Make our healthcare system look less like it does now.

Kurt Andersen: Collectively, in the larger sense, I think that it is important to figure out a kind of a version of healthcare delivery that is more like the rest of the world and less like the way we [i.e. the US] do it. I think that’s an important collective thing to do. I would say maybe that’s the single most important thing we can do collectively.

Individually, again, I think people need to see in their daily lives to try to act correctly, in the obvious ways. That could mean turning off your lights, using the little other fluorescent bulbs, driving cars that get better mileage. And I don’t disparage any of those because I try to do all those, and those are good. In acts with individuals not being niggardly, and not dissembling and being honest.

It’s like a parental exhortation, but I think once you get into the habit of honesty and kindness on those individual levels, with your co-workers, and your children, and your spouse and everybody else, I think not only do those billions of acts add up into a better society, culture, or world, but they also train one for that time that may come when you’re asked to do the right thing in a big, character-defining way. You’re more inclined to do it if along the way you’ve done the right thing in all these small, boring, banal _________.

Recorded On: July 5, 2007