Quotes About Health Care Costs

“$13 to $20 billion a year could be saved in health care costs by demedicalizing childbirth, developing midwifery, and encouraging breastfeeding.”

— Frank A. Oski

“For example, obesity costs the average person an extra $1,429 per year in increased health care costs. But since we're not required to set aside money for every burger we consume (to cover the real financial cost of the burger), the long-term costs of carrying extra weight remain invisible.”

— Kerry Patterson

“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.”

— Doug Elmendorf

“We don't know what our health care costs are going to be. We don't know what our tax rates are going to be. We don't know what our interest rates are going to be. We don't know what our energy costs are going to be. All these uncertainties are being driven by the Government's agenda. What we really need to do is get Government to step back.”

— Jim Renacci

“We need to start training more primary health providers and fewer specialists. We will never be able to control health care costs unless we challenge the over-emphasis on medical research, specialists and technology and put more emphasis on delivering good, everyday basic medicine to those who now have none.”

— Richard Lamm

“Health care costs are eating the Defense Department alive.”

— Robert M. Gates

“Since 1994, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have considered it politically risky to offer a plan to fix America's broken health care system. The American public, though, has paid the price for this silence as health care costs skyrocketed, millions went uninsured, and millions more grappled with financial insecurity and hardship.”

— Ron Wyden

“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

“The pressure to reduce health care costs is aimed only at the treatment of real diseases. There is no pressure to reduce the costs of treating fictitious diseases. On the contrary, there is pressure to define ever more types of undesirable behaviors as mental disorders or addictions and to spend ever more tax dollars on developing new psychiatric diagnoses and facilities for storing and treating the victims of such diseases, whose members now include alcoholics, drug abusers, smokers, overeaters, self-starvers, gamblers, etc.”

— Thomas Szasz

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

— Angela Braly

“I am actually one of those who took President Obama at his word when he first ran - that he would get us out of ill-advised wars, that he would do something about health care costs, and that he would protect civil liberties. Like many Americans, I was disappointed.”

— Gary Johnson

“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.”

— Lamar Alexander

“Health care costs are an issue both for the government and for our larger economy.”

— Sylvia Mathews Burwell

“We cannot continue. Our pension costs and health care costs for our employees are going to bankrupt this city.”

— Michael Bloomberg

“Being overweight and obesity are major risk factors for many chronic diseases for South Dakotans of all ages. When people are overweight or obese, they have more health problems and more serious health problems, in addition to higher health care costs.”

— Mike Rounds

“I'm no health care expert, but you've got technology that constantly advances the ability to extend life and maybe improve lifestyle. That puts constant upward pressure on health care costs.”

— Steven Burd

“Perhaps one of the most important things you can do for human beings is wean them off an animal-based diet. It hardens the arteries and runs up our health-care costs. The last thing a poor person can afford is a heart attack or cancer or a stroke. And that's all linked to a meat-based diet. I think animal liberation is human liberation.”

— Ingrid Newkirk

“Traditionally, Medicare's assurance has been that for the elderly and persons with disabilities that they will not be alone when confronted with the full burden of their health care costs.”

— Mike Fitzpatrick

“Health care costs blunt the competitive edge of American entrepreneurs, from the auto industry to internet start-ups.”

— Tom Allen

“There is no question that managed care is managed cost, and the idea is that you can save a lot of money and make health care costs less if you ration it.”

— Charlie Norwood

“The majority of Americans receive health insurance coverage through their employers, but with rising health care costs, many small businesses can no longer afford to provide coverage for their employees.”

— Jim Ryun

“By the Obama administration's reasoning, it would be constitutionally permissible to make Americans purchase nearly any product (broccoli, gym membership) that improved their health and thereby contributed to lower health-care costs.”

— John Cornyn

“Supported by digital data, new data-driven tools, and payment policies that reward improving the quality and value of care, doctors, hospitals, patients, and entrepreneurs across the nation are demonstrating that smarter, better, more accessible, and more proactive care is the best way to improve quality and control health care costs.”

— Todd Park

“Why should a company like Wal-Mart - who made $10 billion last year alone - be able to force taxpayers to foot the bill for their health-care costs?”

— John Sweeney

“If we do nothing, as the Republicans suggest, we're going to see health care costs reach a point where small businesses can't afford it and families can't afford it. We're going to see people turned down from pre-existing conditions. We're going to find the Medicare doughnut hole - a gap in coverage that's going to hurt a lot of seniors.”

— Dick Durbin

“If you take your kid in for the sniffles, you pay $20, but the full cost is $200. And so we need to get back to the price system where you see the full cost of health care, and then people will make smarter decisions. That will reduce health care costs, and it's a huge part of our economy.”

— Dave Brat

“We need to be careful when we talk about cutting health care costs. They are not going to be reduced - what we really want to do is do is slow the rate of increase.”

— Dave Obey

“I think we have to be very careful when we toss around terms like 'cut health care costs.' We would do very well to expect a cut in the rate of increase.”

— Dave Obey

“As premiums continue to skyrocket, we must ensure that health insurers are not engaging in anticompetitive behavior and unfairly driving up health care costs.”

