The Interstate Highway System: A Model for Investing in U.S. Health Care

Driving from California to Vermont, as I did this summer, offers time to think and plenty to look at.

The vast interstate highway system that I followed for much of my journey, championed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, was created in large part by the Federal-Aid Highway Act in 1956, which declared that building this highway system was “essential to the national interest.”

It was surprising to realize that this highway system would qualify as a baby boomer if it were a person. Freeways feel so ingrained in our American identity. Within a few decades of their construction we already think of the freedom of the open road as a fundamental American value.

These roads reflect the duality of American life today. We value individual freedom so much that in a 2013 Gallup poll, 75% of respondents ranked it as our top national virtue. Yet we consistently struggle with creating the shared infrastructure that enables this freedom.