United Health Quotes & Sayings

The United States should pursue a more robust agenda for U.S. competitiveness and innovation focused on a lower-carbon economy, including investments in education, basic research and development, infrastructure, retraining, retirement security, and universal health care. — Mona Sutphen

Americans are free to choose everything from what they eat, drive and watch on TV to the President of the United States. Yet, when it comes to allowing Americans to choose the health insurance that works best for them and their family, the freedom to choose suddenly becomes un-American. — Ron Wyden

In 2008, I was one of millions united for hope and change. As 2010 dawns, change looks to me like more of the same. Instead of peace, we got more war. Instead of health care reform, we have an industry win that requires Americans to buy health insurance without any real cost controls. — Jodie Evans

In the United States, people with depression, bipolar, and schizophrenia are losing twelve to twenty years in life expectancy compared to people not in the mental health system. (176) — Robert Whitaker

Of the many 'firsts' with which I have been involved at the Texas Heart Institute - including the first successful human heart transplant in the United States and the first total artificial heart transplant in the world - the achievement that may have the greatest impact on health care did not occur in the operating room or in the research laboratory. It happened on a piece of paper ... when we created the first-ever packaged pricing plan for cardiovascular surgical procedures. — Denton Cooley

Every day, families in the United States face the stark choice between a roof over their heads and food on the table. Buying health insurance, owning a home, and saving up for college are just too far out of their reach. — Chris Van Hollen

The WHO is the lead agency in health in the United Nations system, and clearly we have very important functions to play. — Margaret Chan

The health care system in the United States, I'm sure you know, is a total international scandal. It's twice the per capita cost of comparable countries and one of the worst outcomes, with a huge number of people uninsured altogether. And it's going to get worse. — Noam Chomsky

I believe deeply that it's very important to the United States, to the economic health of the United States, that we maintain a strong dollar. — Timothy Geithner

We need money to scale up the services that bring medicine to mothers. The United States government's doing that. There's a global fund that's providing money. mothers2mothers provides for mothers who come in who don't have education, who don't have support. mothers2mothers employs mothers with HIV, mothers who were patients recently in the very same facilities. We take those mothers who were patients who've had their babies, we bring them back, we train them, we pay them, to be health care professionals. — Annie Lennox

According to the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme), 54 per cent of Pakistanis face 'multi-dimentional deprivation'. meaning they lack access to proper education and health facilities and a decent standard of living. Almost two-thirds of the country lives on less than US$2 a day and about 40 per cent of Pakistani children suffer from chronic malnutrition. How can Pakistan be called an Islamic society? — Imran Khan

Lastly, there is bankruptcy, as the United States pours its economic resources into ever more grandiose military projects and shortchanges the education, health, and safety of its citizens. — Chalmers Johnson

Being satisfied, from observation and experience, as well as from medical testimony, that ardent spirit as a drink is not only needless but hurtful; and that the entire disuse of it would tend to promote the health, the virtue, and the happiness of the community, we hereby express our convention that should the citizens of the United States, and especially ALL YOUNG MEN, discontinue entirely the use of it, they would not only promote their own personal benefit, but the good of our country and the world. — Andrew Jackson

Thank God for the American Affordable Care Act. It was passed in a limited form right before the Rising began, despite the opposition of one hell of a lot of people who thought that providing health care to their fellow citizens was somehow, I don't know, inappropriate. Honestly, it was a miracle the thing passed at all, considering that we're talking about the era of vaccine denial and homeopathic cures for everything from autism to erectile dysfunction. If the Rising hadn't come along when it did, most of the United States would probably have died of whooping cough before 2020, leaving the middle part of the continent ripe for Canadian invasion. But — Mira Grant

Like representative government, soccer has been imported from England and democratized in the United States. It has become the great social and athletic equalizer for suburban America. From kindergarten, girls are placed on equal footing with boys. In the fall, weekend soccer games are a prevalent in suburbia as yard sales. Girls have their own leagues, or they play with boys, and they suffer from no tradition that says that women will grow up professionally to be less successful than men.

