David Cutler: belief

Transcript context

…Within cities, are there high returns or low returns to making travel through the city easier? Basically, you would get people to the emergency ward faster if they had a gunshot wound or a heart attack. Does that matter much, or that’s seventh order? No, that matters quite a lot. Having a well-functioning emergency system is extremely important. Just take one example. When the marathon bombings occurred in Boston a few years ago, the number of deaths was very small. I think it was two or three deaths. No one who made it to a hospital alive died. That was because the emergency system had practiced intensely, how do you handle a mass casualty situation? Where do you get people to? What do you do once they’re there? There should have been way more deaths than there were, but it was because of the ability of the system to handle it that we wound up doing better. I think, for any city, figuring out how to get emergencies treated right away and to the right places, and then having those places do the right thing, is really important. If we put aside the fact that you likely have personal connections where you live right now, as many of us do, just in the abstract, as you grow older, where in this country would you most want to get sick?…

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