[MUSIC]
Once again, thank you so much for
being here with us today.
We really appreciate it.
>> I'm thrilled to be here.
>> As Sarah alluded to in your
introduction, you had an upbringing and
sought to your career as a death penalty
lawyer that was very different to most of
your compatriots in the Fortune 500.
It's a little bit more
about how that upbringing,
that experience in your early
career shaped you as man?
>> So let me just start by saying again,
I'm thrilled to be here.
It's a wonderful place to be.
I think what my upbringing really taught
me, because I was born on the other side
of the tracks and
had the opportunity because social
engineers engaged in what was
then called school desegregation.
I was raised in the inner city of
Philadelphia, had many older siblings.
But my younger sister and
I were born at a time when
experimentation was happening in America.
And one of the experiments was,
it was called school desegregation,
which is different from integration
in that the social engineers in
Philadelphia felt that a few inner city
black children should be put on buses for
90 minutes one way to go to
the best schools in Philadelphia.
As a result of that,
which by the way I hated as a child,
I realize now looking back,
that I was given an opportunity
that most of my friends and
even my siblings were not given.
And so I think what that caused
me to realized is that there is,
in fact, this opportunity gap
that exist in our society.
That if you're lucky
to be put on a bus for
90 minutes a day,
it closes that gap for years.
But there are lots of other
people who are similarly talented
who don't get those opportunities.
So I started off, I guess,
in my career, thinking about how do
those of us who are lucky enough to have
these opportunities, how do we get back,
how do we figure out how we can help
those other people who were not so
fortunate, not so privileged,
to actually reach their full potential.
>> You were a lawyer for a long time and
you won-
>> But
not in a perjorative sense of the word,
okay?
>> [LAUGH]
>> You were a business lawyer and then
now you're the CEO of one of the biggest
pharmaceutical companies in the world.
How does that happen?
How does a lawyer get to that stage?
>> So the first thing I have
to say about career paths, and
I've had this conversation
with a lowt of people,
is that there's an element of
serendipity in everybody's career path.
So I never aspired to be
a pharmaceutical executive.
As you mentioned, and I had
the opportunity in the private practice of
law to do things that I thought
were really be great adventures,
whether it's teaching in South Africa,
doing death penalty work.
But one day, the phone rang.
I answered the phone and
it was the General Counsel of Merck,
who said I'd like you to come and
meet with me and the then CEO of Merck,
a really great CEO named Roy Vagelos,
one of the great CEOs of recent history.
I want you to come and interview with us
because we'd like to bring you to Merck.
And I said, well, okay,
I'll come interview.
And I went home that night and
I said to my wonderful spouse, Andre,
who's in the front room.
That I intended to humor my client by
going for an interview, and she said,
honey, I don't want to tell you about your
business, but this whole law firm thing is
a cruel hoax and you might want to
think more openly about it.
So I did what she told me to do.
>> [LAUGH]
>> And I ended up going to Merck, a little
bit against my will because I didn't
think it would be nearly as adventurous,
being in a corporation as being in a firm
where you could represent anybody that
you wanted.
But little did I know that there was
going to be a real as I worked there.
>> Through serendipity or not,
a lot of us ended up here
[INAUDIBLE] in the world of MBAs.
In the policy,
you've been quoted as being slightly
skeptical with the MBA as a degree.
I believe the exact words were I'm
not sure Bill Gates ever had one.
>> [LAUGH]
>> Don't worry, we get a lot.
But I'm curious,
what is it you think we're missing?
What is it you think we need to go out and
learn in the next phase of our careers?
>> So
let me say that I think business education
really has its values, so you should
be encouraged to hear me say that.
But I think the issues that we face in
business are broader than the traditional
issues around finance, around marketing,
I think the issues that
we have to address is,
as businesses are generally
the issues that society faces.
I believe that the biggest problems
that we have in society can only be
addressed through sustainable means, and I
think businesses can address those issues.
But only if their leaders are willing
to take a broad point of view about
what it is that the business exist to do?
What is the fundamental
purpose of the business?
