From fast food drive-throughs to Netflix autoplay, many of America's favorite products are designed to maximize profits at the expense of our health. But Thomas Goetz, co-founder of Building H, believes there's a better way. In this episode about corporate responsibility and public health, the former WIRED editor explains why changing company behavior may be easier than changing consumer habits – and how a new health accountability index could help transform America.

We cover:

🏗️ Why the structure of modern society makes healthy choices nearly impossible for most Americans

📊 How Building H's new corporate health index is measuring companies' impact on consumer wellbeing

🎮 The surprising companies getting health right, from Pokemon Go to sustainable housing developers

📈 Why health metrics should be included in ESG frameworks and corporate KPIs

🏃‍♀️ The challenge of aligning corporate profits with positive health outcomes

🔄 How small product changes can drive meaningful population health improvements

💡 Why traditional public health approaches need reinvention for today's challenges

🏢 The role of public benefit corporations in building health-first businesses

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About our guest:

Thomas Goetz is a journalist, entrepreneur, and author. He uses data and design and stories to help people understand and navigate complicated issues in their world.

Thomas is the co-founder of Iodine, an award-winning website that has helped millions of people make sense of their health and medicines. In 2016, Iodine was acquired by GoodRx, America’s leading source for prescription drug savings, where he presently serves as chief of research. Thomas was previously the executive editor at WIRED, which he led to a dozen National Magazine Awards in as many years. He began his career as a reporter at the Village Voice and the Wall Street Journal. He also wrote the LaunchPad column for Inc. magazine.

Thomas is co-founder of Building H, a nonprofit with a mission to build health into everyday life. He has written two books, most recently the 2014 bestseller The Remedy: Robert Koch, Arthur Conan Doyle, and the Quest to Cure Tuberculosis. He served as the first Entrepreneur-in-Residence for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Curator-in-Residence for Adobe Systems. His TED talk on visualizing medical data has been viewed half a million times.

Goetz holds a Master of Public Health degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Master's in American literature from the University of Virginia. He graduated from Bates College, and lives in San Francisco.

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Show notes:

Building H Index

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2025 has started with sobering reminders of healthcare's challenges, while also showcasing technology's potential to save lives. Join us for this week's episode as we analyze recent headlines:

🏥 UnitedHealth's first earnings report since CEO's murder

🔥 How the Watch Duty app is helping Californians navigate devastating wildfires

🏛️ FDA's flurry of new health protection rules

📊 A concerning new report on healthcare consolidation

💰 The compelling economic case for investing in women's health

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Show notes:

📈 UnitedHealth Group (UNH) Earnings Call Transcript

📕 HHS Consolidation in Health Care Markets Report

💃 The WHAM Report on Women's Health

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From selling deceased patients' body parts to denying cancer treatment over upfront payments, the Lown Institute's annual Shkreli Awards spotlight the most egregious examples of profiteering and dysfunction in American healthcare. Dr. Vikas Saini, President of the Lown Institute, walks us through 2024's (dis)honorees and what they reveal about the state of our healthcare system.

We cover:

🏆 The origin and impact of the Shkreli Awards

🏥 How a Texas medical school sold body parts without family consent

💉 The booming business of unnecessary infant tongue-tie procedures

💊 A Montana oncologist's shocking pattern of patient harm

🏦 UnitedHealth's growing control over American healthcare

💰 How private equity firm Steward Health Care bankrupted community hospitals

🔍 What these cases tell us about healthcare's future

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Show notes:

➡️ Nominate someone for the $25k Bernard Lown Award for Social Responsibility

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About our guest:

Vikas Saini, MD is president of the Lown Institute. He is a clinical cardiologist trained by Dr. Bernard Lown at Harvard, where he has taught and done research. Dr. Saini leads the Institute’s signature project, the Lown Institute Hospitals Index, the first ranking to measure hospital social responsibility. The Index, first launched in July 2020, evaluates hospitals on equity, value, and outcomes, and includes never-before-used metrics such as avoiding overuse, pay equity, and racial inclusivity. 

