People say that the most expensive piece of medical equipment is the doctor's pen. It's not that we make all the money.… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
Providing health care is like building a house. The task requires experts, expensive equipment and materials, and a huge amount of coordination. — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
Health care confronts us with a difficult test. We have never corrected failure in something so deeply embedded in people's lives and… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
Cost is the spectre haunting health reform. For many decades, the great flaw in the American health-care system was its unconscionable gaps… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
In every industrialized nation, the movement to reform health care has begun with stories about cruelty. — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
We now have 30 percent, for example, of Medicare patients who are seeing doctors who are rewarded for doing this kind of… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
One of the consequences of if the Affordable Care Act is repealed, is that all of us now are at risk of… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
There are, in human affairs, two kinds of problems: those which are amenable to a technical solution and those which are not.… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
Most people are squeamish about saying how much they earn, but in medicine the situation seems especially fraught. Doctors aren't supposed to… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“One American in seven has no coverage, and one in three younger than sixty-five will lose coverage at some point in the… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
The Affordable Care Act also offered protections that allow for preexisting conditions, as people know, that you're provided coverage and you can… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
The vast majority of doctors really do try to take the money out of their minds. But to provide the best possible… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
No one teaches you how to think about money in medical school or residency. Yet, from the moment you start practicing, you… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“expanded to a second location in Portland—this one had 142 units and capacity for impoverished elderly people on government support—the state required… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“The progress of medicine and public health has been an incredible boon—people get to live longer, healthier, more productive lives than ever… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“When Felix came to this crossroads, the orthopedic shoe to drop wasn’t his. It was Bella’s. Year by year, I witnessed the… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“The important question isn't how to keep bad physicians from harming patient; it's how to keep good physicians from harming patients. Medical… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
Every country in the world is battling the rising cost of health care. No community anywhere has demonstrably lowered its health-care costs… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“In the United States, 25 percent of all Medicare spending is for the 5 percent of patients who are in their final… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
The health-care sector certainly employs more people and more machines than it did. But there have been no great strides in service.… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
As economists have often pointed out, we pay doctors for quantity, not quality. As they point out less often, we also pay… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
My biggest fear, that 27 percent of Americans under 65 have an existing health condition that, without the protections of the Affordable… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“The soaring cost of health care has become the greatest threat to the long-term solvency of most advanced nations, and the incurable… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
Don’t let yourself be. Find something new to try, something to change. Count how often it succeeds and how often it doesn’t. Write about… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“Wilson spent several days camped out in one government office after another until she had secured an exemption. Unbelievably, she and her husband cleared… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
What is needed, however, isn't just that people working together be nice to each other. It is discipline. Discipline is hard--harder than trustworthiness and… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“8. Chapter 4 describes the birth of the assisted-living facility concept (Park Place), designed by Keren Wilson to provide her disabled mother, Jessie, with… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
When we lived in a society where we had large families that lived together, especially in agricultural societies like my grandfather and father grew… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
My biggest fear, that 27 percent of Americans under 65 have an existing health condition that, without the protections of the Affordable Care Act,… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“..how we seek to spend our time may depend on how much time we perceive ourselves to have. When you are young and healthy,… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“I cannot pretend he escaped unscathed. The extended period of low blood pressure damaged an optic nerve and left him essentially blind in one… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
The battle of being mortal is the battle to maintain the integrity of one’s life, — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“an average of $94,000 during the last year of life with a metastatic breast cancer. Our medical system is excellent at trying to stave… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“we need practice to get good at what we do. There is one difference in medicine, though: it is people we practice upon.” — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
People underestimate the importance of dilligence as a virtue. No doubt it has something to do with how supremely mundane it seems. It is… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
