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 Americans, or half of Americans, think health care is a commodity. Other countries view health care as a social service that should be collectively financed and available to everyone on equal terms. My wife and I just interviewed the German minister of health, and it was an exhilarating experience, because it was a totally different language. It was obviously important that everyone should have the same deal in health care.

The American people are not ready for the idea that everyone has at least a moral right to good, timely health care. They do agree they have a moral right, in critical cases, to have anything done to save their life, but they don't believe that anyone has a right not to fall that sick to begin with. So if you ask me, "Are we ever succumbing to some notions of solidarity as a nation?," I would say, "Not at all." I would describe us as a group of people who share a geography. That's a better description of Americans than that we're a real nation with a sense of solidarity.

We have a nation where the elite thinks it's OK to advocate a war and send the lower-income people to do the fighting. It's natural for such a people to think that the lower-income people should also have a worse health care experience. And the other countries are not there - I always say, not there yet. I tell the Germans and the Swiss, "You're not there yet, but if you're not very, very careful, if we Americans come over there and rearrange ... your health care system, you will be just like us."

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 [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.

The good things at the U.S. health care system are that we have a well-trained labor force, particularly physicians; I don't think any nation trains doctors better. We have the latest technology, simply because we throw so much money at it. We are really technology-hungry in this country. That's a good thing. Our system more treats patients like customers, which is a good thing; that it's very customer-friendly. And it's very innovative, both in the products we use, in the techniques we use and the organizational structures we use. Those are all very good things, highly competitive.