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The world cannot continue to build larger health care systems where you just sit around and wait for people to get sick.

That's one of the ironies of our time: Right when we're on the edge of serious improvements in health care, we're also cooking the planet.

There is just no reason why the richest nation in the world can't provide health care to all its people.

During the summer of 2009, the debate on health care reform was emotional and intense. At its best, it represented the free exchange of ideas that makes this country great. At its worst, it generated death threats and acts of violence.

A truly moral health care system should start out by covering all of its citizens with basic health care. It would not be seduced by its technology and fancy buildings.

The minute health care becomes a huge, unwieldy, expensive government bureaucracy it's a permanent feature of life and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

If you look at healthcare today, it's all about disease. It's not about understanding wellness at all.

And it was back in the mid-1980s, and as I point out in a piece, that was when we are spending about eight percent of our gross domestic product on health care. And even then, we had the impression that so much of the excessive, aggressive medical treatment that took place at the end of life was not only unnecessary but it was cruel.

The way health care is funded in the U.S. is not sustainable. People are being kept alive who are probably better off dead. The cost of health care is too high, and you don't get much for it - it's twice as high in the U.S. as elsewhere, and it's because of the middlemen.

In the future, it's going to become more and more impossible for the economy to support how expensive medical care is and the number of sick people we have. Why don't we just get our population healthier so we don't need medical care?