60 Healthcare Quotes

We Americans live in a nation where the medical-care system is second to none in the world, unless you count maybe 25 or 30 little scuzzball countries like Scotland that we could vaporize in seconds if we felt like it.

Getting out of the hospital is a lot like resigning from a book club. You're not out of it until the computer says you're out of it.

It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a hospital that it should do the sick no harm.

A transfer of money should never be involved in this profound situation. Although illness is profound, too, but medicine's a business today. It's a business.

Doesn't anything socialistic make you want to throw up? Like great public schools, or health insurance for all?

It is when physicians are bogged down by their incomplete technologies, by the innumerable things they are obliged to do in medicine when they lack a clear understanding of disease mechanisms, that the deficiencies of the health-care system are most conspicuous. If I were a policy-maker, interested in saving money for health care over the long haul, I would regard it as an act of high prudence to give high priority to a lot more basic research in biologic science.

If we are going to have a health care program that works for all Americans, we are going to have to get beyond the blame game.

It's time to look beyond the budget ax to assure access to health care for all. It's time to look for bipartisan solutions to the problems we can tackle today, and to work together for tomorrow - building a health care system that works for all Americans.

Many health care providers, particularly physicians in rural and urban areas, are leaving the Government programs because of inadequate reimbursement rates.

Health care for all Americans is the most pressing domestic issue today. It's far past time for the President and Congress to deliver health care to everyone.

People have said, 'You've turned your back on pediatrics.' I said, 'No. It took me until I was in my 60s to realize that politics was a part of pediatrics.'

We went through the records and we found over five hundred of his patients who were alive and well five years after their treatment, with no cancer. And Dr. Burton didn't selectively give us these. These were 'take what you want. Here are the patients I treated.' So there was statistical improvement -- more so than any cancer institution in the United States could show.

There had been a head of the FDA (who later turned out to be a fraud) his name was Fishbein and he was rampantly opposed to any alternative therapy. He went after Hoxsey, the Hoxsey therapy back in the 1940's and 50's, and destroyed Hoxsey. But not before Hoxsey sued the AMA and Fishbein and [proved] that the therapy actually worked. But it didn't help him because they closed him down anyhow.

So what do they do? They start writing articles in the New York Daily News. Boy, that's a paper that loves to write crap on people, isn't it? Wanna talk about a paper that supports fascism! Man, I've seen more doctors hatcheted in there. The butchery they did on Emmanuel Revici, the butchery they did on Lawrence Burton, calling him nothing more --- what was the quote the guy said?. . . 'Burton is nothing more than a horse doctor.' Denigrating him, tearing down his character.

But today in the United States, and this shows you where fascism REALLY exists, ANY doctor in the United States who cures cancer using alternative methods will be destroyed. You cannot name me a doctor doing well with cancer using alternative therapies that is not under attack. And I KNOW these people; I've interviewed them.

At a certain age, you have to live near good medical care - if, that is, you're going to continue. You always have the option of not continuing, which, I fear, is sometimes nobler.

I think that sick people in Ankh-Morpork generally go to a vet. It's generally a better bet. There's more pressure on a vet to get it right. People say 'it was god's will' when granny dies, but they get angry when they lose a cow.

I use the word nursing for want of a better. It has been limited to signify little more than the administration of medicines and the application of poultices. It ought to signify the proper use of fresh air, light, warmth, cleanliness, quiet, and the proper selection and administration of diet - all at the least expense of vital power to the patient.

Hospitals are only an intermediate stage of civilization, never intended at all even to take in the whole sick population.

No man, not even a doctor, ever gives any other definition of what a nurse should be than this - 'devoted and obedient'. This definition would do just as well for a porter. It might even do for a horse. It would not do for a policeman.

Too many doctors are going out of business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their...their love with women all across this country.

You know my Doctor, Doctor Vinny BoomBots... I called and told him I had a bad case of diarrhea. - He put me on hold!

I went to the doctor because I'd swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills. My doctor told me to have a few drinks and get some rest.

We went to the hospital; it was full. The doctor told me that two hundred had died the day before. I asked the cause of death; he shrugged and said, 'Tuberculosis, starvation, fatigue, and there are many who have no desire to live.'

