Uwe Reinhardt Quotes About Health Care

• The issue of universal coverage is not a matter of economics. Little more than 1 percent of GDP assigned to health could cover all. It is a matter of soul.

  Uwe Reinhardt

  Gdp, Issues, Soul

• The ACA is an ugly patch on an ugly system - and I don't think it's worth mentioning in the context of price or quality transparency.

  Uwe Reinhardt

  Thinking, Quality, Aca

• If you want to look at a purely socialized health care, you would have to go to the United States, where we have it. In particular, that's the system we reserve for our veterans. So if I hear politicians run down socialized medicine - and I have done that before the Congress - I say: Do you hate your veterans? Why do you reserve purely socialized medicine - there's only the U.S. and Cuba that have that - for the veterans? So getting the terms right would be very, very helpful in our national conversation on health reform.

  Uwe Reinhardt

  Running, Hate, Done

  Source: www.pbs.org

• The bad things are that our financing of health care is really a moral morass. It is a moral morass in the sense that it signals to the doctors and hospitals that human beings have different values depending on their income status.

  Uwe Reinhardt

  Different, Care, Moral

  Source: www.pbs.org

• We have a nation where the elite thinks it's OK to advocate a war and send the lower-income people to do the fighting. It's natural for such a people to think that the lower-income people should also have a worse health care experience. And the other countries are not there - I always say, not there yet. I tell the Germans and the Swiss, "You're not there yet, but if you're not very, very careful, if we Americans come over there and rearrange ... your health care system, you will be just like us."

  Uwe Reinhardt

  Country, War, Fighting

  Source: www.pbs.org

• Everybody should have health care, on the one hand. But on the other hand, if you ask Americans, "Are you willing to pay for it?," they say no. So I've never been able to understand this contradiction.

  Uwe Reinhardt

  Care, Health Care, Contradiction

  "Frontline", www.pbs.org. November 10, 2007.

• The good things at the U.S. health care system are that we have a well-trained labor force, particularly physicians; I don't think any nation trains doctors better. We have the latest technology, simply because we throw so much money at it. We are really technology-hungry in this country. That's a good thing. Our system more treats patients like customers, which is a good thing; that it's very customer-friendly. And it's very innovative, both in the products we use, in the techniques we use and the organizational structures we use. Those are all very good things, highly competitive.

  Uwe Reinhardt

  Country, Thinking, Technology

• There are libertarian values which say private property is the overarching value, the sanctity thereof, and there are egalitarians who say health care should be shared and so on. That's fair enough.

  Uwe Reinhardt

  Care, Libertarian, Enough

  Source: www.pbs.org

• The bad things the U.S. health care system are that our financing of health care is really a moral morass in the sense that it signals to the doctors that human beings have different values depending on their income status. For example, in New Jersey, the Medicaid program pays a pediatrician $30 to see a poor child on Medicaid. But the same legislators, through their commercial insurance, pay the same pediatrician $100 to $120 to see their child. How do physicians react to it? If you phone around practices in Princeton, Plainsboro, Hamilton - none of them would see Medicaid kids.

  Uwe Reinhardt

  Children, Kids, Different

• We Americans, or half of Americans, think health care is a commodity. Other countries view health care as a social service that should be collectively financed and available to everyone on equal terms. My wife and I just interviewed the German minister of health, and it was an exhilarating experience, because it was a totally different language. It was obviously important that everyone should have the same deal in health care.

  Uwe Reinhardt

  Country, Thinking, Wife

• The American people are not ready for the idea that everyone has at least a moral right to good, timely health care. They do agree they have a moral right, in critical cases, to have anything done to save their life, but they don't believe that anyone has a right not to fall that sick to begin with. So if you ask me, "Are we ever succumbing to some notions of solidarity as a nation?," I would say, "Not at all." I would describe us as a group of people who share a geography. That's a better description of Americans than that we're a real nation with a sense of solidarity.

  Uwe Reinhardt

  Real, Fall, Believe

  "Frontline", www.pbs.org. November 10, 2007.

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