Michelle Obama Quotes

Obesity now contributes to the death of more than 360,000 Americans a year. The incidence of childhood obesity is now at epidemic levels. Alarm bells are going off all over the place. But our government has done virtually nothing.

Obesity is a prison; in the US we spend more to treat type 2 diabetes each year than is spent on education.

All I want to do, if you've already got health care, is lower your costs.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports that the number of overweight adult Americans increased over 60 percent between 1991 and 2000. According to CDC data, the U.S. population of overweight children between ages two and five increased by almost 36 percent from 1989 to 1999.

I also rise today in strong support of forward movement on the implementation of health information technology, which has the potential to save the United States billions of dollars in health care costs each year.

If we don't somehow stem the tide of childhood obesity, we're going to have a huge problem.

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.

We ought to be incentivizing people to save more of their own money for use taking care of their healthcare expenses, and what we have done is we have set it up where health savings accounts are harder and harder to use for narrower and narrower purposes.

We recognize the significant burden on patients from continued, rising insurance premiums and being forced increasingly to pay the full list price for medicines at the pharmacy counter.

For the first time, the nation will have goals, benchmarks, and measureable outcomes that will help us tackle the childhood obesity epidemic one child, one family, and one community at a time.

Overall, our population is in the worst shape it's ever been. Children are in terrible shape. We have absolutely unprecedented numbers of obese and overweight children - one in three now. A generation ago it was something like one in ten.

We think about the enormous costs of homelessness, or the enormous cost of HIV/AIDS, over the long term, as people visit emergency rooms, etc. The more we are investing in that ounce of prevention the better off we're going to be.

If we are serious about combating the childhood obesity epidemic and improving child nutrition, then everyone must chip in -- parents, schools, and yes even Congress.

I would just say it's not good for the country to have 11 million people here who we don't know who they are, where they're living. They're not paying taxes, but they're showing up in emergency rooms. They're driving up the cost of auto insurance 'cause they don't have driver's licenses and are getting into accidents. They're having children, which are US citizens. So, I mean, it's an issue that needs to be dealt with.

Most innovations, unfortunately, actually increase the net costs of the healthcare system. There's a few, particularly having to do with chronic diseases, that are an exception. If you could cure Alzheimer's, if you could avoid diabetes - those are gigantic in terms of saving money. But the incentive regime doesn't favor them.

Right now we also have this epidemic of obesity and diabetes.

Obesity is a drain on the economy - we have to pay for the health care of fat people who are usually poor and can’t afford insurance. Obesity is, well, bad.

American children are the heaviest worldwide, and they are getting heavier at a faster rate than other children around the globe. This spread of obesity foreshadows an explosion in degenerative diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer waiting to erupt in our children's future. Together we can stop this tragedy from ever happening.

East St. Louis-which the local press refers to as "an inner city without an outer city"-has some of the sickest children in America. Of 66 cities in Illinois, East St. Louis ranks first in fetal death, first in premature birth, and third in infant health.

Health care costs generally have gone up at a significantly slower rate since ObamaCare was passed than they did before, which has saved the federal Treasury hundreds of billions of dollars.

I think narcotics and alcohol, and even tobacco are enormously costly ingredients in our society.

Many people believe that dealing with overweight and obesity is a personal responsibility. To some degree they are right, but it is also a community responsibility. When there are no safe, accessible places for children to play or adults to walk, jog, or ride a bike, that is a community responsibility.

I'm not for cutting off hands but I'm more for cutting off hands than I am for molesting children, if that's what it takes to stop it. I think that's fair.

The big cities of America are becoming Third World countries.