'It's a Rip-Off and It's Got to Stop': What We Heard This Week

— Quotable quotes heard by 's reporters

MedicalToday
A female reporter holding two microphones takes notes on a pad

"It's a rip-off and it's got to stop." -- Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), discussing Medicare Advantage marketing schemes during a Senate Finance Committee meeting.

"I felt a little hopeless and a little helpless sitting, watching, scrolling through news on my phone or watching on TV." -- Martin Jacobson, MD, an anesthesiologist from New Jersey, on traveling to Jerusalem to provide medical care during the current crisis.

"The virus isn't doing anything crazy to evade our immune defenses." -- Michael Mina, MD, chief science officer for eMed, discussing why COVID viral load peaks later now than they did early in the pandemic.

"We're halfway home, but we're not all the way there." -- Stephen Hauser, MD, of the University of California San Francisco, on the progress in multiple sclerosis treatments made to date.

"No single right or wrong answer in this area." -- Laurence Klotz, MD, of the University of Toronto, on whether older low-risk prostate cancer patients can eventually stop active surveillance.

"We don't want to medicalize and do things to kids when we really need to be fighting and working for their wellness." -- Sarah Nosal, MD, board member of the American Academy of Family Physicians, on screening young children for high cholesterol.

"We're treating it as any other new variant." -- Shishi Luo, PhD, head of infectious diseases at the population genomics company Helix, on the new HV.1 SARS-CoV-2 variant.