The issue of universal coverage is not a matter of economics. Little more than 1 percent of GDP assigned to health could cover all. It is a matter of soul.

We are the only nation where paper is still the mainstay in the private insurance industry.

The [Hobby Lobby Supreme Court] ruling raises the question of why, uniquely in the industrialized world, Americans have for so long favored an arrangement in health insurance that endows their employers with the quasi-parental power to choose the options that employees may be granted in the market for health insurance.

There are libertarian values which say private property is the overarching value, the sanctity thereof, and there are egalitarians who say health care should be shared and so on. That's fair enough.

Massachusetts is the first state in America to reach full adulthood. The rest of America is still in adolescence.

The bad things are that our financing of health care is really a moral morass. It is a moral morass in the sense that it signals to the doctors and hospitals that human beings have different values depending on their income status.

The ACA is an ugly patch on an ugly system - and I don't think it's worth mentioning in the context of price or quality transparency.

Everybody should have health care, on the one hand. But on the other hand, if you ask Americans, Are you willing to pay for it?, they say no. So I've never been able to understand this contradiction.

Americans keep telling me they hate government. I always tell them: Man, I've got a country for you: Go to Afghanistan they don't have one. So if you're of that ilk, yes, you can have your private paradise, but if you're comfortable with government, then go with government.

The rich are becoming richer, and the gap between the rich and the poor is getting bigger.