Quotes About Right To Health Care

#1. Health care is not just another commodity. It is not a gift to be rationed based on the ability to pay. It is time to make universal health insurance a national priority, so that the basic right to health care can finally become a reality for every American.

Edward Kennedy

#2. It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights - the 'right' to education, the 'right' to health care, the 'right' to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery - hay and a barn for human cattle.

Alexis De Tocqueville

#3. [I]f you think you have the right to health care, you are saying basically that I am your slave. I provide health care ... My staff and technicians provide it ... If you have a right to health care, then you have a right to their labor.

Rand Paul

#4. Everyone has a right to a job, everyone has a right to an education, everyone has a right to health care, everyone has a right to retirement security, everyone has a right to housing, and everyone has a right to peace.

Dennis Kucinich

#5. If Charlton Heston can have a constitutional right carry a rifle, why can't grandma have a constitutional right to health care?

Al Sharpton

#6. If a hundred people were shipwrecked on an island, what would it even mean to say that everyone there has a "right" to food, or that everyone has a "right" to health care, or the "right" to a job, or the "right" to a "living wage"?

Larken Rose

#7. Let us be the ones who say we do not accept that a child dies every three seconds simply because he does not have the drugs you and I have. Let us be the ones to say we are not satisfied that your place of birth determines your right for life. Let us be outraged, let us be loud, let us be bold.

Brad Pitt

#8. As an American, you have a right to good health care that is effective, accessible, and affordable, that serves you from infancy through old age, that allows you to go to practitioners and facilities of your choosing, and that offers a broad range of therapeutic options.

Andrew Weil

#9. When women and families have access to reproductive health care, including contraception and abortion care, they have children when the time is right for them and build stronger families and lives.

Dennis S. Ross

#10. We need a cost-effective, high-quality health care system, guaranteeing health care to all of our people as a right.

Hillary Clinton

#11. If I'm the godfather of [Obamacare], then it gives me the right to kill it.

Mitt Romney

#12. Single payer means something different to everyone. The way I define it is that health care is a right and not a privilege.

Peter Shumlin

#13. Employers should not be able to impose their religious beliefs on female employees, ignoring their individual health decisions and denying their right to reproductive care. Bosses belong in the boardroom, not in the bedroom.

Dina Titus

#14. If access to health care is considered a human right, who is considered human enough to have that right?

Paul Farmer

#15. When it comes to the health of our families, Barack refused to listen to all those folks who told him to leave health reform for another day, another president. He didn't care whether it was the easy thing to do politically - that's not how he was raised - he cared that it was the right thing to do.

Michelle Obama

#16. Restricting access to such a basic health care service, which 99% of sexually experienced American women have used and 62% of American women are using right now, is out of touch with public sentiment.

Sandra Fluke

#17. The very right to be human is denied every day to hundreds of millions of people as a result of poverty, the unavailability of basic necessities such as food, jobs, water and shelter, education, health care and a healthy environment.

Nelson Mandela

#18. I've battled psoriasis; I've had an autoimmune disease since I was two. So I'm very vigilant about taking care of myself and eating right and what I put in my body. It's something that I had to be aware of since a young age. So health is a big deal.

LeAnn Rimes

#19. Hillary Clinton wants to see that all Americans have the right to choose a public option in their health care exchange.

Bernie Sanders

#20. I vote Democrat because I think illegal aliens have a right to free health care, education, and Social Security benefits, and we should take away Social Security from those who paid into it.

David Letterman

#21. At the beginning of his administration, Obama homed right in on Medicare, which he wanted to fix by reducing the overall cost of health care in this country. He risked everything - some would claim he lost everything - by being so single-minded.

Gail Collins

#22. An 'exchange' would allow everyone to choose their health care insurance from a broad range of options - just like federal employees and Congress do right now - and allow their employer to help pay for it.

Andrew P. Harris

#23. There is a consensus of willing leaders from both parties coalescing around the right way forward in health care. Reform should address government-imposed inequities and barriers to true choice and competition.

Paul Ryan

#24. It is hard to talk about a middle ground for something that is a fundamental right.

Teri Reynolds

#25. Lord I submit my body to You. Help me to be disciplined in the way I care for it. Help me to choose health-filled and life-giving foods and be able to resist eating what I should not have. Enable me to make the right choices with regard to what I eat.

Stormie O'martian

#26. If I have a right to a job, education, health care or a house, then I must be able to specify the person or persons who owe me any or all of these things.

Richard Allen Epstein

#27. Thanks to health reform, women across the country with private insurance can get birth control without paying out of pocket. This lets women make the health care decisions that are right for them and puts every one of us in charge of our own reproductive health.

Ann McLane Kuster

#28. I'm going to live long enough to live in an America that will assume universal health care is a basic right. That will be amusing and terrific.