'In the United States, not only are girls on equal footing, but the perception now is that American women can be better than American men,' said Donna Shalala, the Secretary of Health and Human Services. 'That's a turning point, a huge breakthrough in perception. — Jere Longman

Successfully reframing the climate debate in the United States from one based on environmental values to one based on health values ... holds great promise to help American society better understand and appreciate the risks of climate change ... — George Mason

McGlynn EA, Asch SM, Adams J, et al. The quality of health care delivered to adults in the United States. — Robert Wachter

Less than a decade after the explosion of the first atom bomb the megamachine had expanded to a point where it began to dominate key areas of the whole economy of the United States: its system of control reached beyond the airfields, the rocket sites, the bomb factories, the universities, to a hundred other related areas, tying the once separate and independent enterprises to a central organization whose irrational and humanly subversive policies ensured the still further expansion of the megamachine. Financial subventions, research grants, educational subsidies, all worked unceasingly for the 'Life, Prosperity, Health' of the new rulers, headed by Goliaths in brass armor bellowing threats of defiance and destruction at the entire world. In a short time, the original military-industrial-scientific elite became the supreme Pentagon of Power, for it incorporated likewise both the bureaucratic and the educational establishments. — Lewis Mumford

In 1999 the RAND Corporation published a report (the first and, so far, last of its kind) with a "conservative estimate" that more than 307 million tissue samples from more than 178 million people were stored in the United States alone. This number, the report said, was increasing by more than 20 million samples each year. The samples come from routine medical procedures, tests, operations, clinical trials, and research donations. They sit in lab freezers, on shelves, or in industrial vats of liquid nitrogen. They're stored at military facilities, the FBI, and the National Institutes of Health. — Rebecca Skloot

Not only is the actual word "hysteria" gendered - it once referred to an exclusively female disease, a mental illness thought to be caused by a malfunctioning uterus - there is a very long history of critics using accusations or innuendo about women's mental health or emotional stability in order to shut down their political voices. — Sady Doyle

According to the CDC, more than one in three women and one in four men in the United States have been victims of domestic violence. It is a widespread public health problem, and every year 1,600 women and 700 men are killed by their intimate partners. One of the biggest risk factors that domestic violence will become fatal is the presence of a gun. — Melissa Harris-Perry

Approximately 80% of all the antibiotics consumed in the United States are used for animal production, not human health. — Paul G. Falkowski

It is hard to talk about a middle ground for something that is a fundamental right. — Teri Reynolds

I think the United States and the secretary of State should be concerned about the poverty in this country - people without health insurance. The United States should stop being the empire and be concerned about other countries. You've got to be more worried about your own people. — Hugo Chavez

The United States of America took a giant step toward a totalitarian socialist government when the Supreme Court voted to uphold Obamacare, allowing the individual mandate for the government to force American citizens to buy health insurance whether they want to or not. — Charlie Daniels

I think even the poorest people in the great country that is the United States should be entitled to basic health care, — Michael D. Higgins

What we have in the United States is not so much a health-care system as a disease-care system. — Edward Kennedy

He [Johnny Cash] was so fragile. We invaded Iraq in March, and he died in September. And because his health was so fragile, he couldn't take the controversy of making a public statement against the war. He knew that people were rabid. They attacked me mercilessly after I did the press conference with Musicians United to Win Without War. He knew that he couldn't tolerate that. — Rosanne Cash

According to a 2009 Harvard Medical School study, as many as 45,000 people die annually in the United States because they lack health insurance. As one of the study's coauthors pointed out, this works out to about one death every twelve minutes. It's — Naomi Klein

The welfare state and its funding are at the center of current political debate in the United States. Today, the country is divided on whether or not the federal government should deliver regulations covering social provisions.
...
The United States has a long tradition of welfare programs starting in the early days of the new republic in 1776. Payments to the poor, to civil war veterans, or to those who were "unable to work due to their age or physical health" were common. Attempts to reform the law helping the poor and unemployed to get work have a long history, as do the fights against abuses of the same system. — Werner Neff

