During a trip to Iraq last fall I visited our theater hospital at Balad Air Force Base and witnessed these skilled medical professionals in action and met the brave soldiers whose lives they saved.

I'd come out of the army after five years as a medic. I was a medical administrator and we ran hospitals and I was a Captain in the army at the end in 1945.

Today all patients accepted for treatment at St. Jude's are treated without regard for the family's ability to pay. Everything beyond what is covered by insurance is taken care of and for those without insurance all of the medical costs are absorbed by the hospital.

We have the greatest hospitals doctors and medical technology in the world - we need to make them accessible to every American.

Getting out of the hospital is a lot like resigning from a book club. You're not out of it until the computer says you're out of it.

A hospital bed is a parked taxi with the meter running.

What I believe is that marriage is between a man and a woman but what I also believe is that we have an obligation to make sure that gays and lesbians have the rights of citizenship that afford them visitations to hospitals that allow them to be to transfer property between partners to make certain that they're not discriminated on the job.

I later spent... five to eight months in hospitals in New Jersey always on an involuntary basis and always attempting a legal argument for release.

I remember when I came home from the hospital after having my son I wore a Narciso Rodriguez black coat. Then I was using this fragrance that I had created. I walk by that coat and it still smells like that fragrance. It takes you right there.

When my son was born and after a day of lying-in I was told that I could leave the hospital and take him home I burst into tears. It wasn't the emotion of the moment: it was shock and horror.

My biggest nightmare is I'm driving home and get sick and go to hospital. I say: 'Please help me.' And the people say: 'Hey you look like...' And I'm dying while they're wondering whether I'm Barbra Streisand.

I watched Titanic when I got back home from the hospital and cried. I knew that my IQ had been damaged.

Moreover health center services save money and lives by treating diseases before they become chronic conditions require hospital care or require a trip to the emergency room.

Emergency health care for illegal aliens along the southwestern border is already costing area hospitals $200 million a year with perhaps another $100 million in extended care costs.

In 2001 America 's hospitals provided nearly $21 billion in uncompensated health care services.

When Medicare was created for senior citizens and America 's disabled in 1965 about half of a senior's health care spending was on doctors and the other half on hospitals.

The World Health Organisation has a lot of its medical experts sitting in Geneva while hospitals in Africa have no drugs and desperate patients are forced to seek medication on the black market.

In turn more physicians hospitals and other health care providers are severely limiting their practices moving to other states or simply not providing care.

The U.N. Population Fund has a maternal health program in some Cameroon hospitals but it doesn't operate in this region. It's difficult to expand because President Bush has cut funding.

The answer was that in Burundi having a clean bill of health has taken on a very particular meaning: unless and until you have paid for your hospital treatment you simply can't leave you are in effect a captive.

Building a new Health and Hospitals Network is fundamental to building a stronger and fairer Australia.

America has the best doctors the best nurses the best hospitals the best medical technology the best medical breakthrough medicines in the world. There is absolutely no reason we should not have in this country the best health care in the world.

Today we have a health insurance industry where the first and foremost goal is to maximize profits for shareholders and CEOs not to cover patients who have fallen ill or to compensate doctors and hospitals for their services. It is an industry that is increasingly concentrated and where Americans are paying more to receive less.

The power of community to create health is far greater than any physician clinic or hospital.