Our focus is on getting the people still with us out.

We have thousands of people who are getting ill ... our hospitals need to be prepared to take care of the incoming sick.

Our hospitals need to be able to take care of the incoming sick. With the NDMS system you can take care of what you currently have outside of the state.

A lot of people tried writing us off. They didn't throw enough dirt on us and now we're shaking it off.

Those of us who care about the last days of terminally ill people know that we have to focus instead on making advance directives more effective. We need to strengthen advance directive laws, to ensure that health care providers check to see if a patient has a directive before instituting medical interventions. If a patient has directed that no life-sustaining treatment be provided, this wish must be respected.

It gave us a chance to focus on getting people healthy and focus on improving. I'm not sure it would have been our choice but that's how it went.