Q. Which is my favorite country?
A. The United States of America. Not because I'm chauvinistic or xenophobic, but because I believe that we alone have it all, even if not to perfection. The U.S. has the widest possible diversity of spectacular scenery and depth of natural resources; relatively clean air and water; a fascinatingly heterogeneous population living in relative harmony; safe streets; few deadly communicable diseases; a functioning democracy; a superlative Constitution; equal opportunity in most spheres of life; an increasing tolerance of different races, religions, and sexual preferences; equal justice under the law; a free and vibrant press; a world-class culture in books,films, theater, museums, dance, and popular music; the cuisines of every nation; an increasing attention to health and good diet; an abiding entrepreneurial spirit; and peace at home. — Albert Podell

Think of how many fast food chains exist in the United States alone. Each one of those restaurants needs a large supply of beef, chicken, pork, corn, potatoes, lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, milk, and other food products. To keep up with the demand, they need large corporations to supply them with enough food. When producers focus on benefiting business and industry, they lose their focus on benefiting our health. — Joseph P. Kauffman

Intellectual respectability required mental health, and it was becoming evident to me by then that "mental health" consisted of trusting everyone about everything as much as possible - and, for good measure, poking fun at anyone who didn't. Especially to be trusted were the mass media, whose owners and personnel were not to be regarded as minions of the Establishment because, as they themselves used to attest with confidence, there was no Establishment in the United States of America. Only foreigners and paranoids believed (otherwise). — Kerry Thornley

The Carter Center has a policy of doing what others do not want to do. We do not compete with the World Health Organization, the United Nations or the US government. — Jimmy Carter

Throughout the United States, at the dawn of the Progressive era, dozens of laws and regulations were established to empower police officers, public-health officials, and even the armed forces to vaccinate at will, and, if necessary, at gunpoint. — Michael Specter

This year, the United States renewed funding of reproductive healthcare through the United Nations Population Fund, and more funding is on the way. The U.S. Congress recently appropriated more than $648 million in foreign assistance to family planning and reproductive health programs worldwide. That's the largest allocation in more than a decade - since we last had a Democratic president, I might add. — Hillary Clinton

A culture is much more than politics. It is a national identity encompassing education, fine and popular arts and entertainment, science, physical and mental health, leisure activities, friend and family relationships, values, ambitions. . .everything that constitutes the basic shared core values of any country. In our case, the core value of individualism has been the common denominator linking all other aspects of our cultural distinctiveness; it is what makes The United States "America." Viable only where Liberty reigns, valuing the sovereignty of individuals is precisely what makes America exceptional; therefore, it is the culture that warrants attention because the actual, underlying disease invading the mental health of our country has arisen not from the government directly but from the injection of deleterious ideas into our entire individualistic social-economic system. Proposals — Alexandra York

Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), included a recent article by Barbara Starfield, M.D., stating that physician error, medication error and adverse events from drugs or surgery kill 225,400 people per year (Chart 1.5).11 That makes our health care system the third leading cause of death in the United States, behind only cancer and heart disease — T. Colin Campbell

Fact: The cost of crime is $3.2 trillion per year - an amount greater than the expenditures for all health care in the United States. — Kent A. Kiehl

National Health? Socialized pension funds? State-controlled television? Search and seizure laws? Forfeiture laws? If we're not living in the Soviet Union of the United States we certainly have returned to 1776 and 'taxation without representation.' — Michael Moriarty

Americans spend an average of about $7,200 a year on health care, compared with the roughly $2,900 average for the other market economies that make up the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), and for that greatly increased outlay we get higher infant mortality, higher obesity rates, lower longevity, fewer doctors per 1,000 people (just 2.4 per 1,000 in the United States, compared with 3.1 in OECD states), and fewer acute care hospital beds (2.7 per 1,000, compared to 3.8 per 1,000 in the OECD countries). — Matt Taibbi

I spent several years in a North Vietnamese prison camp, in the dark, fed with scraps. Do you think I want to do that all over again as vice president of the United States? ... The vice president has two duties: One is to break a tie in case of a tie vote in the United States Senate .. the other is to inquire daily as to the health of the president. Neither one of those are very challenging as compared with living a good part of time in the state of Arizona. — John McCain

