Mark Bertolini, the CEO of Aetna, a U.S. health care giant, shared two deeply personal stories with HuffPost Live at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday. The experiences, he said, inspired him to see the U.S. health care system for all its faults and shortcomings.
Bertolini told HuffPostLive's Roy Sekoff that the two health-related tragedies -- first his son developing cancer at the age of 16, then the CEO himself breaking his neck later on -- made him feel the country's health care system "wasn't wired" right.
"Both of these experience taught me that if I didn't take it into my own hands that I wasn't going to make it," he said.
Bertolini came to believe that a health care system should be built around the individual's needs, not the system's or the company's.
"[As currently constructed] it's not a system and the patient really isn't a person," Bertolini said. "The patient is a diagnosis. The patient is the day's crisis."
"The focus on the disease instead of the individual does not create advocacy for the person, nor does it coordinate the care," he added.
Watch a video of Bertolini's interview above, and see more updates from Davos below:
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