RAINE MAGAZINE Volume 20 | Innovate

RAINE RAPID FIRE QUESTIONS
(Dr. Carson had only a few seconds to
answer each)
CARSON:
Sprite or 7-up – Sprite
Volleyball or kickball – Volleyball
Tea or coffee – Neither
Purple Raine or Thriller – Thriller
Khakis or blue jeans – Kakis
Gucci or Calvin Klein – Calvin Klein, only
because I know the owner
Pizza or hamburgers – Pizza
Star Wars or Avatar – Avatar
Montego Bay or St. Tropez – Montego Bay
and healthcare reform in the book, I am talking about
making healthcare available to all of our citizens. Because
I am not a particular fan of the Affordable Care Act, people
say, “Well he doesn’t want people to have healthcare.” It’s
just the opposite, I want everybody to have healthcare but
I want them to have good healthcare. I don’t want there to
be a two tier system--the way to do that is health savings
accounts. If everybody has a health savings account,
there in charge of how the dollars are dispersed. There
are a number of different ways we can populate these
account financially for a lot less money than were using
right now for healthcare and everybody can go and have
whatever they need done. If you sprain your ankle and you
think you need an x-ray; it’s coming out of your HSA. You
need a physical exam; it’s coming out of your HSA. You
need birth control pills; it’s coming out of our HSA—no
hobby lobby. Consequently, very few things are impinging
on your major medical or catastrophic insurance, which
means that the cost of that plummets.
Also, if you give people flexibility with their HSA within their
family it makes every family their own health insurance
company, with no middle man and provides enormous
flexibility. By utilizing health saving accounts, it brings the
whole healthcare system into the free market, and that is
what controls price, and that is what controls quality.
RAINE: Would the HSA be funded by the employer, the
individual or both?
CARSON: It can be funded through a whole list of different
things: employer, gifts, tax returns and for the indigent
through the government. For what the government already
pays into the indigent, this would be considerably less,
and yet would give people considerably more flexibility.
RIANE: What cultural or historic figure have you been
most compared to?
CARSON: It depends on whether you are talking about
people on the right or people on the left. People on the
left would say I am more like a demon, and people on
the right would compare me to something good. I don’t
really care that much about that; what I do care about
is doing the right thing. So many people who spend all
their time with their finger in the air seeing what people
think. No one who ever accomplishes anything great
does that! You have to be convicted about what you
are doing. I just worry about doing what’s right. I also
happen to be a person of faith and I do believe there is a
difference between right and wrong and when I talk about
compassion, I am talking about it from the point of view of
actually improving people’s lives and not making people
dependent.
RAINE: What words of wisdom would you share with
rising entrepreneurs?
CARSON: I would say learn how you learn, because
everybody learns in a different way; play to your strengths
and away from your weaknesses. The more you know,
the more valuable you become and the more options you
have. In terms of entrepreneurship, don’t close yourself
off to anything.
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