We have this discussion now,
and unfortunately,
I think what people like Larry think it's
become more of a widespread discussion
about whether corporations exist solely
to create value for their shareholders or
whether they have a broader
purpose in the world.
I happen to believe very strongly that
a company like Merck has a real broad,
significant, salient purpose in the world.
It's 127 years old and the reason why
it's lasted more than a century is
that its purpose goes beyond simply
making money for its shareholders.
If you get up in the morning and
your sole intent is to make money for
your shareholders, you'll miss some really
great opportunities to do a lot of good
for a lot of people.
>> That must particularly hard for
a company like Merck where you've got
employees, you've got shareholders,
and most of all, you've got patients.
How do you go about weighing up
those different constituents
whenever you make a decision?
>> Well, there's no formulaic
way to do it, obviously.
But I think the first thing
is that you have to remember
that the company exists for this purpose.
So I came to work for
a really great CEO named Roy Vagelos.
And I could tell you a lot of stories,
but the thing that I remember more than
anything else is he used to say to me and
he still says to me.
He's 89 years old, and
I still see him frequently.
He says, there are a lot of metrics
around on the way the company operates.
But just remember at Merck,
there are two fundamental metrics,
that if you remember as CEO, you can go
through all your operating reviews, and
you can look at your margins, and
you can look at your cost of goods sold,
you can look at all these
wonderful metrics, but
there's only two metrics
in the end that matters.
Number one, how many people do you help?
And number two,
how much help do you give those people?
And if you're maximizing
the number of people you help, and
you're maximizing the amount of
good that you do for the people
that you are helping, then all of those
other metrics will fall into place.
>> I'd love to unpack that some
more later on in the interview,
bur firstly, there are a few
times when I was researching for
this interview that I came across
times when you had to make really,
really difficult choices,
made very brave choices.
For example,
taking the James Cochran case,
leaving the President's
Manufacturing Council.
You also took on highly sensitive internal
investigation into the Paterno Sandusky
case at Penn State, and I hugely admired
how you held your ground against some
people who were trying to sweep
certain elements under the rug.
How do you know when to act when other
people around you are being silent or
indecisive?
>> Well, I had great parents.
But my mother died when I was young,
so I had the experience of
being raised by a single parent
father who was like a drill sergeant.
He was a very unsentimental person.
But he said to me when I was very young,
probably the best piece of advice that
I've ever gotten from anybody else.
And here it is in a nutshell.
He used to say to me, Kenny,
what other people think about you
is none of your damn business.
>> [LAUGH]
>> And
when I was young I would think,
how could that be?
I want to be Liked, I want to be friendly
with all my colleagues around me.
I want people to like me and
enjoy being around me.
But the more I've experienced in life,
I understand exactly what he was saying.
He was saying that if you can,
focus on what's the right thing to do.
Irrespective of whether people
around you like you or not.
Then you can do the right thing,
so every one of those situations,
the Sandusky investigation was
a very difficult investigation.
I'm a very proud alum of Penn State.
The week before the Sandusky grand jury,
I actually exchanged correspondence
with Joe Paterno who, there'll never
be another coach like Joe Paterno.
No one will ever coach at this school for
60 years.
He was a great man.
He did a lot of wonderful things.
But when we began to see some of
the things that were happening behind
the scenes as a board,
then we had to decide whether we were
going to put the children first,
or whether we we were going to put
the reputation of the university first.
And we chose to do what we
thought was the right thing.
I can't say that everybody agrees with us.
In fact, many of our alums think we
should have represented the university.
We should have defended the university.
We should have defended
the football program.
And I think they have a legitimate
point of view from where they sit.
And the end of the day though, it seemed
to me that what was right in the long
run was that we took a strong stand for
what needs to happen for children.
And you see it happening everywhere.
You see it happening at
Michigan State now, right?
Where the same kinds of things went on.
So I think whether it's Penn State,
you take a death penalty case,
it sounds great in retrospect.
When you start that case, my client
was 13 days before his execution day.
There was a lot of hostility
in that part of Alabama,
because people had bought in to the story
that the conviction was correct.
