Andrew Lansley Quotes

The United States has the best sick care system in the world, however, the health care system remains fragmented and limited, particularly for African Americans who carry a disproportionate burden of disease, hunger, homelessness, and poverty.

I can attest to the very real potential for unnecessary pain, suffering, and death when the work of public-health officials is curtailed.

Perfect health, like perfect beauty, is a rare thing; and so, it seems, is perfect disease.

I brought together experts from health care, business, academic institutions, and the community to develop a comprehensive blueprint for eliminating racial and ethnic disparities in health care in the City of Boston.

But if you're asking my opinion, I would argue that a social justice approach should be central to medicine and utilized to be central to public health. This could be very simple: the well should take care of the sick.

A health system that lacks commodities for managing high-mortality infectious diseases and the main killers of mothers and young children will not have an adequate impact. By the same token, even the best-stocked delivery system will have an inadequate impact if it fails to reach the poor.

In Illinois, community, migrant, homeless and public housing health centers operate 268 primary care sites and serve close to 1 million patients every year.

This is our bottom line: The ways we give should and will evolve to enable us to achieve greater impact to improve the health and health care of all Americans.

Many sections of our country and many groups of our citizens suffer from diseases the eradication of which are mere matters of administration and moderate expenditure. Public health service should be as fully organized and as universally incorporated into our governmental system as is public education. The returns are a thousand fold in economic benefits, and infinitely more in reduction of suffering and promotion of human happiness.

That the AIDS pandemic is threatening sustainable development in Africa only reinforces the reality that health is at the center of sustainable development.

In the same vein as these events, National Minority Health Month also serves as a reminder of how much work needs to be done to eliminate health and healthcare inequities.

If your access to health care involves your leaving work and driving somewhere and parking and waiting for a long time, that's not going to promote healthiness.

In health care, the biggest imperative is: Fix those who cannot get insurance without changing the world for everyone else.

I think all Americans believe in human rights. And health is an often overlooked aspect of basic human rights. And it's one that's easily corrected. The reason I say that is that many of the diseases that we treat around the world, I knew when I was a child. My mother was a registered nurse. And they no longer exist in our country.

The belief that public health measures are not intended for people like us is widely held by many people like me. Public health, we assume, is for people with less - less education, less-healthy habits, less access to quality health care, less time and money.

There is simply not enough money available to support a system in which the lion's share of expenditures is devoted to acute care, with virtually nothing being spent on preventive medicine, i.e. health care.

Universal coverage, not medical technology, is the foundation of any caring health care system.

I want us to be judged by the impact we have on the health of the people of Africa and the health of women. Improvements in the health of the people of Africa and the health of women are key indicators of the performance of WHO. This is a health organization for the whole world... But we must focus our attention on the people in greatest need.

I basically believe the medical insurance industry should be nonprofit, not profit-making. There is no way a health reform plan will work when it is implemented by an industry that seeks to return money to shareholders instead of using that money to provide health care.

In the real world, 90% of the money spent on medical research is focused on conditions that are responsible for just 10% of the deaths and disability caused by diseases globally.

This double burden of disease is rapidly putting a serious brake on the development efforts of many countries.

We need a vibrant Medicaid program and strategies to expand affordable access to health care for all, especially for the specialty care services that community health centers do not provide.

When it comes to health care, the United States is on another planet. The United States spends about 35 percent more per capita than the next two highest-spending countries—Norway and Switzerland…no matter how we measure it—whether by life expectancy or for survival of specific diseases like asthma, heart disease, or some cancers; by the rate of medical errors; or simply by satisfaction with health services, the United States is actually doing worse than a number of countries like France or Germany… America spends far more than other countries, and doesn’t see better results.

[Public Health] means the saving and lengthening of lives of thousands of citizens, the extension of the vigorous working period well into old age, and the prevention of inefficiency, misery, and suffering. These advances can be made by organized social effort. Public health is purchasable.

Growing and aging populations are putting increased pressure on health-care systems that are already buckling under the burden of chronic diseases like cancer and diabetes.