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.

Read full article by Claudia Williams, CEO, Manifest MedEx, published in StatNews.