And in comes this northern lawyer, by the
way, wearing a blue suit, which you're not
supposed to wear in that part of Alabama,
because we're still fighting that war.
>> [LAUGH]
>> And
I'm here to say that the community's
perspective, that the community's
story about what happened in
the night in question is wrong.
That creates a great deal of
anger in the people around you.
And the only way in which you can do that
on a consistent basis is you really have
to believe what my father said,
what they think about you ultimately
is none of your business.
>> You talked about doing the right thing.
And I think a lot of people think we're
at a turning point society at the moment.
There's a real lost of
trust in institutions.
>> Absolutely.
>> And you mentioned earlier to us in the
greenroom that the kind of conflict you
see between capitalism and
democracy in this country and accepting
a certain manner of social inequality.
Is there a solution to this or is this
a endless series of decisions where
we have to rely on people to
make the right one every time?
>> Well,
I don't think that I can sit here and
give you one short set of solutions.
What I would say is that what I am
greatly concerned about our society
is the seeming inability for
us to have nuanced
constructive conversations about
the issues that exist in our society.
And we will never reach
constructive solutions unless
we can have those conversations.
So, for example, frankly,
as I was growing up in
the 70s I would have viewed
myself as a socialist.
The concept that I'm running a large
pharmaceutical company to me,
sometimes I just can't believe it's true,
right?
I remember having an economics
professor in undergraduate school and
he was talking about capitalism.
He happened to be from Eastern Europe,
Professor Albinski.
He was from Eastern Europe.
And he was talking about
the virtues of a capitalist system.
And I remember saying to him,
you're so conservative.
And he walked over and he leaned over, he
looked at me, he said, and you, sonny boy,
have nothing yet to conserve.
>> [LAUGH]
>> I really get him now.
>> [LAUGH]
>> So
here I am,
a staunch defender of the free market.
Well, the free market Inherently requires
some level of economic inequality.
Those people who create value are going
to have more resources than those people
who consume value.
We can't say that everybody is going to
have exactly the same amount of resources.
I accept that.
I think it's actually the best
economic system in the world.
However, if you allow that economic
inequality to translate into
political inequality, for example,
people who have a lot of money can in fact
buy elected representatives,
then I have a problem with that.
And so how do we think about preserving
the economic system in this country which
has created not only tremendous wealth for
people in this country but
around the world?
While at the same time thinking,
well, what's the right balance to have
in terms of our political system?
How much economic inequality are we
willing to tolerate in our country?
We now have a situation where our
economy creates a lot of value for
people who hold capital.
Globalism has been great for
people who hold capital.
The technology revolution, which of
course is centered right out here in
Silicon Valley, it's created a lot of
value for people who hold capital.
But if you're not well-educated,
if you're a person who has a labor job,
all of those have actually been bad for
you.
Because now machines take your place,
labor arbitrage takes your job away.
So how do we try to have a balanced
economy where everybody is
included without losing what's driven the
fundamental strength of our country for
years, which has been
the economic system that we have?
I can't answer all those questions.
But I think, again,
the point I'm making is it's not
a choice between one thing or the other.
>> Certainly not asking you to
answer all those questions,
but will ask you to answer
one particular one.
We're relying on decisive
leaders like you in healthcare.
And we have a system that's hard for
many of us to be optimistic about.
>> [LAUGH]
>> You're already highly influential
in the system.
If you could be king for the day,
what's the one thing you'd change about
the health care system in this country?
>> I would make it patient-centered.
I think the incentives in the system drive
people away from what's good for patients.
I'm a CEO of a pharmaceutical company.
I think Merck goes great things in
the world, but when you sit down with our
friends in the insurance business,
they have different economic incentives.
Physicians have different
economic incentives.
I think the only way in which we can
actually come together and kind of get
alignment around the cost of the system,
around the value of the system,
and the impact of the system on society
and our budgets in society, and
on patients, is to actually say,
what is good for patients as a whole?
Individually, and
from a population standpoint.
I think if we would all agree that
we're here to serve patients and
we want to do what's in the best interest
of patients, I think that would help
us align the really badly aligned
incentives in our system right now.