— Diana DeGette

“Reversing the escalation of health care costs is going to need more than legislation, yet it can be done without imposing rationing, as critics of reform fear.”

— Mitch Kapor

“Many companies today are reducing hours of full-time people to get under the minimum so they don't have to pay health care costs. I just shake my head because that's not going to build long-term value and trust with your people.”

— Howard Schultz

“And so our goal on health care is, if we can get, instead of health care costs going up 6 percent a year, it's going up at the level of inflation, maybe just slightly above inflation, we've made huge progress. And by the way, that is the single most important thing we could do in terms of reducing our deficit. That's why we did it.”

— Barack Obama

“Without Free Choice Vouchers, there is little in the health reform law that discourages employers from increasingly passing the burden of health care costs onto their employees.”

— Ron Wyden

“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.”

— Rick Scott

“People don't actually want to think about their own health and don't take action until they are sick. Yet employers are very motivated to get their employees healthy, since they bear most of the burden of their health care costs.”

— Clayton Christensen

“Doing all we can to combat climate change comes with numerous benefits, from reducing pollution and associated health care costs to strengthening and diversifying the economy by shifting to renewable energy, among other measures.”

— David Suzuki

“Costs for liability insurance are higher than costs for many procedures. There is a need to reform liability laws to stop out-of-control health care costs.”

— Temple Grandin

“The signs of climate change are visible across the nation, from the drought-stricken fields of Central California to the flooded streets of Michigan. Extreme weather is turning people's lives upside down and costing communities millions of dollars in damaged infrastructure and added health care costs.”

— Frances Beinecke

“I understand that in these difficult economic times, the potential for any additional expense is not welcomed by American businesses. But in the long run, the health insurance reform law promises to cut health-care costs for U.S. businesses, not expand them.”

— Gary Locke

“To date, there is no strong empirical support for claims that automating medical record keeping will lead to major reductions in health-care costs or significant improvements in the well-being of patients. But if doctors and patients have seen few benefits from the scramble to automate record keeping, the companies that supply the systems have profited. Cerner Corporation, a medical software outfit, saw its revenues triple, from $1 billion to $3 billion, between 2005 and 2013. Cerner, as it happens, was one of five corporations that provided RAND with funding for the original 2005 study. The other sponsors, which included General Electric and Hewlett Packard, also have substantial business interests in health-care automation. As today's flawed systems are replaced or upgraded in the future, to fix their interoperability problems and other shortcomings, information technology companies will reap further windfalls.”

— Nicholas Carr

“Get out of debt. In a world of stagnant incomes and rising core expenses like mortgage and health care costs, that's a lot easier said than done. The middle class is under enormous pressure. But families can stop the bleeding by reducing their reliance on debt wherever they can. They can also start fighting back by taking a hard look at whom they do business with and rethinking whether they want tricks-and-traps banks to hold their money. They can also demand that public officials take the side of families over the side of banks.”

— Elizabeth Warren

“The cost of health care and the cost of cars and fuel are huge burdens on families and businesses. We can reduce health care costs NOW by promoting biking, walking and transit.”

— Steve Novick

“Undocumented immigrants produced $1.58 billion in state revenues, which exceeded the $1.16 billion in state services they received. However, local governments bore the burden of $1.44 billion in uncompensated health care costs and local law enforcement costs not paid for by the state,”

— Carole Keeton

“I know of nothing else in medicine that can come close to what a plant-based diet can do. In theory, if everyone were to adopt this, I really believe we can cut health care costs by seventy to eighty percent. That's amazing. And it all comes from understanding nutrition, applying nutrition, and just watching the results.”

— T. Colin Campbell

“One of the principal impediments to job creation is uncertainty on the part of American companies, large and small. We've all watched as companies have sat on a lot of capital. They're uncertain about what tax policy is going to be. They're clearly uncertain about how health care costs. They're uncertain about all the regulations on capital markets.”

— Tom J. Donohue

“We only gain collectively by acting now. We gain by one day not having to pay a thing for fuel. We gain by having cleaner air, water, and food so that we are healthier and our health care costs come down. We gain by deflating the global fossil fuel markets that drive much of the conflict around the world.”

— Mark Ruffalo

“The principal villain in rising health care costs is the government. Not pharmaceutical companies, not doctors, but government.”

— Neal Boortz

“Given the fact that poverty is growing, more and more Americans are losing health insurance, health care costs are going up, the middle class is shrinking, the gap between the rich and the poor is growing wider.That speaks to the weakness of the opposition. People do not like George W. Bush. But I think it's fair to say that they are not flocking to the Democratic Party, or see the Democrats as a real alternative.”

— Bernie Sanders

“One reason for the tremendous increase in health-care costs in the U.S. is managerial neglect of the "hotel services" by the people who dominate the hospital, such as doctors and nurses.”

— Peter Drucker

“Health care costs are on the rise because the consumers are not involved in the decision-making process. Most health care costs are covered by third parties. And therefore, the actual user of health care is not the purchaser of health care. And there's no market forces involved with health care.”

— George W. Bush