I was at Yale and I said to the poet Elizabeth Alexander, "I'm interested in the ways in which black health seems precarious in the United States." She introduced me to the term "John Henryism." And then I went back and researched it and understood that, woah, this thing I am thinking about is actually a condition that's named. — Claudia Rankine

mentioned the network's coverage of fracking, a process to extract oil and gas that has helped the United States become the world's leading oil producer. Russia, another major oil producer, sees this development as a threat, and RT offers a constant stream of stories on the health dangers of fracking. — Anonymous

My home State of North Carolina ranks 12th in the United States for increased aging population and, according to a national report, 41st in overall health. According to this same report, individuals aged 50+ are the least healthy. — Howard Coble

The United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace. — George C. Marshall

I'm completely fascinated by the health-care debate going on in the United States, especially by posters of Obama with a little mustache drawn on his upper lip. Is that what Hitler is really known for, his health-care plan? To quote Bill Maher, "I haven't seen this many pissed-off old white people since they cancelled 'Murder She Wrote.' " — David Sedaris

In the 2012 election, Obamacare, as it's called, and I'll be more polite - the ACA ... was a major issue in the campaign. I campaigned all over America for two months, everywhere I could. And in every single campaign rally I said, 'We have to repeal and replace Obamacare.' Well, the people spoke. They spoke, much to my dismay, but they spoke. And they reelected the President of the United States. — John McCain

[I]t's up to Republicans to expose the bureaucracies and criticize the orthodoxies - to ask why visas for travel to the United States are still being issued in West Africa and why American military forces are being deployed there without a workable plan or intelligible purpose, why CDC spending priorities are so skewed and CDC management so weak, and why here at home routine police powers aren't being used and routine public health measures aren't being implemented. — William Kristol

Had campaigned hard to the very end, but Barack had won and now it was time to support him. The causes and people I had campaigned for, the Americans who had lost jobs and health care, who couldn't afford gas or groceries or college, who had felt invisible to their government for the previous seven years, now depended on his becoming the forty-fourth President of the United States. — Hillary Rodham Clinton

We were told that all this new high technology, all these new high-tech jobs that we were going to be creating here in the United States of America would stay here, so our people would benefit with the jobs and health care and everything else. — Tim Ryan

I dream that someday the United States will be on the side of the peasants in some civil war. I dream that we will be the ones who will help the poor overthrow the rich, who will talk about land reform and education and health facilities for everyone, and that when the Red Cross or Amnesty International comes to count the bodies and take the testimony of women raped, that our side won't be the heavies. — Michael Parenti

America's health care system is neither healthy, caring, nor a system. — Walter Cronkite

In my opinion, the battles over birth control and Planned Parenthood are primarily neither political nor religious. This is an issue of equality for women. This is an issue of women's rights: Planned Parenthood is the most important private provider of reproductive health care for women in the United States. — Karen DeCrow

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. — Bernie Sanders

I want to end the international embarrassment of the United States of America being the only major country on earth that doesn't guarantee health care to all people as a right, not a privilege. — Bernie Sanders

Seychelles said at U.N. climate talks. The report was bound to sharpen disputes in Lima over who pays the bills for the impacts of global warming, whose primary cause is the burning of coal, oil and gas but which also includes deforestation. It has long been the thorniest issue at the U.N. negotiations, now in their 20th round. Rich countries have pledged to help the developing world convert to clean energy and adapt to shifts in global weather that are already adversely affecting crops, human health and economies. But poor countries say they're not seeing enough cash. Projecting the annual costs that poor countries will face by 2050 just to adapt, the United Nations Environment Program report deemed the previous estimate of $70 billion to $100 billion "a significant underestimate." It had been based on 2010 World Bank numbers. — Anonymous

In the United States, where we have more land than people, it is not at all difficult for persons in good health to make money. — P.T. Barnum

We've got to have major health care reform because that is the 800-pound gorilla. That is the thing that can swamp the boat fiscally for the United States. — Kent Conrad

France, like every other Western country except the United States, has long accepted the principle that comprehensive health care is the right of every citizen. No Frenchman need ever fear that catastrophic illness will wipe him out financially. How long, do you suppose, will it take us, in the United States, to catch up? — Suzanne Massie

