Dr. Céline Gounder argues that universal primary care access could make heart attacks, strokes, and cancer rare in America. Telemedicine and AI can extend care to underserved areas at lower cost, though neither replaces human judgment entirely.
Absolutely, but you know, one thing I, I, I, there's so much controversy in society. I would hope that we can get to a bipartisan place with primary healthcare. Now there may be different perspectives about who should provide it and how to pay for it, but ultimately there shouldn't be any disagreement that every American should have access to a healthcare team that will provide the great treatments that we have, because for all the bad news in the world, the fact is we have better and better tools every single day. We can help people live longer, be healthier, avoid cancer, avoid heart attacks, avoid strokes. In fact, I think we could make heart attacks and strokes rare if we just implement what we know how to do. So that means thinking creatively about how to provide primary healthcare in states, in cities, with support from providers in a way that reaches patients and probably capitalizing on telemedicine, which is really a great way of reaching more people for less money. Doesn't replace all in-person visits, but it's a great— it's a lot better than nothing. And frankly, I think AI is going to improve healthcare substantially, make it more efficient and more effective, because there are a lot of mistakes in healthcare and you can't rely exclusively on AI, but AI can find those mistakes and prevent them. Let's end, as we've got about 5 minutes left, let's end with more positives. Let's think about how to build forward to a public health and a healthcare system that is going to work really well for as many people as possible in this country and around the world.
"You Don't Bring Water to People Who Think You're Killing Them" | Inside Congo's Ebola Trust Crisis
"We Had to Become Farmers" | A Doctor in Congo on What Happened When USAID Left
