The use of psychoactive drugs - including both antidepressants and antipsychotics - has exploded...[yet] 'the tally of those who are disabled...increased nearly two and a half times.

Liberals are wrong to think that opposition to health reform is a rejection of big government. If health reform consisted of extending Medicare to everyone, people would be delighted. There are millions of 64-year-olds out there who can hardly wait to be 65.

The pharmaceutical industry isn't the only place where there's waste and inefficiency and profiteering. That happens in much of the rest of the health care industry.

Why should anyone - the state, the medical profession, or anyone else - presume to tell someone else how much suffering they must endure as their life is ending?

Pharmaceutical companies have too much influence over the education of physicians in this country. They have too much control over the evaluation of their own products, and that's a conflict of interest. I think the industry needs to be regulated, but I've never suggested taking it out of the market altogether.

Brand-name drugs have no competition, since the government grants them very long, exclusive marketing rights.

Alternative medicine plays into this exaggerated notion that you can prevent disease simply by doing the right thing.