Fear-bola attacks the part of the brain responsible for rational thinking. It starts with a low-grade concern about the two health care workers diagnosed with Ebola in Dallas and slowly builds into fear of a widespread epidemic in the United States. — Mel Robbins

The United States remains the only major country on earth that doesn't guarantee health care to all of our people. And yet we are spending almost twice as much per capita. We have a massively dysfunctional health care system. And I do believe in a Medicare for all single-payer system, whether a small state like Vermont can lead the nation, which I certainly hope we will, or whether it's California or some other state. — Hillary Clinton

When Dickens arrives in the United States in November of 1867, he's already in questionable health. So by the end of the trip, he was really in failing condition, and really, he would never recover completely after this point, and you could sort of draw a straight line to his ultimate decline and death. — Matthew Pearl

The United Auto Workers is AARP in an Edsel: It has three times as many retirees and widows as 'workers' (I use the term loosely). GM has 96,000 employees but provides health benefits to a million people. — Mark Steyn

Something else was different when we were young: our parents were outdoors. I'm not saying they were joining health clubs and things of that sort, but they were out of the house, out on the porch, talking to neighbors. As far as physical fitness goes, today's kids are the sorriest generation in the history of the United States. Their parents may be out jogging, but the kids just aren't outside. — Richard Louv

Today, only two groups in the United States have total immunity from lawsuits: foreign diplomats and HMOs. We believe it's time to end diplomatic immunity for HMOs. Holding them accountable is the only way to guarantee that you get the health care your family deserves. — Tom Harkin

The health-care sector certainly employs more people and more machines than it did. But there have been no great strides in service. In Western Europe, most primary-care practices now use electronic health records and offer after-hours care; in the United States, most don't. — Atul Gawande

The much-vaunted sex appeal of American women is drawn from films, reviews and pin-ups, and is in large print fictitious. A recent medical survey in the United States showed that 75% of young American women are without strong sexual feeling and instead of satisfying their libido they seek pleasure narcissistically in exhibitionism, vanity, and the cult of fitness and health in a sterile sense. — Julius Evola

50,000-63,000 individuals in the United States and 19,000-25,000 in the UK die prematurely from cancer annually due to insufficient vitamin D. — John Cannell

Great Britain had a much different situation than we do and did here in the United States, in that they had literally thousands of infected animals with human health risks. Their infectivity in this disease happened before very much was known about it. — Ann Veneman

In the United States, the Constitution is a health chart left by the Founding Fathers which shows whether or not the body politic is in good health. If the national body is found to be in poor health, the Founding Fathers also left a prescription for the restoration of health called the Declaration of Independence. — Dick Gregory

Just a short while ago the Republicans were objects of fear and hatred - now they're just pathetic assholes. Barry took them to the paint and cut their throats. (O-BAM-a!) Now they walk around like white frat boys in Bed-Stuy, talking tough to show they aren't scared as the urine streams down their chinos into their cordovans. Obama has these dweebs so turned around all they can do is get behind some fat junkie DJ, a gibberish-spewing PsychoBimbette from the Far North, and a tele-dork who gives adrenaline-crazed, 1950s-style "chalk talks" (speaking of little white dicks) like some health-class instructor in a sex-offender unit. — Don Winslow

Everyone should have health insurance? I say everyone should have health care. I'm not selling insurance. — Dennis Kucinich

The United States has an active pharmaceutical industry that has brought huge benefits to the U.S. public. Most Americans, who benefit from these advances, have little understanding of how difficult it is to create an important new medical therapy and make it available to improve public health. — Robert Jarvik

Publications by the World Health Organization show that diphtheria is steadily declining in most European countries, including those in which there has been no immunization. The decline began long before vaccination was developed. There is certainly no guarantee that vaccination will protect a child against the disease; in fact, over 30,000 cases of diphtheria have been recorded in the United Kingdom in fully immunized children. — Leon Chaitow

