I missed Bill Gates’ remarks about global health and pharmaceutical innovations to the J.P. Moran Health Conference, but not his message. Earlier in my career, I had a front-row seat as VP of External Affairs at the Gates Foundation-funded former Institute for OneWorld Health (now PATH Drug Development) where his use of philanthropy to de-risk innovation in drug development for neglected tropical diseases yielded some early wins. I believe in his “the smart thing to do, the right thing to do” approach to sustainable and profitable private-public partnerships.

Where is our Bill Gates for US healthcare? Perhaps, she was sitting in from of me during in the basement of Glide Memorial Church for @ConsejoSano_USFuture of Medicaid panel discussion. Although Bill Gates wasn’t there, the panelists - Andy Slavitt (@ASlavitt), Molly Coye, Margaret Laws, Greg Buchert, Christian Seale, Abner Mason – are the type of leaders who went to Seattle in the early 2000’s to meet with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and helped create a nonprofit pharmaceutical industry as a way to prove “All lives have equal value."

We already have the nonprofit healthcare industry in place. Perhaps we just need the will and skill of "impatient optimists" like Bill and Melinda Gates to make this the goal of the 2020s and beyond. Any Seattle billionaires interested?