Sylvia Mathews Burwell Quotes

When Obamacare was introduced, Republicans and Democrats knew the status quo wasn't working. But Republicans rejected the notion that to help 2 million people with preexisting conditions get access to care, we needed a 2,000-page bill that transformed one-sixth of the economy.

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.

Obamacare is simply incapable of doing what it is supposed to do - provide nearly universal care at an affordable and sustainable cost.

The national debate on health care once centered on improving access to quality care, yet the effect of Obamacare will be the exact opposite, resulting in the shameful degradation of care for the neediest individuals.

Obamacare is going to destroy the elderly by denying care, by even perhaps denying treatment to people who are in catastrophic circumstances.

But for us Democrats, Obamacare is a badge of honor. Because no matter who you are, what stage of life you're in, this law is a good thing.

We are making health care a human right which, after all, is the purpose of Obamacare.

The Affordable Care Act was passed in large part because of recognition that our nation's health care system is not working. The act is not perfect, but it is a starting point, and we have been using it to improve the health of Coloradans.

Since the days of Harry Truman, Democrats have wanted universal health coverage, believing that if other industrialized countries can achieve it, surely the United States can. For Democrats, universal coverage speaks to America's sense of decency and compassion. Democrats also believe that it will lead to a healthier and more productive country.

Under Obamacare - which placed 159 federal agencies, commissions, and bureaucracies between patients and doctors - patients not only face dramatically higher health care costs, they've also lost the power to choose the options right for them.

I am of the view that the Affordable Care Act will be a transformative piece of legislation that can lower the cost of health care in the United States - perhaps our greatest fiscal obstacle - and help all Americans lead healthy and productive lives, free from worry that a single illness could mean ruin for an entire family.

As a dentist and representative, I have seen firsthand the need to make our healthcare system both more accessible and affordable.

We need to work together to strengthen protections for pre-existing conditions and improve upon the gains made under the ACA, not tear it down.

I think we obviously need health care. Of course we need health care, but I think that it's gone too far the other way, and I don't understand it. It's gotten so complicated. The minute they made a deal with the drug companies, you know something isn't kosher here.

I think preexisting conditions is a very important feature of any healthcare system.

My state, Scott Walker, our governors, reformed Medicaid so it actually works, so that the doctors will take the program.

I see the insurance issue, the coverage of people for healthcare in our country as a huge moral issue. The richest country in the world to have 47 million people without health insurance is ridiculous.

Health care is too expensive, so the Clinton administration is putting a high-powered coporate lawyer - Hillary - in charge of making it cheaper. (This is what I always do when I want to spend less money - hire a lawyer from Yale.) If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free.

I think one of the lessons we should have learned from what's happened with the current plan is that there is insurance coverage, but there is not really, many times, access to health care. If you have these high deductibles, there is every - there is a disincentive to get the policy, because you would have to pay another - I think the average of deductible policies on the individual market.

20 million people thrown off of health insurance, prescription drug prices raising for seniors, privatization of Medicare: devastation. And we've got to fight back against that.

The Affordable Care Act is no longer affordable.

The Affordable Care Act has clearly, as Secretary Clinton made the point, done a lot of good things, but, what it has not done is dealt with the fact we have 29 million people today who have zero health insurance, we have even more who are underinsured with large deductibles and copayments and prescription drug prices are off the wall.

If you vote for candidates who think it's the role of the state to provide health care, don't complain when your hospitals are as badly run as everything else run by the state.

Every major country on earth, whether it's the U.K., whether it's France, whether it's Canada, has managed to provide healthcare to all people as a right and they are spending significantly less per capita on health care than we are. So I do not accept the belief that the United States of America can't do that.

We certainly will have a vote on proceeding to a bill to repeal Obamacare... it was a very large issue in the campaign. And, the reconciliation process does present an opportunity and we're reviewing that to see what's possible through reconciliation.