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To me, politics is an extension of what I do in medicine.

I think legislation needs to put an end to doctors profiting on businesses to which they can funnel patients - that is business, not medicine. If you try to call it medicine, then it is corruption. Without legislation, it will keep happening.

Medical decisions have been politicized. What doctor wants a state legislator in his consulting room?

A doctor can only treat patients. A doctor can only help the people who are shot or who are injured. But a politician can stop people from injuries. A politician can take a step so that no person is scared tomorrow.

We need to take politics out of health care. Congress will cave to pretty much any special interest on the subject.

Modern medicine is a negation of health. It isn't organized to serve human health, but only itself, as an institution. It makes more people sick than it heals.

I think history would say that medical research has, throughout many changes of parties, remained as one of the shining lights of bipartisan agreement, that people are concerned about health for themselves, for their families, for their constituents.

Medicine really matured me as a person because, as a physician, you're obviously dealing with life and death issues, issues much more serious than what we're talking about in entertainment. You can't get more serious than life and death. And if you can handle that, you can handle anything.

I think we are faced in medicine with the reality that we have to be willing to talk about our failures and think hard about them, even despite the malpractice system. I mean, there are things that we can do to make that system better.

A second opinion never hurts, not only in medicine, but also in politics.