Since 2000, no important technology innovation in the United States has been scaled up to create millions of manufacturing, marketing, and engineering jobs here, as personal computers and related industries did. While selling online and social networking are clearly transformational movements that have created entrepreneurial opportunities, fewer than fifty thousand traditional jobs - those with full-time hours, benefits, and health insurance - have been created. — Doug Menuez

As the largest contributor to the United Nations and funder of international family planning, the U.S. is in a unique position to continue to lead the global agenda and place reproductive health at its core. — Mike Quigley

Across the country, red states are poorer and have more teen mothers, more divorce, worse health, more obesity, more trauma-related deaths, more low-birth-weight babies, and lower school enrollment. On average, people in red states die five years earlier than people in blue states. Indeed, the gap in life expectancy between Louisiana (75.7) and Connecticut (80.8) is the same as that between the United States and Nicaragua. Red states suffer more in another highly important but little-known way, one that speaks to the very biological self-interest in health and life: industrial pollution. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

Proximity to power has an unsurprising ability to mutate a politician's spinal cord into bright yellow jelly. — Tariq Ali

If you think about it, candidate Obama, Sen. Obama, was running on sort of long-run economic issues, like restoring prosperity to the middle class, dealing with the perennial problem of health care in the United States. He talked a lot about the budget deficit, about the need to transition to clean energy. — Christina Romer

Why are they making rules that say my lover can stay in the United States if they're foreign or share my health care benefits because I'm straight - but if you're gay, you can't have that? — Natalie Portman

The United States has got to join the rest of the industrialized world in making sure that working families of the middle class have benefits that they absolutely need. We are the only major country on Earth that does not guarantee health care to all people as a right. We are the only major country on Earth that does not provide paid family and medical leave. There are many countries around the world which make sure that public colleges and universities are tuition-free. In our country, it's becoming increasingly difficult to afford to go to college. — Bernie Sanders

The breakthrough study was done by Dr. Peter Elwood and a team from the Cochrane Institute of Primary Care and Public Health, Cardiff University, United Kingdom, and released in December 2013. For thirty years, these researchers followed 2,235 men living in Caerphilly, Wales, aged 45 to 59, and observed the impact of five activities on their health and on whether they developed dementia or cognitive decline, heart disease, cancer, or early death. The Cardiff study was meticulous, examining the men at intervals over the thirty years, and if they showed signs of cognitive decline or dementia, they were sent for detailed clinical assessments of high quality. It overcame study design problems from eleven previous studies (discussed in the endnotes). Results showed that if the men did four or five of the following behaviors, their risk for cognitive (mental) decline and dementia (including Alzheimer's) fell by 60 percent: — Norman Doidge

Our latest research shows that in every city across the United States in which we conducted surveys with restaurant workers, the restaurants that mistreated their workers were more likely to engage in unsafe food-handling practices that sicken customers. It made sense- if a restaurant was not a responsible employer, how could we expect that restaurant to be responsible with our health and safety? — Sarumathi Jayaraman

As important as the presidency is, that's not the only thing to take a look at in determining the racial health of the United States. — Randall Kennedy

I hope someday we will be able to proclaim that we have banished hunger in the United States, and that we've been able to bring nutrition and health to the whole world. — George McGovern

Along with better training, pediatricians need better pay. Paradoxically, physicians involved in the primary care of our children - the doctors on the front lines who receive tens of thousands of visits every day from parents and their children - are among the lowest paid of all physicians in the United States. Something is wrong with our system when the doctor who performs a brief diagnostic procedure - some form of X-ray, for example, or a fifteen-minute operation - is paid many times more than the doctors making crucial decisions about our children's health. — Martin J. Blaser

I entered the health care debate in response to a statement in the United States press in summer 2009 which claimed the National Health Service in Great Britain would have killed me off, were I a British citizen. I felt compelled to make a statement to explain the error. — Stephen Hawking

Look, we understood we couldn't make it illegal to be young or poor or black in the United States, but we could criminalize their common pleasure. We understood that drugs were not the health problem we were making them out to be, but it was such a perfect issue for the Nixon White House that we couldn't resist it — John Ehrlichman

