I believe the most important aspect of Medicare is not the structure of the program but the guarantee to all Americans that they will have high quality health care as they get older.

It's time to look beyond the budget ax to assure access to health care for all. It's time to look for bipartisan solutions to the problems we can tackle today and to work together for tomorrow - building a health care system that works for all Americans.

We are spending most of our time in American health care fixing the mistakes that either we in the profession are causing or our patients are without recognizing it causing to themselves.

And I believe that if we can care about whether or not our neighbor has a good job or access to affordable health care for their children and we move to implement the policies that can improve these situations we will unleash vast amounts of human potential and recapture the American spirit.

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.

I mean the fight for a health care bill to cover all Americans and leave none behind is attacked as being a race appeal which is not true but then it's put out in the media as true.

You cannot drive a system that's going to be aiming at preventing illness if everyone is not in it. The whole gaming of health insurance and health care in America is based on that fundamental principle: insure people who aren't sick and you don't have to pay more money on them.

It's easier to lecture women on sexual morality than it is to explain why all Americans shouldn't have comprehensive fair and equal health care coverage.

The greatest public health threat for many American women is the men they live with.

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.