This is episode 31, "The Tremendous Good a Publicly Sponsored Insurance System Can Do."

My guest, Donald Berwick, MD, has a Masters of Public Policy and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. He is President Emeritus and Senior Fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), an organization that Dr. Berwick co-founded and led as President and CEO for 18 years. He is considered one of the nation's leading authorities on health care quality and improvement.

Dr. Berwick is a pediatrician by background, and he has served as Clinical Professor of Pediatrics and Health Care Policy at the Harvard Medical School, Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health, and on the staff of several hospitals. He has also served as chair of the National Advisory Council of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

In July, 2010, President Obama appointed Dr. Berwick to the position of Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and he served as Administrator until December, 2011.

Do not miss this episode as Dr. Berwick makes the case for single-payer Medicare for All that is patient-centered.

Episode 31 Transcript

This is episode 30, "Plain Economics: The Main Problem With Rural Health Care."

My guest, Robert Devereaux, MD, practices family medicine in Pearisburg, Virginia, a rural town near the West Virginia border. He received his medical degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine and is certified by the American Board of Family Physicians. Dr. Devereaux has been in practice for more than 20 years.

Do not miss this episode as Dr. Devereaux describes the problems that rural residents have getting health care and how Medicare for All can help.

Episode 30 Transcript

This is episode 29, “Retrospective Denials.”

My guest, Martha Gaines, is a 1983 cum laude graduate of the University of Wisconsin Law School and received her LL.M in 1993 from the same school. Her thesis is titled "I do make house calls--Effective Legal Representation From Our Clients' Perspective." Ms. Gaines is on the faculty of the National Criminal Defense College in Macon, Georgia and the New York State Defender's Association in Albany, New York.”

Ms. Gaines and several colleagues founded The Center for Patient Partnerships at the University of Wisconsin in September 2000. The Center trains students from the schools of Law, Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy and Social Work to provide advocacy to cancer patients. Ms. Gaines teaches a Patient Advocacy course where students are joined in interdisciplinary teams that help cancer patients understand their diagnoses, get the information necessary to make critical treatment decisions, and support patient's efforts to obtain the treatment they need. The Center also conducts research about issues relevant to patient care and health care delivery from the patient's perspective.

Do not miss the episode as Ms. Gaines explains what retrospective denials are, and why they are especially harmful to patients.

Here is the link to the JAMA article mentioned in the podcast, "Changing the Game of Prior Authorization, The Patient Perspective."

This is episode 28, “Racial Inequities in Health Care.”

My guest, Susan Rogers, MD, FACP, is the president-elect of Physicians for a National Health Program. She has recently retired, but continues helping people as a volunteer attending hospitalist and internist at the John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County, Illinois. Previously, Dr. Rogers was the co-director of medical student programs for the Department of Medicine at Stroger Hospital. She is also an assistant professor of medicine at Rush University and an assistant professor of medicine at Rosalind Franklin University. She has received numerous teaching awards from Stroger Hospital, Rush University, and Rosalind Franklin University.

Dr. Rogers is a member and Fellow of the American College of Physicians (FACP), and a member of the Society of General Internal Medicine and the National Medical Association.

Do not miss this episode as Dr. Rogers describes the racial inequities in our current health care system system and what can be done to address them.

This is episode 27, “Stop Using Health Insurance Industry Language”

My guest, Ben Palmquist, is the Health Care Program Director for the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative (NESRI). He does research, communications, and strategy to help grassroots organizations build power to win universal, publicly financed health care and to transform our economy and public policies to meet everyone's needs and put people ahead of profits.

Do not miss this episode as Mr. Palmquist describes how we use language developed by the health insurance companies to describe a publicly financed health care system.

Here is the link to the article mentioned in this podcast, "Parroting the Right."

This is episode 26, “Surprise Medical Bills”

My guest Mark Krasnoff, MD, is an internist in St. Louis, Missouri. He received his MD from Johns Hopkins and teaches students and residents as a member of the clinical faculty for Washington University School of Medicine and St. Louis University School of Medicine.

Dr. Krasnoff has also held positions as President of the Medical Staff of SSM Rehabilitation Hospital and as chair of the peer review committee at St. Mary's Hospital in St. Louis.

He has been involved with Physicians for Social Responsibility since 1987 and with Physicians for a National Health Program since 2012.

Do not miss this episode as Dr. Krasnoff describes the problems and anxiety caused by surprise medical bills.

This is episode 25, “Insurance Companies Are Practicing Medicine, And They Are Doing It in a Way That If a Doctor Did That, They Would Absolutely Lose Their License.”

My guest, William Bennett, MD, is a Pediatric Gastroenterologist. He is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and an Adjunct Associate Professor of Urology at Indiana University. In addition, Dr. Bennett has an M.S. in both Computer Science and Health Informatics and has written and co-written several papers.

Do not miss this episode as Dr. Bennett describes the problems of letting untrained insurance clerks make medical decisions, other problems with our corporate-run health care system, and why we need to end our corporate-run health care system.

Correction: In this episode I said, “In my most recent podcast episode before this, I had a doctor on, Dr. Victoria Dooley.” That was “Episode 23: The Average Family Is Going to Get Much More and Pay Much Less,” which was two podcast episodes before this.

This is episode 24, “Why Drug Prices Are So Expensive in the United States.”

My guest Donald Light explains why drug prices are so high in the United States and the deficiencies in our current drug regulation system.

Donald Light is a Professor of Psychiatry and Medical Sociology at Rowan University-School of Osteopathic Medicine. He is a guest researcher at Princeton and New York University. Prof. Light received the Edmund Pellegrino Medal in Bioethics for 2016 and the Distinguished Career Award for 2013 from the American Sociological Association. On the Google citation h-index, Prof. Light ranks in the 96th percentile.

Do not miss this episode as Prof. Light describes the problems of our current drug regulatory system and explains why our drug prices are so high.

For more information about drug regulation and pricing, check out Prof. LIght’s website, http://www.pharmamyths.net/.

Prof. Light’s book, “The Risks of Prescription Drugs,” can be found here and here.

This is episode 23, "The Average Family Is Going to Get Much More and Pay Much Less."

In this episode, my guest, Victoria Dooley, MD, describes the problems patients and doctors face under our current health care system and how Medicare for All will solve those problems.

Dr. Dooley is a board-certified Family Medicine physician, a member of Physicians for a National Health Program, and a health care activist.

She has appeared on numerous live radio and television broadcasts, and she was a weekly contributing medical expert on ABC WXYZ-TV news in Detroit for over two years. Dr. Dooley has published op-eds in the The New York Times and the HuffPost.

Do not miss this episode as Dr. Dooley describes the problems of our current health care system and how Medicare for All can solve them.

This is episode 22, “Mothers for Medicare for All – Part 2.”

In Part 2, my guest Kristen Grimm, founder of Mothers for Medicare for All, continues the conversation by explaining her decision to start Mothers for Medicare for All and her plans for the organization.

Do not miss this episode as Ms. Grimm continues her riveting and powerful story about her support of Medicare for All and her decision to start her own organization.