Quote

We need to be careful when we talk about cutting health care costs. They are not going to be reduced - what we really want to do is do is slow the rate of increase.

Every country in the world is battling the rising cost of health care. No community anywhere has demonstrably lowered its health-care costs (not just slowed their rate of increase) by improving medical services. They've lowered costs only by cutting or rationing them.

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.

Well, now, and there's - for every dollar the federal government spends, there's real people on the other side, and so when we talk about reductions that are going to affect providers, that's going to affect hospitals and doctors and others.

We think healthcare costs should be going down, not up. We think people should be able to keep insurance that they had.

I believe we can incentivize more affordable health care in general by better regulating insurance and creating meaningful competition for health care services.

I understand that in these difficult economic times, the potential for any additional expense is not welcomed by American businesses. But in the long run, the health insurance reform law promises to cut health-care costs for U.S. businesses, not expand them.

I am hopeful for the American people that we can actually improve the outlook for bringing down costs in health care.

I think we can see how blessed we are in America to have access to the kind of health care we do if we are insured, and even if uninsured, how there is a safety net. Now, as to the problem of how much health care costs and how we reform health care ... it is another story altogether.