>> How does that kind
of conversation start?
How do ou get everyone
in the room together?
Is it politically led?
Is it industry led?
>> We're trying do it.
A bunch of us are going to try and
come together again in June from
across the entire healthcare spectrum.
We think of ourselves as
the enlightened ones.
>> [LAUGH]
>> We're all going to try and get together
and see if we can have a conversation
that bridges some of those gaps.
I mean, if you listen to what was being
said the other day by President Trump and
Secretary Azar, a lot of what they
were focusing on is they can see
how badly misaligned
the incentives are in the system.
So, for example,
You hear a lot about drug pricing.
The system in which we actually sell drugs
in the commercial market is one in which,
if you actually lowered your list price,
you'd be less competitive.
As an antitrust lawyer,
I just can't get that through my head.
The way to be non-competitive in my
business is to lower your price.
Why is that?
Well, because many of
the actors in the supply chain
make money as a percentage
of the list price.
So for them high prices
are better than low prices.
Okay?
But if you're a person who's filling
a prescription at the pharmacy counter,
you're paying a copay
based on a list price.
So you would actually
rather have a lower price.
We actually ran that experiment with
a hepatitis C drug that we came out with
a little while ago.
We said, okay, we're the third
entrant in the market, this is a cure.
Let's see what happens if we bring this
product to market significantly
lower than our competition.
Now, that was the category, hepatitis C,
where they used to talk about the $100,000
cure you might remember a few years ago.
We said let's see what happens if we
bring in a drug at a lower price.
Well, I think the experiment
that we ran showed
that a lot of actors in the system would
disfavor a lower list price product.
And there's something wrong with
a system that operates that way.
>> One of the other things in that speech
was referring to President Trump's notion,
I think shared by many people, that
foreign governments who run countries and
public healthcare systems take
advantage of American consumers because
they're able to negotiate drugs in bulk,
effectively.
Is that notion correct, and
is there something that you can change?
>> Well,
I think if you look across the world,
I think it's pretty fair to say that
there's some countries in the world,
particularly some of the higher
OECD countries in Western Europe,
That actually don't pay their fair share
of the cost of pharmaceutical research.
I think that's pretty clear.
How we change that,
I mean I just left London where I met with
some of the top health officials and
I have news for the President.
They're not actually interested
in paying more for our drugs.
They're pretty clear about that.
They actually found some of those comments
mildly amusing, as they say in London.
>> [LAUGH] It's a real shocker they
didn't want to pay more for them.
>> The problem is though, of course,
if Americans didn't, quote, overpay for
drugs, there would be no drugs.
>> I mean,
that's the sad truth of the matter.
At the end of the day, the only thing
worse than Americans paying a very
substantial amount for drugs, is Americans
not paying a substantial amount for drugs.
Because if they didn't, frankly,
we couldn't raise the capital to take
the risks that we do in R and D.
>> You take risks in R and D for
some diseases that you're not
planning on making any money on.
You mentioned that today you shipped
Ebola vaccines free to the Congo.
You, in the past, developed a cure for
River Valley Fever.
When is it you choose to go
after these particular diseases?
How do you come up with that?
>> So the way that we think about our
R and D enterprise at Merck is that
we're pretty much agnostic
to therapeutic category and
pretty much agnostic to modality.
That is to say, we don't say we
want to do a small molecule or
a vaccine or a biologic.
And we don't say we want to do
this disease or that disease.
We try to follow the scientific
opportunities that we get.
And the reason that we ended up in Ebola
was the work that we were doing in our
vaccine research organization really lent
itself to doing something about Ebola.
At a time when frankly, we had that
last outbreak in western Africa,
Sierra Leone, Guinea,
Liberia which killed 11,000 people and
made 25,000 people sick before
we got it under control.
We were able to look at some of
the work that had been done,
pioneering work done elsewhere, and
say the work that we know how to
do inside Merck to sort of purify
the antigen to make sure that
we bring forward the right kinds of steps
to go from just having an antigen to
actually having a full-fledged safe
vaccine is what we do every day.