Anna Quindlen

#29. Nurses are on the front lines of our care. And they need to be at the foundation of health care reform. Let's get health care done - and done right - by ensuring the amount of nurses we need to provide quality care for all.

Kirsten Gillibrand

#30. We are the only major country on earth that doesn't guarantee health care to all people as a right and yet we end up spending much more than they do, so I do believe that we have to move toward a Medicare for all, single-payer system.

Bernie Sanders

#31. The two things are synergistic, the health care crisis and the food crisis. Right now, to a large extent, the food industry's biggest product is patients for the health care industry and we have to break that.

Michael Pollan

#32. I really wanted to know what happens in a place that is trying to build socialism, that's trying to construct some form of social justice. That's trying to feed people, to make health care and education a right.

Assata Shakur

#33. Patient autonomy is paramount to the oath that we take when we enter the profession of medicine. That is why I am appalled when the federal government gets between my patients and their right to the full range of medical information and complete access to health care.

Ami Bera

#34. Health care is an essential safeguard of human life and dignity and there is an obligation for society to ensure that every person be able to realize this right.

Joseph Bernardin

#35. We have never seen health as a right. It has been conceived as a privilege, available only to those who can afford it. This is the real reason the American health care system is in such a scandalous state.

Shirley Chisholm

#36. Today there are people trying to take away rights that our mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers fought for: our right to vote, our right to choose, affordable quality education, equal pay, access to health care. We the people can't let that happen.

Kerry Washington

#37. Everything that we believe in and count on is really in question right now. Our safety net, public education, housing, health care, so many things that are fundamental to a healthy democracy, are under attack. So I think, in general we've got a lot of work to do.

Ai-jen Poo

#38. You can't afford to get sick, and you can't depend on the present health care system to keep you well. It's up to you to protect and maintain your body's innate capacity for health and healing by making the right choices in how you live.

Andrew Weil

#39. If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. This especially includes your health care.

Andrew Saul

#40. So I can't show you how, exactly, health care is a basic human right. But what I can argue is that no one should have to die of a disease that is treatable.

Paul Farmer

#41. I think health care is more about love than about most other things. If there isn't at the core of this two human beings who have agreed to be in a relationship where one is trying to help relieve the suffering of another, which is love, you can't get to the right answer here.

Donald Berwick

#42. Every American has a right to affordable, high-quality health care.

Max Baucus

#43. And the issues I think are important in Louisiana right now happen to be health care and education. And those are two areas that the federal government can play a very important role. And I think I can be effective in trying to help our state from the Washington scene.

John Breaux

#44. At one point, I had over 800 employees, and I always paid all health care for my people - including a man who was my assistant who got HIV. I wound up paying his medical bills, which went into the hundreds of thousands. I'm not making myself out to be a saint. I did the right thing.

Jerry Della Femina

#45. We have a country that wants to believe it is the best in everything, but until all of us embrace the idea that health care should be a right, not a privilege, our system cannot be glibly described as, quote, 'the best in the world.'

Tim Johnson

#46. I want to end the international embarrassment of the United States of America being the only major country on earth that doesn't guarantee health care to all people as a right, not a privilege.

Bernie Sanders

#47. If you drink too much, you go out and you harm to somebody, you have to suffer the consequences. Same way with health matters. You don't have the right to demand that someone else take care of you because of your habits.

Ron Paul

#48. Many smart folks seem to think that if you just get your metaphors and messages right, you'll win. That if you start describing what you favor as a 'moral value' - 'affordable health care is a moral value' etc., - then you'll appeal to red-state voters.

Eric Liu

#49. I definitely write from a need to try, in my own two hours, to right a wrong. My little play is inconsequential in terms of whether or not we have health care, but it may affect the way people who see the play think about the issue.

Lisa Loomer

#50. IT'S NEVER TOO LATE
It's never too late to look after yourself. Never too late to eat healthily, get plenty of rest, exercise regularly and look after your skin. You'd be amazed at how quickly your skin and body can rejuvenate given the right environment.

Jana Elston

#51. We have one of the few societies, the only one I can think of right offhand, where your health care is so tied to your job, so that when an American company has to hire, they have to think about health care.

Tim Bishop

#52. Wash, wash, wash. Tone, tone, tone. Strip the oil, then add an oil-free moisturizer to replace the oil. This is how we've been taught to care for our skin. It seems a little crazy when you see it in print, right? Take all that oil out and add chemicals to replace it. Nuts!

Yancy Lael

#53. In the first two years this is a man [Clinton] who tried his best to balance the budget, to reform health care, to fight for gay rights, to support personal freedoms. Couldn't those be considered doing the right things, evidence of true character?

Bryant Gumbel

#54. Health care is not a privilege. It's a right. It's a right as fundamental as civil rights. It's a right as fundamental as giving every child a chance to get a public education.

Rod Blagojevich

#55. Health is a human right, not a privilege to be purchased.

Shirley Chisholm