15 Quotes by Alan Levine

Obviously, if everyone has contracted with the same ambulance service, there could be serious problems. We are in favor of requiring the county EOCs to review the nursing home plans not just individually, but how they connect and how much they depend on the same resources and whether that is viable.

Gold Standard was one of the best-led small companies I've ever worked with. Russ Thomas is a visionary.

Our goal was to get the hospital reopened.

That would not have gotten people out of harm's way. His position was that it's expensive to even move people to other homes he owned. But when it comes to patient safety, it's nonnegotiable.

We do want to move to a market-based system but understand it is a controlled market system.

Time had run out. We got fantastic cooperation . . . and were able to get the patients to safety.

Transparency in waiting times is much more relevant in an emergency. It's more important than infection rates.

Those changes failed to pass the legislature last year. We're hopeful they will pass this year, given our knowledge of the problems posed by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Those who want to defend the current system are defending the indefensible. Only 4 percent of all women in the Medicaid fee-for-service program are getting mammograms. That's absurd. That's not a successful system, that's a failure.