We thought if we took that program over,
if we paid for that IP, if we brought it
in-house, there was a good chance that
we could do something for the world.
And I'm very proud that in
the field tests that drug,
that vaccine has been shown to be,
so far, 100% effective.
>> That's amazing.
And Merck does a lot more.
>> Well,
it's hard to be more than 100% effective.
>> [LAUGH] Merck does a lot more for
causes.
And one cause I've heard you speak
about particularly passionately is
preventing the death of
women in childbirth.
Why is this something you are so
passionate about or that Merck is so
passionate about?
>> So, I think, I don't want to
sound like I'm just a booster for
Merck, but I will say that
the company has as part of its Ethos,
the concept that we should
be contributing to humanity.
And we don't just say, well,
we're contributing to humanity because
the medicines and vaccines that we
make actually have a positive impact.
I have to say this industry
has a lot to be proud of.
At the beginning of the 20th century
global life expectancy was less than
40 years.
It's now above 70 years, largely
driven by the innovations by Merck and
other companies.
But we don't say, because we invented
a measles vaccine which probably has saved
20 million children's lives over the last
15 years, that that's all we need to do.
We need to also look at those things
that we're not required to do.
We need to find areas where we can bring
both our financial resources as well
as our scientific expertise to bear and
we just chose maternal mortality because
there's, 80% of women who die in child
birth die from preventable causes.
And just to give you some data,
people think this is a problem in
Sub-Saharan Africa or India or
other poor places in the world.
In New York City, the chance that
a black woman dies in childbirth is 12
times higher than the chance that
a white woman will die in childbirth.
12 times higher.
If you look across all OECD countries,
in maternal mortality,
the US ranks 32nd out of 35 countries.
I mean, that's an amazing statistic.
So as we look at those things,
we know what to do.
The problem in maternal mortality is
that we don't have these clear protocols
to deal with the issues like hemorrhaging,
like spikes in blood pressure,
like sepsis.
It used to be in this country that
if you had a heart attack, you died.
Now you don't die anymore because there
are clear protocols to what to do when
somebody presents at a hospital
with a heart attack.
So we just decided that we would devote
a half a billion dollars over ten years
to seeing how we could reduce
preventable cases of maternal mortality.
And we feel good about that.
But there's also a business
benefit to that,
because when we go to recruit world class
scientists that come out of academia,
those kinds of things are evidence to them
of what the company really cares about.
And I think it's a tremendous
competitive advantage.
When people can see the kind of impact
that we're having in areas like that.
>> You mentioned a truly horrifying
statistic, which is that black mothers
are far more likely to die than
white mothers in [CROSSTALK].
>> Yeah, only 12 times more.
>> Is this an example of
institutionalized bias?
What are the factors behind this and
what can be done about them?
So again, in the spirit of
having a nuanced conversation,
I won't label it as just
the product of institutional bias,
but clearly, there is institutional bias.
Because the same studies that show
a black woman is 12 times more likely
to die than a white woman
show that it almost
doesn't matter what the socioeconomic
status of the black woman is.
So, even when they have insurance,
even when they present,
they don't get the same care.
There's also the issue of what
happens in their environment, right?
And so, from my perspective,
that is an issue, I think in this case,
because even if you control for
socioeconomic status.
An African American woman in
New York City with an advanced degree
is more likely to die than a white
man without a high school degree.
And I think it's pretty hard to square
those things without looking at
how the healthcare system delivers
care to different people.
>> There are clearly issues
more broadly in society, and
we've all heard about
the opportunities gap before.
You mentioned this earlier at
the beginning of the interview.
In the past, I've heard you also mention
an access gap for minorities in business.
Can you unpack this idea
a little further for us?
>> Sure, when I talk about
the opportunity gap, I mean two things.
And then I'll get to access gap.
So I talked about being bussed as part of
the experimentation when I was a young
child in Philadelphia,
being bussed to majority schools,
white schools,
let's call them what they were.
So, what did that do for me?
When I was in elementary,
and middle, and high school,
I didn't think of myself as a student.
