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.

Thanks to evolution our bodies have powerful ways to ward off illness and infection and enable us to live long and healthy lives. Why then do health costs continue to climb at unsustainable and frightening rates?

Women know the financial social and physical costs of not having access to basic health care.

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

We must solve the problem in health care by curbing out-of-control costs that erode paychecks for working families and push quality coverage out of reach for millions of Americans.

But if you - if what - the reports are true what they're saying is is that as a consequence of us getting 30 million additional people health care at the margins that's going to increase our costs we knew that.

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.

For a man to attain to an eminent degree in learning costs him time watching hunger nakedness dizziness in the head weakness in the stomach and other inconveniences.

One side of the American psyche wants smaller government lower taxes and more choices for individuals even if those choices increase risk. The other wants a strong social safety net to protect the weakest among us even if it costs more to minimize risk.

The right way to reign in healthcare costs is not by applying more government and more controls and making it more like the post office it's by making it more like a consumer-driven market.