Healthcare is Hard: A Podcast for Insiders

Sitting at the intersection of healthcare policy, hospital finance, and patient access, the 340B drug discount program is a hot button issues in the pharmacy space. The program is critically important to providers that serve high volumes of low income and vulnerable patient populations, but it’s drawing increasing scrutiny.

340B was established in 1992 as part of the Public Health Services Act to help providers stretch scarce resour...

From being at the center of some of the most significant shifts in U.S. healthcare policy over the past two decades, Liz Fowler can offer valuable perspective in uncertain times. In her most recent government role, Liz served as director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), an organization she helped create a decade earlier. 

As Chief Health Counsel at the Senate Finance Committee, Liz played a major role in th...

Dr. Mark McClellan has served as a Member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), and Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). But his experiences before, and accomplishments following these leadership roles at the highest levels of government health policy are equally important to his perspective on the healthcare ecosystem – espe...

Dr. Josh Mandel says his first love was software. But on a whim, while studying computer science and software engineering at MIT, he took a course that opened his eyes to the world of medicine and genetics. It changed the trajectory of his career away from software – but only temporarily. He entered medical school after earning a bachelor’s degree in computer science and began rotating through Boston-area hospitals at the same time...

Brendan Keeler’s path into healthcare interoperability has been anything but straightforward. After early stints implementing Epic in the U.S. and Europe, he helped hundreds of startups connect to provider and payer systems at Redox, Zus Health and Flexpa before taking the reins of the Interoperability Practice at HTD Health. Along the way, his Health API Guy blog turned dense policy updates into plain-language guides, earning a fo...

Seth Hain has spent two decades at Epic, watching the electronic health record evolve from digital filing cabinet to care-delivery platform. Now he thinks the entire stack of software is being re-imagined, only this time it isn’t mobile or cloud driving the change, but generative AI.   

In a conversation with Keith Figlioli, Hain explains how new tooling, cheaper compute and larger context windows are pushing healthcare toward an “a...

Brian D. Pieninck didn’t take a conventional path to healthcare leadership. He started his career as an 18-year-old IT contractor and spent two decades working across the industry before becoming President and CEO of CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield. He now also serves as Chair of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, bringing both local and national perspective to the role. 

In this episode, Keith Figlioli speaks with Pieninck ab...

Kody Kinsley has been called many things—operator, innovator, Medicaid “nerd”—but above all, he’s a fierce advocate for the health and well-being of the populations Medicaid serves. Now a senior advisor at the Milken Institute and recently North Carolina’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kinsley joins Keith Figlioli for a wide-ranging conversation about how Medicaid works, why it matters, and where innovation is reshaping i...

Dr. Ali Khan has spent his career at the intersection of medicine, public policy, and value-based care. He’s also been at the forefront of some of the country's most innovative care delivery models—from Iora Health and CareMore to Oak Street Health and now Aetna, where he serves as Chief Medical Officer of Medicare at Aetna, a CVS Health company. In this episode, Keith Figlioli sits down with Dr. Khan for a conversation about ...

The first two episodes in this Healthcare is Hard podcast series on “Opportunities in Oncology” explored the relationship between academic medical centers and community care, with guests Dr. Stephen Schleicher from Tennessee Oncology, and Dr. Harlan Levine from City of Hope. For the third and final episode in the series, Dr. Daphne Haas-Kogan joined Keith Figlioli for a conversation that dives more deeply into patient care, innovat...

Dr. Harlan Levine began his career practicing internal medicine but soon moved into business leadership roles at national healthcare organizations to help improve the dysfunction with payer-provider relationships that he experienced firsthand as a physician.

At United Health Group, Dr. Levine joined as clinical lead of the team that launched Optum, where he subsequently served as chief medical officer for more than six years. He als...

There’s been a massive gap in oncology where people who have been responsible for a dramatic increase in the standard of care have lacked a solid understanding of the business, payment and policy constructs required to deliver it. Dr. Stephen Schleicher has spent the early part of his career working to fill that gap.

Dr. Schleicher entered medical school with an interest in oncology, anchored by an appreciation for the psy...

Elements of the new Trump administration are coming into focus as announcements of key healthcare appointments and nominations provide indications for what the market can expect starting in January. To dissect the impact these changes might have, Wall Street Analyst Jeff Garro joined Keith Figlioli to wrap up a four-part series of episodes on election implications. Previous episodes featured conversations with JP Morgan’s Lisa Gill...

Healthcare was not a major focus during the 2024 election where other key issues drove most of the discussion. This left a vacuum around specific healthcare policies and what to expect from a second Trump Administration. With few details available and political capital to spend from the ‘red sweep’ this election, healthcare stakeholders are pondering how much of the incoming administration’s preference for disrupting the status quo...

With the White House and Congress up for grabs this election, anticipation in the healthcare industry is high. Shifts in healthcare policy will influence how care is paid for and delivered, which will of course influence the flow of investment dollars in both public and private markets.

During the first episode of a four-part series on election implications, beltway insider Julie Barnes laid out potential scenarios for the direction...

Julie Barnes has made a career helping health plans, tech vendors, investors and others in the healthcare space decipher health policy. She’s a former Hill staffer who earned her law degree and spent a decade in corporate law serving healthcare clients before moving to policy think tanks, business consulting, and founding Maverick Health Policy. At Maverick, she provides strategic advice on federal health policy to private companie...

OSF HealthCare stands as a model health system for those who want to do innovation right. One of the defining characteristics of the Peoria, Illinois-based system is how it aligns innovation with operations for everyone – all 24,000 employees across 159 locations, including 16 hospitals.

Becky Buchen is responsible for driving innovation at OSF HealthCare. As SVP of Innovation Operations she works to engage and educate peo...

With great power comes great responsibility and in healthcare, those words may have never held more meaning than they do with the advent of artificial intelligence. AI most certainly has the power to transform healthcare, and those in the industry working to develop and use it have an immense responsibility to shape principles that ensure these technologies help, not harm.

The Coalition for Health AI (CHAI) was created wit...

Chris Coburn has been driving health system innovation for decades. He is currently chief innovation officer at Mass General Brigham (MGB), the nation’s largest academic research enterprise with over $16 billion in annual revenue, 1.5 million patient visits and more than $2.4 billion in research expenditures. MGB also has a managed care organization, out-patient facilities and community hospitals. 7,000 of its faculty are appointed...