In his role at the Lown Institute since 2012, Dr. Saini led the development of the Right Care series of papers published by The Lancet in 2017; convened six national conferences featuring world-renowned leaders in health care; and guided other Lown Institute projects such as the “Shkreli Awards.” Dr. Saini also serves as co-chair of the Right Care Alliance, a grassroots network of clinicians, patient activists, and community leaders organizing to put patients, not profits, at the heart of health care.

Prior to the Lown Institute, Dr. Saini was in private practice in cardiology for over 15 years on Cape Cod, where he also founded a primary care physician network participating in global payment contracts. He also co-founded Aspect Medical Systems, the pioneer in noninvasive consciousness monitoring in the operating room with the BIS device.

Dr. Saini is an expert on the optimal medical management of cardiologic conditions, medical overuse, hospital performance and evaluation, and health equity. He has spoken and presented research at professional meetings around the world, and has been quoted in numerous print media, radio, and television.

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In this bonus episode, Bessemer Venture Partners’ Healthcare and Life Sciences team shares the top industry developments they anticipate in the year to come.

We cover:

⚖️ The future of Obamacare under Trump

💊 Novel drug modalities

📊 Improved GLP-1 payment models

🏥 Caregiver workforce shifts

🤖 Multimodal clinical AI in practice

🔮 And more!

Join Bessemer Partners Steve Kraus and Andrew Hedin, and Vice Presidents Sofia Guerra and Morgan Cheatham, for this bonus episode on the state of the healthcare business in 2025.

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"Healthcare attracts a lot of good people, but it also attracts a lot of morally unscrupulous people who consistently demonstrate their willingness to do horribly unethical stuff to make a lot of money."

Join us for many mic-drop moments with recording artist-turned-healthcare-investor D.A. Wallach, who tells it like it is—but in a nice way only someone who grew up in the Midwest can.

From questioning the "doctor" honorific to calling large health systems "the root of evil," D.A. challenges healthcare's sacred cows and offers a provocative vision for the future.

We cover:

🏥 Why the "doctor" title might be outdated and how to reframe medical authority

🤖 The future of AI in medicine and why software can and should handle more

💊 How to preserve humanity while automating healthcare delivery

💰 Starting a healthcare VC fund as an outsider

🎵 Parallels between the music industry and healthcare

🔄 The need for a universal, evidence-based standard of care

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About our guest:

D.A. Wallach is a venture capital investor at Time BioVentures and an acclaimed recording artist who Fast Company named one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business. While an undergraduate at Harvard, D.A. studied with professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and received the Andrew Ramroop and Alain Locke prizes as the top graduate in his department. Prior to leaving school, Pharrell Williams discovered D.A.’s band Chester French and signed the group to Interscope Records, where they released two full-length albums. He has toured with Lady Gaga, Weezer, and Blink 182, performed on TV Shows including Jimmy Kimmel Live and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and appeared in Rolling Stone and Vogue.

In 2011, D.A. stopped touring in order to focus on his other passion, investing. He has since built a parallel career as a venture capitalist, backing a series of industry-defining technology companies including Spotify, SpaceX, Ripple, The Boring Company, and Memphis Meats. Since 2015, D.A. has focused on biotechnology and healthcare, seeking to reinvent medicine through breakthrough start-ups like Beam, Glympse, Doctor on Demand, Devoted Health, and Neuralink. As co-founder and General Partner of Time BioVentures, he brings this experience to a new generation of talented entrepreneurs in the life sciences.

Outside of work, D.A. appeared as an actor in the film La La Land, which received 14 Academy Award nominations. He publishes essays on a range of topics on his website www.dawallach.com, and is the co-founder of the non-profit Franca Fund for preventive genomics, an advisory board member of No Patient Left Behind, and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Santa Fe Institute.

