A Quote by Noam Chomsky

The US health-care system is a complete scandal. It's got twice the costs of comparable countries and some of the worst outcomes.

Noam Chomsky

Quote Topics

Care Comparable Complete Costs Countries Got Health Outcomes Scandal Some System Twice Us Worst

Quote Author

Noam Chomsky
American - Activist
Born: December 7, 1928

The U.S. has the most dysfunctional healthcare system in the industrial world, has about twice the per capita costs, and some of the worst outcomes. It's also the only privatized system.

Noam Chomsky

The cost-of-living crisis extends beyond housing. Health-care costs are exorbitant, too: Americans pay roughly twice as much for insurance and medical services as do citizens of other wealthy countries, but they don't have better outcomes.

Annie Lowrey

In comparison to the U.S. health care system, the German system is clearly better, because the German health care system works for everyone who needs care, ... costs little money, and it's not a system about which you have to worry all the time. I think that for us the risk is that the private system undermines the solidarity principle. If that is fixed and we concentrate a little bit on better competition and more research, I think the German health care system is a nice third way between a for-profit system on the one hand and, let's say, a single-payer system on the other hand.

Karl Lauterbach

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

What I want veterans to know is that VA is here to care for them. VA is a good system - health care wise, safety wise - highly comparable to any other system out there. Our oversight reviews tell us that. I'm very comfortable in the quality of our system.

Eric Shinseki

What the Affordable Care Act started was a change in the American health care system from paying for procedures to paying for outcomes, paying for health. Other nations have already made that move. We pay for procedures and we get the best procedures in the world and we get the most procedures in the world, and then we spend a huge chunk of our GDP on health care, but we don't have the best outcomes.

Tim Kaine

Nations that pay for outcomes and health actually spend a lower percentage of GDP, and they have better outcomes. And so the Affordable Care Act is starting to make that migration, but we've got to keep down that path, and we'll improve outcomes and reduce cost.

Tim Kaine

The United States is unique among the rich countries, developed countries, in not having some kind of a national health-care system.

Noam Chomsky

Look at other countries that have tried to have federally controlled health care. They have poor-quality health care. Our health-care system is the envy of the world because we believe in making sure that the decisions are made by doctors and patients, not by officials in the nation's capital.

George W. Bush

The United States remains the only major country on earth that doesn't guarantee health care to all of our people. And yet we are spending almost twice as much per capita. We have a massively dysfunctional health care system. And I do believe in a Medicare for all single-payer system, whether a small state like Vermont can lead the nation, which I certainly hope we will, or whether it's California or some other state.

Hillary Clinton

What I was saying back then was that we have a lot of public health costs that taxpayers end up paying for through Medicaid, Medicare, through uncompensated care, because that was in the context of the push for health care reform and that we needed some way to try to defray those costs.

Hillary Clinton

We need a new health care architecture that will reduce costs, improve outcomes, and protect vulnerable persons.

Jeff Fortenberry

We've got the emPHAsis on the wrong sylLAble when it comes to crime in this country. The FBI says burglary and robbery cost U.S. taxpayers $3.8 billion annually. Securities fraud alone costs four times that. And securities fraud is nothing to the cost of oil spills, price-fixing, and dangerous or defective products. Fraud by health-care corporations alone costs us between $100 billion and $400 billion a year. No three-strikes-and-you're-out for these guys. Remember the S&L scandal? $500 billion.

Molly Ivins

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

I don't think that I am a Lefty in the sense that I grew up in countries that have a universal health-care system, but I also think that I'm a little Right in other directions. I also think that - in regards to the whole health-care thing - that yeah, they should repeal and replace Obamacare with universal health care.