On Christopher Reeve: 'If we can do the work that we can do in this country -- the work we will do when John Kerry is president -- people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk. Get up out of that wheelchair and walk again.'

Lao Chiu's burns were so extensive that, with the exception of his scalp, two shoulders, the waist where his leather belt was worn and the soles of his feet, pratically his whole body was affected. His back and hips were burned deeply and his right leg was even worse. Every time it was necessary to turn him over and change his dressings ten doctors and five nurses were required and the process took several hours. Moreover, the patient suffered very much and was short of breath for a long while.

A solution to cancer would mean the termination of research programs, the obsolescence of skills, the end of dreams of personal glory, triumph over cancer would dry up contributions to self-perpetuating charities....It would mortally threaten the present clinical establishments by rendering obsolete the expensive surgical, radiological and chemotherapeutic treatments in which so much money, training and equipment is invested....The new therapy must be disbelieved, denied, discouraged and disallowed at all costs, regardless of actual testing results, and preferably without any testing at all.

In our time, respect for the right to life calls us to defend the sick and the dying, persons with disabilities and birth defects, and all who are weak and vulnerable. And this self-evident truth calls us to value and to protect the lives of innocent children waiting to be born.

Everyone who has seen the recent news reports has been shocked and moved by the suffering children in Sarajevo. At the end of last week, we told the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees that we stood ready to evacuate children from Sarajevo to the United Kingdom for medical treatment, or to send medical teams to Yugoslavia to provide treatment on the spot. If it is possible to treat the children on the spot, near to their families, with people around them who speak their language and in relatively familiar surroundings, that is obviously the best way. We have told the International Red Cross that we are willing to fly out medical personnel at very short notice if needed. I hope to meet the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in London later this week to see what further action is needed.

The citizenry insist and insist and insist that they are proud of the Medicare system and that they want it to work. They continually send instructions to this effect to their governments. They do so in every imaginable way. And yet, day by day, the governments and the bureaucracies chip away at the system as if in the hope that, by opening holes in it and creating a new ineffectiveness, the citizenry will drop their commitment to it.

Private courier companies are fine to handle the lucrative parts of the [postal] business. But they have little interest in servicing remote communities, so these areas get poor or non-existent service. Similarly, leaving health care and education to the private marketplace will result in fine services for the affluent but leave many others without access to decent services (or in some cases any services at all). While this kind of deficiency is bad enough when it comes to postal delivery, it becomes downright serious in areas like health care and education.

All our confidence in our ability to act collectively is being undermined, with the subtext message Whatever it is, the private sector can do it better. Never mind that there's no evidence for this. Never mind, for instance, that the private US health-care system is 40 percent more expensive per capita than the Canadian public system, even though the Canadian system provides full coverage for all Canadians and the American system leaves some forty-three million without any coverage at all. This isn't because Canadians are smarter than Americans - it's because we have a public system and they don't.

Mothers! Can you afford to have a large family? Do you want any more children? If not, why do you have them? Do not kill, do not take life, but prevent! Safe, Harmless Information can be obtained of trained Nurses.

I, along with something like 5 million other people, insure to enable me to go into hospital on the day I want; at the time I want, and with a doctor I want.

'Malpractice: Where Will It End?' Orthopedic Technology Review, September/October 2003, by Michael Johns.

The nurse is the night To wake to, to die in: and the day I live, The world and its life are her dreams.

You know my Doctor, Doctor Vinny BoomBots... I called and told him I had a bad case of diarrhea. - He put me on hold!

The organ banks would be supplied for years. Not only would the crew have a full supply, which they always did anyway, but there would be spare parts for exceptional servants of the regime; i.e., for civil servants such as Jesus Pietro and his men. Even the colonists would benefit. It was not at all unusual for the Hospital to treat a sick but deserving colonist if the medical supplies were sufficient. The Hospital treated everyone they could. It reminded the colonists that the crew ruled in their name and had their interests at heart. And the Sons of Earth was dead. All but one man, and from his picture he wasn't old enough to be dangerous. Nonetheless Jesus Pietro had his picture tacked to the Hospital bulletin boards and sent a copy to the newscast station with the warning that he was wanted for questioning. It was not until dawn, when he was settling down to sleep, that he remembered who belonged to that face. Matthew Keller's nephew...