I went to schools where the ambient
standard for education was very high.
I didn't know it was higher than
the kids that I was playing with in my
neighborhood in the summers, but
the ambient standard was very high.
So when you took standardized tests,
you came across as being very prepared for
those things.
So that closed one form
of opportunity gap.
Also when you go into business, or
in my case, into the practice of law,
the opportunity to work on the best
cases isn't distributed evenly.
This is the stock and trade of lawyers.
In my case, I was very fortunate
that the then general counsel of
Merck took an interest in me and
made sure that I got really good cases.
And then I learned to try sophisticated
cases, and that made my career what it is.
So one form of opportunity
gap was education.
The other form of opportunity gap is,
once I arrived in the institution,
who got the best opportunities
inside the institution?
And then the third one is this access gap.
So the access gap is what I would
define as being, do people have access
to the people in the firm who can make or
break their career?
So I sit before you as the CEO of Merck,
and the reason I am the CEO of Merck
is that Roy Vagelos, who was the CEO two
removed from me, took an interest in me.
Hired me in the company as a lawyer,
called me into his office as soon as he
got me to sign up, and said,
you cannot be a lawyer.
I said to him, what do you mean?
I'd like to contribute to
Merck in my own discipline.
And his reply was,
that's the most ridiculous thing
I've ever heard in my life.
We're in the medicine business.
We're not in the legal business.
And he forced me out of my comfort level.
And as a result of that,
I got access to working in broader areas
of the company as I sit here today.
I realize that I'm the product of
being given access to those broader
opportunities inside the company.
So that Is an important issue.
There was a New York Times front page
story, you might have seen it last fall,
that said the majority of both men and
women are uncomfortable
with close mentoring relationships
between men and women.
Well if that's the case,
then we're putting women in the position
where they lack the mentorship and
the sponsorship that's necessary
to be successful in business.
And so we have to mindful that
talent may be evenly distributed.
I believe it is, but opportunities and
access are not evenly distributed.
>> You are at the very top now,
you have access to boardrooms that
none of us are able to sit in.
Minority underrepresentation on boards has
received a lot of attention from the media
in the last few years.
From your perspective, from where you sit,
do you think attitudes and
perceptions in boards is really changing?
>> So I have access to a limited
number of boards, of course,
my board is extremely enlightened.
>> [LAUGH]
[APPLAUSE]
>> Pete Wendell's in the front row.
>> [LAUGH]
>> No, I do think that
generally speaking,
the conversation is happening around
board rooms about representation,
about diversity.
I think that there still are challenges.
So for example, there's a lot of focus
now on recruiting women to boards.
I'll use that as an example.
But the selection criteria
have lagged that conversation.
So everybody's eager to recruit women to
boards, but they still say we want CEOs.
Well, there are more CEOs with the first
name Michael than there are women CEOs in
the Fortune 500.
So if you're going to insist on women and
saying that you have to use
the same traditional criteria, then
you're at odds with your actual intent.
So, I think we have to open up our minds,
because there's talent everywhere,
and I think we have to be open.
But when you have that conversation,
you have to guard against the reaction
that you're lowering standards now.
We're bringing women into the board room,
but we've lowered the standards.
And in fact, actually, I think the biggest
problem with boards is group think.
And so, if you get a bunch of people
who come from the same background,
they're more likely to see
the problem the same way than
people who come from
different backgrounds.
The value of my board,
frankly, is two things.
They bring varied experiences that are
very different from the management teams,
including an outside-in view of Merck.
And the other one is that while
they're empathetic, they're just not
too empathetic, so that they don't
let us get away with our bullshit.
So at the end of the day,
you want people who come
into the board room with very different
experiences and perspectives.
That's how you get the best deliberations.
>> You remain one of the very few
minority CEOs in the Fortune 500.
>> Yeah, there are three of us,
out of 500.
>> Where all have you been?
>> There used to be six
of us in the happy days,
the halcyon days of African American CEOs.
A few years ago, there were a whole
six out of 500, now there are three.
>> We're all hoping to be
leaders in the future.
What do you want all of us to do to
make sure we change this for the better?
