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Fraser Bayley's arc of transformation is long and inspiring. Growing up in Auckland, New Zealand, Fraser was a poor student who struggled in school despite putting in the effort.He felt stupid, like something was wrong with him. His social anxiety was so severe, he dropped out of college but managed to keep a crushing load of student debt.When an after school job at a local supermarket offered him a chance to learn about butchery, Fraser jumped on the opportunity to apprentice himself in the grueling trade. It didn't require smarts, or much reading, or sitting still.

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Eric Krieg spent decades in the belly of the beast; the benefits industry beast, that is. Until one day he asked a profoundly inconvenient question: “Am I doing the right thing?”

By way of answer, he left his job as a traditional broker and went rogue, revealing the ethically questionable practices of the benefits industry to the world.

And, putting his career where his mouth is, he formed the anti-brokerage: Risk International, a firm that advises companies on how to navigate the benefits industry, and make decisions in their own best interests. Rather than getting paid on commission, Risk International is fee-for-service; a rare case of financial transparency in the health benefits world.

OK, you're wondering, what the heck is a benefits broker doing on a podcast that features doctors, activists, farmers, and behavioral scientists?

Turns out that Krieg's industry may hold the key to real reform of the American healthcare system; the kind of reform that can enable lifestyle medicine and plant-based nutrition to take their rightful place as first-line treatments rather than fringe options or afterthoughts.

In our hard-hitting conversation, which is much more exciting than you might imagine, we covered:

* the dirty little secret of benefits brokers: they're the sales arm of the insurance industry

* the invisible conflicts of interest that warp client service and smash any pretense of fiduciary responsibility

* the farce of end-of-year insurance rate hike negotiations

* the death by paper cuts of incremental annual increases

* the hammered middle class: meager raises don't keep up with increased health costs

* insurance companies don't take on risk – huh?

* insurance company stocks have a 50% rate of return over the last few years

* brokerage industry also flush – consolidation vs M&A

* private equity money in brokerage, and very healthy margins

* it's just the clients and employees who are suffering

* why Econ 101 isn't working: normal consumerism doesn't apply in a third party payer system

* 50% of all healthcare costs in the US paid by the federal government (medicare and medicaid)

* the Amazon/JP Morgan/Berkshire Hathaway bombshell: “we can't take this anymore”

* the disruption on the horizon: Walmart and CVS

* the future will challenge the standard ways of accessing healthcare

* we spend the most and are 37th in healthcare quality

* the top-1o systems are all single payer

* insurance companies are not going to survive, because they provide commodity value at best

* how to shake up and improve the system

* what organizations can do to stop getting fleeced

* you can find waste and fat in your healthcare spend 100% of the time

* “facts rule the day”

* how employees can have an impact

* and much more…

Enjoy, add your voice to the conversation via the comment box or audio recording box below, and please share – that's how we spread our message and spread our roots.

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Links

Risk International

Eric Krieg's article in Crain's Business Cleveland

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Eric Krieg spent decades in the belly of the beast; the benefits industry beast, that is. Until one day he asked a profoundly inconvenient question: "Am I doing the right thing?"By way of answer, he left his job as a traditional broker and went rogue, revealing the ethically questionable practices of the benefits industry to the world.

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Thoughts on the episode? Let us know.

Dave Chase is one of those quiet innovators who moves mountains through vision, energy, and sheer persistence. With a healthy dose of trickster energy in the mix...Chase is one of the founders of Healthcare Rosetta, a non-profit dedicated to accelerating "adoption of simple, practical, non-partisan fixes to our healthcare system."

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Dave Chase is one of those quiet innovators who moves mountains through vision, energy, and sheer persistence. With a healthy dose of trickster energy in the mix…

Chase is one of the founders of Healthcare Rosetta, a non-profit dedicated to accelerating “adoption of simple, practical, non-partisan fixes to our healthcare system.”

He was also CEO/Co-founder of Avado, a digital health company that was acquired by WebMD & Medscape.

Given the messed-up state of healthcare at the moment, Chase makes a startling claim: “Healthcare is already fixed.” In other words, we know what works, and how to implement those fixes. On a small scale, everything that's needed is already in place somewhere. It's our job to publicize and scale those fixes until they change the entire system.

So if it's so easy, what's standing in our way? As Chase writes in his masterful and infuriating book, The CEO's Guide to Restoring the American Dream, only three trillion things. As in, the amount of money spent on healthcare in the US every year.

