Tammy Baldwin Quotes

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.

But if you're asking my opinion, I would argue that a social justice approach should be central to medicine and utilized to be central to public health. This could be very simple: the well should take care of the sick.

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.

Let's make health care a meritocracy. Access to the best care goes to people who did what they could to avoid becoming ill.

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.

Our health care system squanders money because it is designed to react to emergencies. Homeless shelters, hospital emergency rooms, jails, prisons - these are expensive and ineffective ways to intervene and there are people who clearly profit from this cycle of continued suffering.

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.

Unequal development in different countries in the promotion of health and control of disease, especially communicable disease, is a common danger.

Medical statistics will be our standard of measurement: we will weigh life for life and see where the dead lie thicker, among the workers or among the privileged

Being an American is life-threatening. For various reasons, men and women here don't live as long as men and women in about two dozen other countries, including the ones we defeated in World War II - Japan, Germany and Italy.

Whenever you have large numbers of people who are dying for preventable reasons, that constitutes a public health issue.

Let's face it, in America today we don't have a health care system, we have a sick care system.

If you look upon chronic diseases as an epidemic, and you see that the chronically ill are the poor, then you see that this issue of the uninsured is not really a moral but a financial obligation to change health care.

Every American has a right to affordable, high-quality health care.

This idea of universal access to basic healthcare has to be figured out as a world. No country has figured it out in part because it is driven by ideology.

Today we see a human population of over 6 billion people, many of whom have serious medical conditions, which either can't be treated or cannot be treated economically.

Universal coverage, not medical technology, is the foundation of any caring health care system.

I've been to enough other countries in the world to know what happens when you have socialized single-payer health care. It works. People don't get sick as much. They don't lose their life savings with a catastrophic illness like cancer or AIDS.

In Illinois, community, migrant, homeless and public housing health centers operate 268 primary care sites and serve close to 1 million patients every year.

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.

This double burden of disease is rapidly putting a serious brake on the development efforts of many countries.

Our health care system is terribly broken… Health comes from much more than health care and health care is much more than hospitals. We do a good job on treatment and a terrible job on prevention.

When anyone dies from a preventable disease in New York City, it’s my fault.

[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.

The US, whose health care system is monopolized by corporations, has the worst infant mortality rate compared to 23 other wealthy countries whose health care system is still partly in public hands. US health care corporations are powerful lobbyists and generous financial benefactors to politicians on Capitol Hill. The US has 5% of the world's population and it spends 45% of the world's health dollars. Despite this, Americans' life expectancies are the lowest of 23 other wealthy nations' and lower than some Third World countries like Costa Rica.