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So it's been a slow process and it's taken some patience. That's why patients are called patients I think - patience is required.

Less than 1 percent of the patients treated are alive at the end of five years.

If, over time, patients don't go to some services, then progressively they become less viable, so you do arrive at a point where the conclusion is: 'These are the right services for the future, and this is capacity we don't need.'

Present law has a process to ascertain whether or not a patient is in a persistent vegetative state, and it should not matter what politicians think.

Certainly, by providing individuals coming out of institutions with ways to become productive citizens, we reduce recidivism. What that means is we reduce crime. There are fewer victims when individuals have options - when they have job skills, when they have life skills, we break the cycle of children following their parents into institutions.

If I'm at the front line and refuse to treat a patient, it's considered a crime. As a physician, this is my oath. I'm going to treat everyone regardless.

Punishment for putting patients at risk ought to reflect the gravity of manufacturing, distributing or selling counterfeit medications.

The chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80% of the total health care bill out there. There is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place. The decision is not whether or not we will ration care. The decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.

Anywhere from 40% to 60% of people, when they're given a requisition by a doctor to go get tested, don't, because they're scared of needles or the locations are inconvenient or the cost is too high. And if you're not even getting tested, how is it possible that we're going to move toward an era of preventive medicine?

We can now diagnose diseases that haven't even manifested in the patient, and may not until the fifth decade of life - if at all.