David Axelrod Quotes

Many of us are alarmed at the skyrocketing cost of medical care, including patients, who are the consumers. However, medical malpractice is not the reason for these increasing costs.

As a physician and a U.S. senator, I have warned since the very beginning about many troubling aspects of Mr. Obama's unprecedented health-insurance mandate. Not only does he believe he can order you to buy insurance, the president also incorrectly equates health insurance coverage with medical care.

Ensuring Americans have access to adequate medical care should be a priority for all of us.

What we need are more good doctors and fewer bad health plans.

Medical costs are soaring because our health-care system is totally screwed up. Doctors and hospitals have every incentive to spend on unnecessary tests, drugs, and procedures.

I think the first and principle objective is to repeal Obamacare before it does lasting, fundamental damage to our health care system, to our individual liberty, to the relationship each of us has with his or her doctor.

Today, Medicare provides health insurance to about 40 million seniors and disabled individuals each year. The number is only expected to grow as the baby boomers begin retiring.

No one should have to choose between medicine and other necessities. No one should have to use the emergency room every time a child gets sick. And no one should have to live in constant fear that a medical problem will become a financial crisis.

People say that the most expensive piece of medical equipment is the doctor's pen. It's not that we make all the money. It's that we order all the money.

As a former professional patient advocate, I believe prescription drugs are an essential part of high-quality medical treatment, and I supported enactment of the Medicare Prescription Drug and Modernization Act.

Medical costs are of concern, both in developing and developed countries.

To do health care was a noble, good thing, and it will help America dramatically. I don't begrudge Barack Obama choosing it, even though if I were president, I might not have.

Soaring prescription drug costs have placed a tremendous strain on family budgets. They have also imposed a heavy burden on employers - both public and private - who are struggling to provide affordable health insurance coverage to their workers.

I think that we have a number of different health care challenges in our country, and certainly addressing the uninsured is one, and the second is making sure that those with health insurance actually get the care that they assume they'll have available to them if they get sick.

When Medicare was created for senior citizens and America 's disabled in 1965, about half of a senior's health care spending was on doctors and the other half on hospitals.

No one plans to get sick or hurt - I certainly didn't - but most people will need medical care at some point in their lives.

America's health care system provides some of the finest doctors and more access to vital medications than any country in the world. And yet, our system has been faltering for many years with the increased cost of health care.

Clearly, healthcare is a very important sector.

A major driver of the cost of healthcare in the United States is a compromise that was reached with the American Medical Association in the 1960s when Medicare was first established.

Almost every economist agrees that the American health care system is unsustainable. Medical care is so expensive that it is busting all of our budgets - government, business, and personal. Eventually, the medical price bubble will pop. What, then, are the alternatives?

Medicare is a promise we made to seniors more than four decades ago. When President Johnson signed Medicare into law, one in three seniors lived in poverty. Half of seniors had no health coverage at all.

Long gone are the days when hospital stays and surgeries made up the bulk of seniors' annual medical expenses.

I think we can see how blessed we are in America to have access to the kind of health care we do if we are insured, and even if uninsured, how there is a safety net. Now, as to the problem of how much health care costs and how we reform health care ... it is another story altogether.

I was proud to share the stories of my friends at Georgetown Law who have suffered dire medical consequences because our student insurance does not cover contraception for the purpose of preventing pregnancy.

There's no way we're going to have low cost health insurance in a world of high cost medicine.