Joycelyn Elders Quotes

I want us to be judged by the impact we have on the health of the people of Africa and the health of women. Improvements in the health of the people of Africa and the health of women are key indicators of the performance of WHO. This is a health organization for the whole world... But we must focus our attention on the people in greatest need.

We do not have a functioning market in the true sense of the word in health care. That's a layer of transparency that's sorely needed in America.

Having come from the U.S. and observed the way the health care system works there, we definitely felt that we could do something in India.

If your access to health care involves your leaving work and driving somewhere and parking and waiting for a long time, that's not going to promote healthiness.

This is our bottom line: The ways we give should and will evolve to enable us to achieve greater impact to improve the health and health care of all Americans.

Many sections of our country and many groups of our citizens suffer from diseases the eradication of which are mere matters of administration and moderate expenditure. Public health service should be as fully organized and as universally incorporated into our governmental system as is public education. The returns are a thousand fold in economic benefits, and infinitely more in reduction of suffering and promotion of human happiness.

Public health service should be as fully organized and as universally incorporated into our governmental system as is public education. The returns are a thousand fold in economic benefits, and infinitely more in reduction of suffering and promotion of human happiness.

What we're really trying to do is level out the health care system. It has gotten so one-sided as more and more people have been put into managed care; in fact, about 70 percent of the patients in the country.

I'm not saying we don't need health care reform. We do need health care reform.

The quality of health care in Canada is excellent.

Health care is one-sixth of our economy. If the government can control that, they can control just about everything. We need to understand what is going on, because there are much more economic models that can be used to give us good health care than what we have now.

In health care, the biggest imperative is: Fix those who cannot get insurance without changing the world for everyone else.

I entered the health care debate in response to a statement in the United States press in summer 2009 which claimed the National Health Service in Great Britain would have killed me off, were I a British citizen. I felt compelled to make a statement to explain the error.

It is, I guess, politically correct, widely believed, that to say that American health care is the best in the world. It's not.

I think all Americans believe in human rights. And health is an often overlooked aspect of basic human rights. And it's one that's easily corrected. The reason I say that is that many of the diseases that we treat around the world, I knew when I was a child. My mother was a registered nurse. And they no longer exist in our country.

And so to those who suggest that we are somehow 'harming' young women by encouraging them to take charge of their health we say this: We are not harming young women by educating them. We are arming them with information that they will carry with them throughout their lives.

There is simply not enough money available to support a system in which the lion's share of expenditures is devoted to acute care, with virtually nothing being spent on preventive medicine, i.e. health care.

We have a country that wants to believe it is the best in everything, but until all of us embrace the idea that health care should be a right, not a privilege, our system cannot be glibly described as, quote, 'the best in the world.'

We need a vibrant Medicaid program and strategies to expand affordable access to health care for all, especially for the specialty care services that community health centers do not provide.

I'm sure that the standard of public morality we've helped build will force government in Canada to approve complete health insurance.

We cannot educate children who are not healthy, and we cannot have healthy children without education.

Health is more than the absence of disease…It is also education….We have a health illiterate society.

[Public Health] means the saving and lengthening of lives of thousands of citizens, the extension of the vigorous working period well into old age, and the prevention of inefficiency, misery, and suffering. These advances can be made by organized social effort. Public health is purchasable.

Health is the single most difficult public policy that a Governor has to deal with.

I think it's important, especially in health care, to take this step by step, whether it's the replacement of the Affordable Care Act, how we make Medicaid work better, how we save Medicare for the long term.