Barack Obama Quotes

American families, families back home in Minnesota, know only too well that out-of-pocket expenses for health care have been rising at an astonishing rate.

First of all, pharmaceutical costs are the single fastest-growing part of our health care budget.

We have by far the most expensive health system in the world. We spend 50 percent more per person than the next most costly nation. Americans spend more on health care than housing or food.

Prescription drugs today represent 60¢ on every dollar spent for health care. Ten years ago it was only 10¢.

One reason for high health care costs is that patients fail to follow their treatment regimen.

Rising health care costs make it impossible to plan for the future, and that means it's impossible to hire more people.

I think that the American diet is a very large part of the reason we're spending 2.3 trillion dollar per year on health care in this country. 75% of that money goes to treat chronic diseases, preventable chronic diseases, most of those are linked to diet.

It is time to maximize and prioritize our health care dollars.

I'm going to announce in the very near future, I'm going to lead by example and start paying 20 percent of my health insurance.

People don't like it, but inevitably we need to think about both the costs and the benefits of health care. We cannot avoid the financial consequences.

We really do have to get at the underlying question of health-care costs.

We do not see the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount and, on the contrary, the legislation significantly expands the federal responsibility for health care costs.

Since the 1960s, there has been a tremendous expansion of the resources available to pay for health care.

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

Healthcare costs are rising, and not just Medicare and Medicaid, but healthcare in general.

Cost is the spectre haunting health reform. For many decades, the great flaw in the American health-care system was its unconscionable gaps in coverage.

I know the exploding cost of health care is at the root of our long-term fiscal challenges.

Even families with health insurance are quite vulnerable to a severe economic reversal if someone gets sick.

The high cost of health care is creating a crushing burden, threatening our economy.

At least 25 percent of the money Americans spend on health care is wasted.

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

I had, in my legal practice, often encountered really shocking examples of the devastating impact of the costs of long-term medical care on meager incomes. And, just before I was elected, I had my own personal experience in paying very considerable bills for my mother's terminal illness.

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

Health-care costs when I got into the industry in '88 were 16 percent a year inflation. When I got out in 1997, they were less than 1 percent.

Yes, prices go up in health care. They have been doing so for 80 straight years.