One of the consequences of if the Affordable Care Act is repealed, is that all of us now are at risk of being a preexisting - of having a preexisting condition waiting to happen. Life, increasingly, is a preexisting condition waiting to happen, now that we have more and more of this data available.

After readinf some essay on the nature of human fallibility, I was very aware that we are the recipients of a huge amount of discovery over the last century. Medicine exemplifies this. And that has transitioned us from a world in which people's lives were mostly governed by ignorance to one that's constrained by ineptitude. A century ago, we didn't know, for instance, what diseases afflicted us, what their nature really was, or what to do about them. And that has changed.

You may not control life's circumstances, but getting to be the author of your life means getting to control what you do with them.

My biggest fear, that 27 percent of Americans under 65 have an existing health condition that, without the protections of the Affordable Care Act, would mean they would - could be automatically excluded from insurance coverage. Before the ACA, they wouldn't have been able to get insurance coverage on the individual market, you know, if you're a freelancer or if you had a small business or the like.

When [disease] can't be stopped, that's where we become lost.

We've created a multitrillion-dollar edifice for dispensing the medical equivalent of lottery tickets - and have only the rudiments of a system to prepare patients for the near certainty that those tickets will not win. Hope is not a plan, but hope is our plan.

Life is choices, and they are relentless. No sooner have you made one choice than another is upon you.