Patrick Soon-Shiong Quotes

Millions of Americans who are not poor are health care poor.

When it comes to health care, the United States is on another planet. The United States spends about 35 percent more per capita than the next two highest-spending countries—Norway and Switzerland…no matter how we measure it—whether by life expectancy or for survival of specific diseases like asthma, heart disease, or some cancers; by the rate of medical errors; or simply by satisfaction with health services, the United States is actually doing worse than a number of countries like France or Germany… America spends far more than other countries, and doesn’t see better results.

The lack of health care coverage has remained very important to me during my time in Congress and as a member of the House Subcommittee on Health, I am working hard with my colleagues to correct these inequalities.

The time is now for Congress to address health care in America.

I have people coming to me every day, coming to my office, with life-threatening diseases - life-threatening diseases - and they were dropped from their health care because of the Affordable Care Act.

Kidney disease is a low-profile, unglamorous problem, a disease that disproportionately strikes minorities and the poor. Its celebrity spokesman is blue-collar comedian George Lopez, who received a kidney from his wife.

Anywhere you have extreme poverty and no national health insurance, no promise of health care regardless of social standing, that's where you see the sharp limitations of market-based health care.

The United States has the best sick care system in the world, however, the health care system remains fragmented and limited, particularly for African Americans who carry a disproportionate burden of disease, hunger, homelessness, and poverty.

When people are left out, we're naturally going to focus on that, if it's 47 million people who don't have health insurance, if it's 23,000 people who die every year because they lack access to health care for something that's easily treatable.

Today right here in America we have 50 million people without health insurance.

I have stood on the front lines of the health care system as a doctor, patient and concerned parent. Those experiences have served as my guideposts throughout the struggle to reform America's health care system. And it's those same experiences that tell me that fear and election hysteria should not overshadow the reality of reform.

Prior to passage of Obamacare, Americans spoke out against the individual mandate; they didn't want to change the health care they had; they didn't want a 3,000-page bill that empowered 15 Washington bureaucrats to decide the future of the doctor-patient relationship.

After a century of striving, after a year of debate, after a historic vote, health care reform is no longer an unmet promise. It is the law of the land.

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.

Health care comprises nearly 20 percent of our national economy, but outdated bureaucracy and red tape have stifled competition and raised costs. As a result, today more than 45 million are without any health coverage.

In this most powerful nation in the world, lack of access to health care should not force local and state governments, companies and workers into bankruptcy, while causing unnecessary illness and hospitalization.

The burden of disease falls on the poor.

Seven presidents before him - Democrats and Republicans - tried to expand health care to all Americans. President Obama got it done.

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.

We have common enemies today. It's called childhood poverty. It's called cancer. It's called AIDS. It's called Parkinson's. It's called Muscular Dystrophy.

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.

The health care industry can play a great role in this by being aware of the fact that these children form perhaps the most neglected group of people in the country, largely because it is hard to find them.

America's doctors, nurses and medical researchers are the best in the world, but our health care system is broken.

This Obamacare program has Obama's name on it. He lied to people for three years about this program. People trusted him. People believed what he told them. They believed that he was going to improve the health care system in this country, and it was going to get cheaper, more affordable, more plentiful.

If a severe pandemic materializes, all of society could pay a heavy price for decades of failing to create a rational system of health care that works for all of us.