Dick Durbin Quotes

Healthcare in the U.S. remains a dire mess, and the Obama presidency, unfortunately, didn't really address that.

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.

I happen to believe that health care is an imminent crisis. It is.

The bottom line: health care reform is about the patient, not about the physician.

Arizona faces unique healthcare challenges including uncompensated care for illegal immigrants, and the large number of Native Americans who live in remote and isolated areas of the state.

As efforts to fix this failure at the Veterans Administration continue, I also intend to persist in demanding answers and action on the establishment of a new clinic to serve the veterans in North Central Washington.

Health care is much the same - the status quo is, by all measures, failing far too many people - and we must not shrink from the challenge.

Medicare is expensive because we spend a lot on healthcare. We spend a lot on healthcare basically just because we want to, and doing so has been very good to a lot of people who work in healthcare fields.

One of the shortcomings of our medical system is that doctors have very little time with their patients.

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.

Our health system is broken.

Your care and your treatment shouldn't be dictated by your ZIP code.

For our veterans to have to wait long periods of time to receive care is not only unacceptable to us, but to elected officials as well.

I know firsthand how our being such a rural state presents challenges to healthcare.

Most of the people who make decisions about global health are in the U.S. and Western Europe. There, the mental health care system is dominated by highly trained, expensive professionals in big hospitals, who often see patients over long periods of time. This simply can't be done in rural Africa or India. Who the hell can afford that kind of care?

Arizona has excellent medical schools, both public and private, and it is critical that we create an environment that keeps medical students in Arizona to practice medicine once they complete medical school and their residency programs.

The very rich, very poor, and the very famous get the worst medical care. The very rich can buy it, the very poor can't get any, and the very famous can dictate it.

The burden of health care shouldn't be borne by the poorest families. We should have equity within health systems so that families are able to cope with serious illness and not be driven into poverty and relationship breakdown because they don't have access to health care.

Cost containment too often becomes care containment. And it affects the least powerful population sector with the quietest voice.

AIDS killed him, but our health care system tortured him.

Obamacare is, 'Patient, heal yourself.'

Medical professionals are as skilled and as dedicated as any, but they operate within a fragmented system that has not progressed as far as we have in aviation.

In 1979, just after I became governor, I asked Hillary to chair a rural health committee to help expand health care to isolated farm and mountain areas. They recommended to do that partly by deploying trained nurse practitioners in places with no doctors to provide primary care they were trained to provide.

I believe - I clearly believe that government-run health care will be bad for you as a patient. It will be bad for you as a taxpayer.

Illinois has the opportunity to lead the country in providing more affordable health care options to its citizens.