Jason Becker Quotes

People with AIDS, cancer and other illnesses need free nonmedical support services.

One of the big things coming out of healthcare reform is a thing called the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Act (CLASS) which is a mechanism to reimburse people staying at home for technology and services that allow them to stay at home.

Where patient needs are complex, we should provide greater support in the community so that patients can cut down on trips to the tertiary hospital.

As a country, we can make the commitment to provide quality long-term services - so that getting care doesn't depend on whether you are fortunate enough to have a loved one willing and able to provide it.

Actually, I have my own charity that I started that helps supplement families with terminal children.

We know we are entering a period of transformation in aged care.

It is essential that we provide the best possible care for our wounded and disabled veterans.

He had Parkinson's disease for about, I'd say diagnosed for about 11 of the last years of his life. And treatment was not as good as it is now, of course. We're still going along and he died in '85 and he was 77.

People use so much more health care when they live longer.

For the last 20 months, I've just been going from one hospital to another.

What good will a tax break do me if I'm crippled for life?

About six years ago my family was affected by multiple sclerosis.

We have lost close friends and relatives to cancer and Parkinson's disease, and the level of personal suffering inflicted on patients and their families by these diseases is horrific.

In health care today, we spend most of the dollars - in terms of treating disease - in the last two years of a person's life.

Most Americans have some experience with nursing homes or other long term care settings, and nearly half have had a family member or close friend in a home in the past three years.

Traditionally, Medicare's assurance has been that for the elderly and persons with disabilities that they will not be alone when confronted with the full burden of their health care costs.

I am proposing that every person over sixty-five years of age be spared the darkness of sickness without hope.

Nearly every American will encounter the need for long-term care.

In advanced age, and in cases of disability from accident, natural infirmity or any other cause, the individual shall be supported by the colony, and receive every comfort which kindness can administer

I had, in my legal practice, often encountered really shocking examples of the devastating impact of the costs of long-term medical care on meager incomes. And, just before I was elected, I had my own personal experience in paying very considerable bills for my mother's terminal illness.

Just 10 percent of the population—mainly the elderly—consumes about 80 percent of health care expenditures, primarily on expensive chronic illnesses and end-of-life costs. Historically, the longer lives that medical advances have given us have run exactly parallel to the increase in chronic illness and the explosion in costs. Can we afford to live longer—much less radically longer?

I have felt the force of what governments can do. I remember my elder son being in the first cohort of kids who got a free nursery place, I remember the palliative care my mother got at home as I watched her die.

As a physician, I treated hundreds of patients who needed long-term care, including ones with Alzheimer's.

I've always been aware of mortality because I've always had ill health most of my life.

As my father went through a really, really long and dark period of his health declining and falling deeper into the abyss, I knew I was never going to let my family and my children experience this without any long-term care.