I’m in Lucerne, Switzerland speaking at a conference today. This place is stunning.

Also interesting to note the challenges that the Swiss have in healthcare. They have a somewhat similar situation as the US:

  • they’ve been mandated to purchase private insurance since 1996
  • premiums have risen over 80% since then (our premiums double every 7 and a half years)
  • they’re getting increasingly angry about the high cost of health insurance, especially since the health insurance companies are seen as highly profitable

Switzerland has only about 8 million people but over 80 different private health insurance companies. And most everything here in Switzerland’s healthcare system is done on paper, no computers. It’s fascinating to see that everywhere, all over the world, healthcare is simply backwards. Nobody has gotten it right. I used to think that we can produce some fancy new technology using the internet to disrupt healthcare and make it more friendly and efficient, but it’s quite clear that a technological solution to a political problem will fail 99.9% of the time.