Under the market system, there is demand for a product if a lot of people want it - but that demand counts for nothing if those people have no money. If they lack money, their demand essentially doesn't exist...This explains why the drug industry is not investing money to develop a cure for a disease known as sleeping sickness, which leaves its victims in a coma. The disease...killed 66,000 people last year and threatens to infect 60 million more - but the only people who are afflicted by it are poverty-stricken Africans with no clout in the marketplace. Interestingly, there is a drug called eflornithine that is effective in lifting victims out of their comas. But drug companies stopped producing eflornithine in 1995 because it was no longer profitable to continue. The drug was still desperately needed, but only by people without money. So, following modern market practices, these people were simply left in a coma.

Together, we can make ourselves a nation that spends more on books than on bombs, more on hospitals than the terrible tools of war, more on decent houses than military aircraft.

Sol: Hello, I bought glasses there, my name is Sol Rosenberg. Optometrist: Yes? Sol: And my eyes are going crazy. Optometrist: Okay. Let me pull your file. Hold on.. Sol: Okay, thank you Optometrist: Hello, did you go to the Empire State Building? Sol: I went to the Empire State Building and I can't see so good... Optometrist: Would you like to come see us? Sol: I went to the observatory and I can't see, Goddamn it. Optometrist: Okay, would you like to come in and see us? Sol: Sure. Okay Optometrist: We're at 30 East 60th Street. Sol: 35 78th Street, Ok. Optometrist: No, no..30..three zero Sol: okay Optometrist: East 60th Street. Sol: Alright. And should I bring all my glasses with me? Optometrist: Do you need an examination?- Mr. Rosenberg, do you need an examination? Sol: Okay. Optometrist: Do you need an examination? Sol: Alright. Optometrist: Yeah, alright. Do you need an appointment? Sol: Right. And I'll bring all my shoes and my glasses with me so I have them. Optometrist: Mr. Rosenberg? Sol: Sure. Optometrist: Do you need...do you want to see the opthamologist? Sol: Right. Optometrist: Do you need an appointment? Sol: I'm sorry. Optometrist: Do you need an appointment? Sol: Okay. Optometrist: Okay, hold on, I'll have my girl make an appointment for you to see the doctor. Okay, do you have the address? Sol: Fantastic then. Optometrist: Do you have the address? Sol: Yeah. Optometrist: What's the... what room? Sol: I don't know...you say 35-8-7? Optometrist: No. 30 East 60 th Street Sol: 30 East 50 th Street Okay. Thank you. Optometrist: Do you need an appointment? hold on.....

Most people die in improvised circumstances of harassment and confusion, whether in hospital or out of it.

I look forward to standing up and holding George Bush accountable for pushing seniors off of Medicare into HMOs.

'You know the best medicine go to people thats payed/If Magic Johnson got a cure for AIDS and all the broke motherfuckers passed away/ You tellin me if my grandma's in the NBA, right now she would be ok?/ But since she was just a secretary workin' for the church for thirty-five years/things supposed to stop right here?'

They are splendidly built ( Italian Hospitals ), the best food and drink are at hand, the attendants are very diligent, the physicians are learned, the beds and coverings are very clean, and the bedsteads are painted. As soon as a sick man is brought in, all his clothes are taken off in the presence of a notary and are faithfully kept for him. He is then laid in a handsomely painted bed with clean sheets. Two physicians are fetched at once. Attendants come with food and drink, served in immaculate glass vessels; these are not touched with as much as a finger but are brought on a tray.

That's what a shrink is for, my friends and neighbors; their job is to fuck the mentally disturbed and make them pregnant with sanity. It's a bull's job and they go to school to learn how, and their courses are all variations on a theme: Slipping It to the Psychos for Fun and Profit, Mostly Profit. And if you find yourself someday lying on that great analyst's couch where so many have lain before you, I'd ask you to remember one thing: When you get sanity by stud, the child always looks like the father. And they have a very high suicide rate.