>> So I think this issue of diversity is
one of these issues that I've started off
saying is a very challenging and
nuanced issue, that it's really difficult
to discuss in corporate America.
Because what happens in the conversation,
inevitably,
is people say, in effect,
let me tell you what my experience is.
And you're not allowed to
challenge my experience.
And that leads people to
retreat to different camps,
to be defensive,
to engage in the rhetoric of blame,
which doesn't solve anything,
as far as I'm concerned.
So I would say that for
the young students who are here today,
I hope that you actually understand
the points that I made about how
opportunity and
access isn't distributed [INAUDIBLE].
And I hope that you're willing to take
steps to ensure that we close those gaps,
whether you're talking about What's
happening in public schools in our
society, whether you're talking about
what's happening in corporations.
I think enlightened leaders can
provide those opportunities.
I'll say it for
the last time, I am the product of
a CEO who looked at me and thought
that I had much more potential than I ever
would've dreamed that I would of had.
I hope I have done a good
job as the CEO of Murk but
the opportunity came from somebody
who was willing to invest in me.
>> So
again before we turn to audience Q&A,
I've got one last huge societal
problems for you to solve.for us.
If you succeed at your job you
will save the employee lives,
it's obviously a good thing.
But there's an aging population and
the associated burden's worry
>> Yeah It does.
I mean, we talk about the cost to
the health care system, of our drugs.
So that's certainly a challenge
to the health care system.
But the fundamental challenge in our
health care system is chronic disease.
90% of the costs in the healthcare
system is from chronic disease and
chronic disease is correlated with age.
So the good news is with all
of these medical advances,
people are living longer,
longevity is the good thing.
But when it comes to healthcare
consumption, longevity isn't a good thing.
The older people are,
the more healthcare services they need.
And as a compassionate society I would
hope the more health care services we're
willing to give them.
But the aging of our society
is a major challenge for
the economics of our health care system.
In fact, some estimates are that a third
of all health care spending is in the last
two months of life.
We have to think about that and we have to
think about what's the compassionate and
rational way to deal
with people as they age.
>> So kind of a, half of us here are
second year MBAs, we're about to graduate.
We've got a month to go.
We're going to have as much
fun as possible in that month.
But soon reality's going to
hit us in the face.
So I'd like to give you the opportunity
to give us some quick words of wisdom
before we go,
in the form of a lightning round.
So I'm going to hit you with two options,
and
then just say back the one
you think is most appealing.
>> Okay.
>> So should
we take time finding the perfect job or
just get on the ladder?
>> I say get on the ladder.
>> Stay in the US or move to China?
>> Stay in the US.
>> Go into tech or into finance?
Go into tech.
>> Communication,
should we be blunt or tactful?
>> I think we should be tactful
at all times but honest.
>> Is Bitcoin a bubble or the real deal?
>> [LAUGH]
>> Well Bill Gates says it's a bubble,
so who am I to argue?
>> [LAUGH]
>> Beyonce or Rihanna?
>> I'm sorry?
>> Beyonce or Rihanna?
>> [LAUGH]
>> Beyonce.
>> [APPLAUSE]
>> Personal philanthropy,
should we be giving time now or
money later?
>> I'd say both really,
but give money later.
[LAUGH]
>> Now
that's the question at
this gentlemen over here.
If you have money you an make
a big difference in the world.
>> East coast or West coast?
>> Clearly East coast.
>> [APPLAUSE]
>> All right.
>> Especially Philadelphia, right?
>> [APPLAUSE]
>> Kids now or kids later?
>> Kids later.
>> [LAUGH]
>> I'll tell you I have two,
it's an overrated experience when
they get to be here on this show.
>> [LAUGH]
>> Don't have to tell me.
Given the state of the world today,
optimism or realism?
>> I say optimism, for sure.
>> And finally, the big one,
LeBron or Jordan?
>> No question, Jordan.
>> Yeah!
>> [APPLAUSE]
>> Ladies and gentlemen, thanks so much.
Please welcome him back, Ken Frasier.
It's all in fun, thank you.
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