Kathleen Sebelius Quotes

The way health care is funded in the U.S. is not sustainable. People are being kept alive who are probably better off dead. The cost of health care is too high, and you don't get much for it - it's twice as high in the U.S. as elsewhere, and it's because of the middlemen.

Prescription drugs today represent 60¢ on every dollar spent for health care. Ten years ago it was only 10¢.

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.

Our system of private health insurance that fails to provide coverage to so many of our citizens also contributes to the double-digit health care inflation that is making America less competitive in the global economy.

One thing governors feel, Democrats and Republicans alike, is that we have a health care system that, if you're on Medicaid, you have unlimited access to health care, at unlimited levels, at no cost. No wonder it's running away.

Too many of my constituents, like many other hard working Americans across the country, are suffering unnecessarily due to our flawed health care system.

Every country in the world is battling the rising cost of health care. No community anywhere has demonstrably lowered its health-care costs (not just slowed their rate of increase) by improving medical services. They've lowered costs only by cutting or rationing them.

For the amount of money that the country is going to spend this year on health care, you can go out and hire a doctor for every seven families in the US and pay the doctor almost $230,000 a year to cover them.

Most other rich countries not only spend less than the United States on health care; they also achieve better outcomes in both coverage and quality.

People spending more of their own money on routine health care would make the system more competitive and transparent and restore the confidence between the patients and the doctors without government rationing.

When I came to Congress, like our first panel, small business people, 64 percent of the people had health insurance. We'd buy it. Now, we're down to about 34 percent. That's why we have to do something on health care in this country because the cost is killing us.

The fear of health care changing is beyond belief. Like there's a way to make the system worse. Really?

General Motors spends more on health care than steel.

The concern right now is that families are paying for insurance, or getting insurance from their employer and trusting that health care will be available for their families. In too many instances now, the care they need isn't available.

Economists specialize in pointing out unpleasant trade-offs - a skill that is on full display in the health care debate. We want patients to receive the best care available. We also want consumers to pay less. And we don't want to bankrupt the government or private insurers. Something must give.

The lack of health care coverage has remained very important to me during my time in Congress and as a member of the House Subcommittee on Health, I am working hard with my colleagues to correct these inequalities.

Medical costs are of concern, both in developing and developed countries.

Since the 1960s, there has been a tremendous expansion of the resources available to pay for health care.

The U.S. government has been preoccupied with health care 'reform,' but this refers to improving access and insurance coverage and has little or nothing to do with innovation.

Small businesses pay 18 percent more than big businesses for health care, the same health care, just because they're small and they have too small a pool of risk.

Yes, Democrats can prove that America pays more for health care than other countries; yes, they have won the dispute that private health insurance is needlessly expensive. But what they've lost is the argument that we are a society.

America's doctors, nurses and medical researchers are the best in the world, but our health care system is broken.

First of all, pharmaceutical costs are the single fastest-growing part of our health care budget.

I know the exploding cost of health care is at the root of our long-term fiscal challenges.

I think we can see how blessed we are in America to have access to the kind of health care we do if we are insured, and even if uninsured, how there is a safety net. Now, as to the problem of how much health care costs and how we reform health care ... it is another story altogether.