Variability is the law of life, and as no two faces are the same, so no two bodies are alike, and no two individuals react alike and behave alike under the abnormal conditions which we know as disease.

The trained nurse has become one of the great blessings of humanity, taking a place beside the physician and the priest.

[Medicare] was created in 1965 to make it easier for the elderly to get health care. But by reducing the patient's out-of-pocket costs, it increased the demand for doctors and hospitals. It also reduced the supply of those services by requiring doctors and other medical personnel to use their time and attention handling paperwork and complying with regulations -- and looking for ways to circumvent these things. So the price of medical care rose sharply as the demand soared and the supply diminished. As a result, the elderly now pay from their own pockets over twice as much for health care (after adjusting for inflation) than they did before Medicare began. Many older people now find it harder to get adequate medical service. Naturally, the politicians point to the higher costs and shortages as proof that the elderly would be lost without Medicare -- and that government should be even more deeply involved. When Medicare was set up in 1965, the politicians projected its cost in 1990 to be $3 billion -- which is equivalent to $12 billion when adjusted for inflation to 1990 dollars. The actual cost in 1990 was $98 billion -- eight times as much.

...why the American people would even give the slightest consideration for government health programs. They don't want the government to deliver their automobiles, or their videocassette recorders, or their food... The best way to deliver healthcare is the way we deliver all goods and services in a free society.

The American people have been offered two lousy choices. One, which is corporatism, a fascist type of approach, or, socialism. We deliver a lot of services in this country through the free market, and when you do it through the free market prices go down. But in medicine, prices go up. Technology doesn't help the cost, it goes up instead of down. But if you look at almost all of our industries that are much freer, technology lowers the prices. Just think of how the price of cell phones goes down. Poor people have cell phones, and televisions, and computers. Prices all go down. But in medicine, they go up, and there's a reason for that, that's because the government is involved with it... I do [think that prices will go down without government involvement], but probably a lot more than what you're thinking about, because you have to have competition in the delivery of care. For instance, if you have a sore throat and you have to come see me, you have to wait in the waiting room, and then get checked, and then get a prescription, and it ends up costing you $100. If you had true competition, you should be able to go to a nurse, who could for 1/10 the cost very rapidly do it, and let her give you a prescription for penicillin. See, the doctors and the medical profession have monopolized the system through licensing. And that's not an accident, because they like the idea that you have to go see the physician and pay this huge price. And patients can sort this out, they're not going to go to a nurse if they need brain surgery...

Question: As a doctor, is it meaningful to you when somebody say that healthcare is a right, or that people have a right to good medical care? Ron Paul: That's incorrect, because you don't have a right to the fruits of somebody else's labor. You don't have a right to a house, you don't have a right to a job, you don't have a right to medical care. You have a right to your life, you have your right to your liberty, you have a right to keep what your earn. And that's what produces prosperity. So you want equal justice. And this is not hard for me to argue, because if you really are compassionate and you care about people, the freer the society the more prosperous it is, and more likely that you are going to have medical care... When you turn it over to central economic planning, they're bound to make mistake. The bureaucrats and the special interests and the Halliburtons are gonna make the money. Whether it's war, or Katrina, these noncompetitive contracts, the bureaucrats make a lot of money and you end up with inefficiency.

I think stem cell research is crucial. I think medically it has a great future. I think that the answers aren't in yet. Some people say it's absolutely the answer, and others say it's no good and don't do it. It's not known yet, and I'll tell you what: politicians and bureaucrats and the FDA don't know either, and I don't think that's where it should be determined. It should be determined in the marketplace. In Washington so far we only had two choices, either prohibit it or subsidize it. My position is that we shouldn't do either. It should be in the states to devise the rules and laws on what you can do and can't do. Though I'm very strong pro-life and the worst thing I can conceive of is manufacturing babies to be used for research, but as an obstetrician I've had on quite a few occasions to do a surgery on a woman with a pregnancy in the Fallopian tube. And, the fetus is small, and alive, and the heart is beating, but if you don't operate on him, the fetus dies and the patient dies, because a hemorrhage is a very very critical time for ectopic pregnancy. I don't see any reason why you can't use that fetal tissue for research.