we are ready for single-payer health insurance.' We are the only industrialized country in the world that does not have national health insurance. We are the richest in wealth and the poorest in health of all the industrial nations.

To do health care was a noble, good thing, and it will help America dramatically. I don't begrudge Barack Obama choosing it, even though if I were president, I might not have.

Every child in America deserves high-quality health care.