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As thousands of healthcare leaders descend on San Francisco for the annual JPM Healthcare Conference, Steve and Michael break down January's biggest stories in digital health. From unprecedented bipartisan scrutiny of PBMs to surprising patient satisfaction data and the industry's first major M&A deal of the year, 2025 is already shaping up to be transformative for healthcare.

We cover:

🏥 Why PBMs are suddenly in the crosshairs of Trump, Warren, and Musk

💳 The controversy over hospitals charging patients for doctor emails

📊 The puzzling disconnect between Americans' personal healthcare experiences and their view of the system

💰 Breaking down Transcarent's acquisition of Accolade and what it means for digital health M&A

📦 How UPS is transforming healthcare logistics with its new lab testing hub

🏢 Why ICHRAs could reshape employer-sponsored health insurance

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Five-time Midas List investor Annie Lamont has seen every healthcare cycle since the genomics revolution. Now, as co-founder of Oak HC/FT and early investor in category-defining companies like One Medical, Athena Health, and Devoted Health, she believes 2025 could mark the return of animal spirits to healthcare investing. In this forward-looking conversation, Annie shares why AI might finally deliver on technology's promise to transform American healthcare, even as she warns entrepreneurs to watch out for the "revenge of the incumbents."

We cover:

💬 The advice she's giving her founders right now

🔮 How many healthcare IPOs we can expect in 2025

🤖 How AI is changing everything from medical education to care navigation

🏛️ What a potential Trump administration could mean for Medicare Advantage and Medicaid in 2025

💰 Why hospital monopolies remain healthcare's fundamental cost problem

🔑 The "superpower" that's helped her pick winning entrepreneurs for three decades

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About our guest:

Annie Lamont co-founded Oak HC/FT in 2014. Prior to founding Oak HC/FT, Annie spent 28 years at Oak Investment Partners, where she served as a Managing Partner and led the healthcare and fintech practices. Over the course of her career, she has invested in category-defining companies across the healthcare and financial services industries, including athenahealth, OneMedical, VillageMD, Castlight Health, iHealthTechnologies (which becameCotiviti), Aspire Health and NetSpend. 

Annie has been featured on the Forbes Midas List, Modern Healthcare's 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare list, Institutional Investor’s FinTech Finance 40 list, and the Top 100 Venture Capitalist rankings published by CB Insights. She also served as a core participant of the Health and Human Services Deputy Secretary’s Innovation and Investment Summit (DSIIS). 

In addition to her portfolio company board seats, Annie serves on the Board of Directors for Bloomberg Inc. and has served on the Board of Trustees for Stanford University, from which she holds a B.A. degree. 

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From the return of "historic norms" in funding to the rise of AI and strategic pharma partnerships, 2024 was quite the year for digital health. Rock Health Advisory CEO Megan Zweig joins us on this episode to unpack a year defined by resilience, consolidation, and the 'revenge of the Goliaths.' We look at the funding data, reveal how the industry's unicorns survived their valuation hangovers, and share why 2024 might be remembered as healthcare's boiling point.

We cover:

💰 How digital health funding returned to 2019 levels at ~$10B, with fewer mega-deals but healthier fundamentals

🤖 How 40% of investment dollars went to AI-enabled companies despite growing incumbent competition

🔄 Why M&A hit decade-lows as buyers and sellers struggled to align on valuations

🏢 The concentration of power among top VCs, with just nine funds raising 50% of all venture capital

🏥 The surprising resilience of 2020-2022's unicorn cohort in navigating the downturn

💊 Eli Lilly's strategic partnership with Ro and what it means for the future of weight care

👥 The rise of women's health, from Maven's success to Midi's innovative health system partnerships

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Show Notes:

• Don't Do a Down Round Until You Read This
• Do We Need an “OBGYN for Men”?

