2030_ The Real Story of What Happens to America - Albert Brooks [63]
“I don’t intend to change my mind.”
“I know you don’t, but you haven’t seen the numbers. They’re not pretty.”
Susanna smiled. “I don’t expect them to be. Thank you, Mr. President. Can I call you if I have any questions during this period?”
“You can call me even if you don’t. Just not too late at night; I don’t want any problems at home.” Susanna laughed. Matthew Bernstein loved this woman. Not in a sexual way, but in a way that no other older woman in his life had ever quite filled.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Shen Li’s gift to the kids of Los Angeles had gone over very well. He was even contacted by the governor of California, who wanted to thank him personally. But Li was frustrated. He still wanted to break into the United States health market, but he didn’t know the exact way to go about it. Of course, health had become a global business, but Li didn’t just want to buy into America, he wanted to change it.
When Anthem Blue Cross was sold years earlier to an Arab company, it created a small amount of uproar in Congress, along the lines of, “Should Arabs be taking care of Americans?” But since no national security was involved, the protest went nowhere, and the United Arab Health Group became the second-biggest provider of health insurance in America.
No one noticed any difference. The company’s intent was not to change the system but to buy a profitable business and save money by combining accounting costs with its other businesses around the world. People thought Arab doctors would fill the hospitals, but the hospitals looked exactly the same. The same long lines. The same poor service. And this was exactly what Shen Li was not interested in.
Li always felt that what he created in China was the most efficient system in the world, and he just knew that it would translate everywhere. But America was not yet clamoring for his ideas.
In 2026 he was able to break into the Indian market, and he took that country by storm. India had already had solid heath care in its biggest and richest cities, but like China, that care simply disappeared in the smaller towns. And it was those places where most of the people lived. If people in those areas got sick, they would have to ride hundreds of miles to a small clinic, or do nothing. Li used the system he invented in China and began serving the India that no one had served before. His Health Care for All made its way into the parts of that country that had never even seen a doctor.
One of Li’s original secrets—aside from letting nurses do most of the work with the help of virtual doctors—was robotic surgery. Obviously, surgery needed to be performed by trained physicians, but technology now made it possible for that to be done from anywhere in the world. And instead of buying superexpensive robotic units for each distant location, Li had them mobilized. They were constantly on the move so that none of the five-million-dollar robots was ever idle. It was like combining medicine with Federal Express. Each operating unit, as soon as it was finished in one location, was cleaned and on its way to the next place within an hour, either by truck, plane, or train, whatever was the most cost-effective way to move it.
These self-contained operating theaters could work anywhere, even where there was no electricity, so the concept of patients traveling a long way for major surgery was slowly becoming a thing of the past. If someone in a small Indian village showed up with an acute appendicitis, the operating unit could be in that location within a half a day. Certainly faster than getting that person to the nearest big city, which could be a thousand miles away.
Doctors in Hong Kong or Beijing—or whatever place Li had agreements with—would take out the appendix