Richard Lamm Quotes

In the future we may have to ration health care, but we're not there now.

Our system of private health insurance that fails to provide coverage to so many of our citizens also contributes to the double-digit health care inflation that is making America less competitive in the global economy.

We implicitly or explicitly ration health care no matter what we do.

We ration health care now. We just don’t ration very rationally.

Economists specialize in pointing out unpleasant trade-offs - a skill that is on full display in the health care debate. We want patients to receive the best care available. We also want consumers to pay less. And we don't want to bankrupt the government or private insurers. Something must give.

In the U.S., hospitals are rewarded for keeping hospital beds full. That's the market at work. The question is: should we work for the market, or should the market work for us?

The chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80% of the total health care bill out there. There is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place. The decision is not whether or not we will ration care. The decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.

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

The decision is not whether or not we will ration care. The decision will be whether we ration care with our eyes open.

What you see is when the government gets involved, you run out of money and health care gets rationed.

Every country in the world is battling the rising cost of health care. No community anywhere has demonstrably lowered its health-care costs (not just slowed their rate of increase) by improving medical services. They've lowered costs only by cutting or rationing them.

They call it managed care but it really is only managed costs.

People spending more of their own money on routine health care would make the system more competitive and transparent and restore the confidence between the patients and the doctors without government rationing.

And so our goal on health care is, if we can get, instead of health care costs going up 6 percent a year, it's going up at the level of inflation, maybe just slightly above inflation, we've made huge progress. And by the way, that is the single most important thing we could do in terms of reducing our deficit. That's why we did it.

What I know is that we no longer have free enterprise capitalism in health care; it's not a system any longer where people are able to innovate. It's not based on voluntary exchange. The government is directing it.

It is my passionate belief that we can all have better health care through rationing.

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

I'd like to see the health care professionals making decisions, not some bureaucrat in Indianapolis working for an insurance company.

I believe a nation does not maximize its health care until it starts to ask the hard question: How can we prioritize our expenditures to buy the most health care for the most people? We should not apologize for rationing; we should promote it and advance it.

I basically believe the medical insurance industry should be nonprofit, not profit-making. There is no way a health reform plan will work when it is implemented by an industry that seeks to return money to shareholders instead of using that money to provide health care.

Progressive activists are angry that a Medicare-for-all single-payer approach was totally ignored during the health care debate.

Since 1994, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have considered it politically risky to offer a plan to fix America's broken health care system. The American public, though, has paid the price for this silence as health care costs skyrocketed, millions went uninsured, and millions more grappled with financial insecurity and hardship.

We need to work together to fairly assess and improve the long-term economic and health value - and affordability - of all components of the healthcare system, including hospitalizations, drugs, devices, and other interventions, to optimize our health investment decisions.

Under Obamacare, it virtually is impossible to find out the price of anything. That's not the way to make health care affordable.

Everyone knows that my key drivers to moving health care policies is improving access and reducing costs and improving outcomes.