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About our guest:

As President and CEO, Megan leads Rock Health Advisory, a digital health strategy group that helps enterprise companies understand and act on opportunities, craft novel solutions, and succeed in an evolving landscape. Previously, Megan served as COO of Rock Health and oversaw Rock Health’s membership offering and research efforts. Prior to joining Rock Health, Megan worked at The Advisory Board Company, where she led the Physician Executive Council, a best practice research membership supporting Chief Medical Officers at over 1,300 hospitals and health systems nationwide. Megan received an MBA from Berkeley Haas, where she graduated valedictorian of her executive MBA class in January 2020. Megan graduated cum laude from Duke University, earning a B.A. in Public Policy Studies with a focus on health policy.

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After building and selling Meebo, Seth Sternberg wanted his next venture to transform lives at scale. A decade later, Honor has become the world's largest in-home senior care network, delivering care to 35,000 US homes daily. In this candid conversation, Sternberg reveals how AI saved the company from near collapse in 2015 and why treating caregivers like true professionals creates better outcomes for everyone.

We cover:

🏠 How Honor grew from a "shed startup" to a $2B global care network

🤖 Why AI was the key to solving home care's scaling problem - and how they use 22 different AI models today

👥 The surprising truth about what really drives caregiver retention (hint: it's not hourly wages)

💼 Why they switched from contractors to W2 employees in the first 6 months

🔍 How "revealed preferences" help match caregivers with the right clients

🌐 The dramatic differences in home care models across countries

🚀 Their vision for expanding beyond basic care to solve food, medication and other challenges for aging adults

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About our guest:

Seth Sternberg is the Co-Founder and CEO of Honor, a non-medical home care company with a mission to enable our parents to remain in their homes as they age. Prior to Honor, Seth was the Co-Founder and CEO of Meebo, which brought instant messaging to the web and reached close to half the internet population in the United States. Meebo was acquiredby Google, where Seth became a Product Director working on the Google Identity Platform, and then within GoogleX. Seth started his career with IBM’s Corporate Development group after graduating from Yale.

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"There's been a degree of toxic positivity in US healthcare," says Dr. Sachin Jain, CEO of SCAN Health Plan. In this episode about healthcare's need for radical change, Dr. Jain challenges industry orthodoxy and calls for a leadership revolution. From Medicare Advantage turbulence to the failures of healthcare consolidation, he offers an insider's view of what needs to change.

We cover:

🔄 Why healthcare needs to move beyond "toxic positivity" and incremental improvements toward real transformation

⏰ The fundamental flaw in value-based care: measuring outcomes in one-year increments when real health improvements take decades

💰 Medicare Advantage's current challenges, including benefit cuts, market exits, and controversial star ratings

🏥 Why healthcare consolidation has failed to deliver better outcomes and may be driving clinician burnout

🏠 How SCAN's "12 angry seniors" sparked a movement to help people age at home, and why that mission remains relevant today

⚡ The need for a new generation of healthcare leaders willing to think big instead of being trained to be incrementalists

🔑 His advice for the new administration

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About our guest:

Sachin H. Jain, MD, MBA is President and CEO of SCAN, where he is charged with leading the organization’s growth, diversification, and emerging efforts to reduce healthcare disparities. SCAN’s revenues top $4.3 and the organization serves 300,000 patients. Under his leadership, SCAN has grown its revenues by more than $1B.

Previously, Dr. Jain was President and CEO of CareMore and Aspire Health, innovative care delivery systems with > $1.6B in revenues serving 200,000 Medicare and Medicaid patients and 2500 associates in 32 states. He pioneered the first clinical program in the world focused on social isolation. Dr. Jain is also an adjunct professor of medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine and a contributor at Forbes.

Prior to joining CareMore, Dr. Jain was global Chief Medical Information & Innovation Officer at Merck & Co. He contemporaneously served as an attending physician at the Boston VA-Boston Medical Center and a member of faculties at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Business School. From 2009-2011, Dr. Jain worked in leadership roles at the US Department of Health and Human Services, where he was senior advisor to the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). Dr. Jain was the first acting deputy director for policy and programs at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI). He also served as special assistant to the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.

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Thank you to medical school student Eric Shan for help preparing this episode!

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