He pondered that a little while and then he asked, do Black people have to pay for their doctors, too? Because that's what TV programs had said. I smiled a little at this and told him it's not only Black people who have to pay for doctors and medical care; all people in America have to. Ah, he said. And suppose you don't have the money to pay? Well, I said, if you don't have the money to pay, sometimes you died. And there was no mistaking my gesture, even though he had to wait for the translator to translate it. We left him looking absolutely nonplussed, standing in the middle of the square with his mouth open and his hand under his chin staring after me, as in utter amazement that human beings could die from lack of medical care. It's things like that that keep me dreaming about Russia long after I've returned. — Audre Lorde

I am very much concerned that American Negroes achieve their freedom here in the United States. But I am also concerned for their dignity, for the health of their souls, and must oppose any attempt that Negroes may make to do to others what has been done to them. — James Baldwin

I argued last year on my shared blog that selling the right to immigrate would be the best approach to legal immigration. Among other benefits, the revenue from immigrants' payments could reduce taxes. Paying for the right to immigrate would also negate the argument that immigrants get a free ride when they gain health care and other benefits. Moreover, making immigrants pay would attract the type of immigrants who came much earlier in American history: young men and women who are reasonably skilled and want to make a long-term commitment to the United States. — Gary Becker

Similarly, though the United States is one of the world's richest economies by per capita income, it ranks only around seventeenth in reported life satisfaction. It is superseded not only by the likely candidates of Finland, Norway, and Sweden, which all rank above the United States but also by less likely candidates such as Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic. Indeed, one might surmise that it is health and longevity rather than income that give the biggest boost to reported life satisfaction. Since good health and longevity can be achieved at per capita income levels well below those of the United States, so too can life satisfaction. One marketing expert put it this way, with only slight exaggeration: Basic Survival goods are cheap, whereas narcissistic self-stimulation and social-display products are expensive. Living doesn't cost much, but showing off does. — Jeffrey D. Sachs

When I was traveling the world on my quest, I asked the health ministry of each country how many citizens had declared bankruptcy in the past year because of medical bills. Generally, the officials responded to this question with a look of astonishment, as if I had asked how many flying saucers from Mars landed in the ministry's parking lot last week. How many people go bankrupt because of medical bills? In Britain, zero. In France, zero. In Japan, Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, Switzerland: zero. In the United States, according to a joint study by Harvard Law School and Harvard Medical School, the annual figure is around 700,000.3 QUALITY — T.R. Reid

The African Challenge - We must end conflict in Africa. We must lead to allow the Africans to enjoy the benefits from their natural resources. We must end poverty in Africa. Every African must be educated, have access to health care and a fair chance to fulfil their dream. Preventable sickness and disease must not reduce life expectancy or rob pregnant women of a chance to continue living. Africa must develop. Africa must not depend on foreign aid. Africa must be united and governed more effectively. Africa must customize her leadership culture and philosophy in a way that gives her global relevance and respect but still remain true and authentic to herself. Will you accept the challenge? Will you be that Africa? — Archibald Marwizi

I also rise today in strong support of forward movement on the implementation of health information technology, which has the potential to save the United States billions of dollars in health care costs each year. — Russ Carnahan

Did you know that the United States is ranked fiftieth in the world in life expectancy? And the forty-nine loser countries where they live longer than us...they live shackled to the tyranny of nonprofit health care. Here in America, you're not coughing up blood, little Bobby, you're coughing up freedom! — Bill Maher

The power of the state to impose restraints and burdens upon persons and property in conservation and promotion of the public health, good order, and prosperity is a power originally and always belonging to the states, not surrendered to them by the general government, nor directly restrained by the constitution of the United States, and essentially exclusive. — Melville Fuller

Demand that your government pays more attention. It's immoral that people in Africa die like flies of diseases that no one dies of in the United States. And the more disease there is, the more political unrest there will be, leading to more Darfurs, which the U.S. will have to pay to fix. — William J. Clinton

Both referred to the Affordable Care Act, which is the accurate title of the health care reform law, as 'Obamacare.' That is a disparaging reference to the President of the United States, it is meant as a disparaging reference to the President of the United States. — Debbie Wasserman Schultz