Susan Collins Quotes

As Congress debates overhauling the nation's health care system, it should not authorize a reform plan that would further our financial woes. We must avoid creating an unsustainable government program. There is no question that reform is needed, but health care can be made more affordable without massive and expensive new bureaucracies.

We must solve the problem in health care by curbing out-of-control costs that erode paychecks for working families and push quality coverage out of reach for millions of Americans.

Yes, I do agree we need health care reform; however, this bill badly misses the mark. Congress can and must do better for the American people.

Whatever we do, it is definitely time that we reboot the health care reform attempt. It's time to completely start over.

I think we do better as a country when we go step by step toward a goal, and the goal in this case should be reducing health care costs.

To protect our country's economic future and the health and well being of all Americans, we must find a way to rein in out-of-control costs, provide quality, affordable health care choices to all, and make outrageous insurance industry abuses a thing of the past.

The real cure for what ails our health care system today is less government and more freedom.

Successful health reform must not just make health insurance affordable, affordable health insurance has to make health care affordable.

Enacting elements of the Affordable Care Act isn't backtracking on core principles, but rather understanding that new ways to help make health care affordable builds stronger businesses and saves struggling hospitals. And that is a very attractive offer.

The surest way to return to the people's business is to listen to the people themselves: We need to drop this whole scheme of federally controlled health care, start over, and work together on real reforms at the state level that will contain costs and won't leave America trillions of dollars deeper in debt.

Keeping America competitive requires affordable health care.

We’ve got to have some kind of universal medical coverage and we have to have a more efficient system.

What Americans want is more affordable health care.

You bet every member of Congress who votes for this bill ought to read it, read it thoroughly, and understand that what we're looking at here amounts to nothing more than a government takeover of our health care economy, paid for with nearly a trillion dollars in new taxes on individuals and small businesses. And it must be opposed.

I am hopeful for the American people that we can actually improve the outlook for bringing down costs in health care.

I believe strongly that the opportunity is here for us in America to finally have a healthcare system that we can really be proud of. But it's got to be one where everybody is involved. Everybody: consumers, employers, providers, health-insurance companies, everybody.

Nothing is more valuable to people than health care, and by paying, they feel less like beggars and more like 'customers' who can and should demand quality care.

My whole professional life has been dedicated to improving access, affordability, quality and choice of health care.

After a century of striving, after a year of debate, after a historic vote, health care reform is no longer an unmet promise. It is the law of the land.

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.

Government did get into the health care business in a big way in 1965 with Medicare, and later with Medicaid, and government already distorts the marketplace.

The time is now for Congress to address health care in America.

Part of me thinks that innovation, real innovation in health care delivery, needs to happen from the bottom to the top.

In our own state, we came up with, I think, what was a very novel approach to closing the gap on the uninsured. To harmonize medical records - which was a major step in getting costs out of the system.

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