Much of that money, Chase argues, is misspent on ineffective and/or unnecessarily expensive treatments. The book is a handbook for CEOs who are desperately trying to reduce their organizations' healthcare costs, but it also reads like a crime thriller.

On page after page, I found myself shocked at the perverse incentives that reinforce a crooked system. One that costs lives, promotes suffering, and is literally stealing the American dream of middle class prosperity from an entire generation.

In our conversation, we covered:

* “we've gone to war for far less”

* the gut punch that inspired Dave to tackle healthcare

* at the bedside of a dying friend, watching the medical system “suck the life out of her medically and financially”

* having to do something, and not knowing what that was

* simultaneously discovering the overwhelming magnitude of the problem and that “every structural fix had already been invented and proven and replicated”

* the essential problem: we're not getting value from our healthcare spend

* 25 cents of every healthcare dollar goes to doctors and nurses – they aren't the problem

* where the money gets squandered

* half of the average millennial's lifetime earnings will go to healthcare

* the history of employer-sponsored health insurance (an artifact of a World War II-era law)

* Starbucks and Virginia Mason University study: 95% of all surgeries were unnecessary

* “we ration choices, not care”

* our badly undermined primary care system

* the unintended consequences of a well-meaning provision in the ACA

* every year, employees are asked to downgrade “from an iMac to a DOS-based healthcare plan”

* the stunningly high misdiagnosis rates in oncology

* the mission of Health Rosetta – to become the LEED certifying equivalent in the healthcare space

* The Big Heist mockumentary – aiming to catalyze a national moment of awakening

* Harris Rosen hotel company, an innovative approach to healthcare, and the community miracle in Florida

* Chase's next book on the opioid crisis: “every addict needs an enabler, and 11 out of 12 enablers are employers”

* and much more…

Enjoy, add your voice to the conversation via the comment box or audio recording box below, and please share – that's how we spread our message and spread our roots.

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Links

HealthRosetta.org

The CEO's Guide to Restoring the American Dream – on Amazon

Dave Chase TEDx Talk: Healthcare Stole the American Dream:

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Bethany Stec Janicek grew up on a Nebraska pig farm, on a diet of meat and dairy and cheese and butter. Always bigger than her peers, she began dieting in elementary school, and suffered the anguish that came with always failing, always giving up, and always feeling disappointed in herself.She was deeply disconnected from her true self, and masked her sense of inadequacy with a bubbly exterior and various coping mechanisms: food, cigarettes, alcohol, clothing, and makeup. Everything in her life was literally or figuratively sugar-coated.

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Bethany Stec Janicek grew up on a Nebraska pig farm, on a diet of meat and dairy and cheese and butter. Always bigger than her peers, she began dieting in elementary school, and suffered the anguish that came with always failing, always giving up, and always feeling disappointed in herself.

She was deeply disconnected from her true self, and masked her sense of inadequacy with a bubbly exterior and various coping mechanisms: food, cigarettes, alcohol, clothing, and makeup. Everything in her life was literally or figuratively sugar-coated.

Bethany navigated a series of health conditions that she had no idea were related to diet: stabbing stomach pains so severe they led to gall bladder removal (to no effect); asthma; allergies; multiple bouts of bronchitis per year; and a week-long stint in a mental hospital for anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation.

Then, one day in her 23rd year, Bethany stopped lying to herself. She took responsibility for her choices and actions, and started cleaning up her life. At first she was working with suboptimal tools, like the South Beach Diet, Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, etc.

And a video!

Eventually she discovered the missing piece in a PBS show featuring Joel Fuhrman, MD. Amazed and angered that no one had ever shared this information with her, Bethany dove in to the Nutritarian lifestyle and, for the first time, experienced profoundly positive changes in her body and mind.

Bethany is now Mrs. Love Chard: a plant-based health coach and founder of Nutribabe Nation.

I got a double treat: our first interview was destroyed by an electrical outage that caused my computer to not save the audio file. Undaunted, we rescheduled, and held the conversation that you hear today. (I now have an external backup to a recorder with an SD card, as well as a primary and backup recording on my desktop, thanks to that experience.)

In our conversation, we covered:

* “the big murky bowl of before”

* growing up on a Nebraska pig farm

* the tools for hiding emotions from herself and others

* deciding to end her life

* all the fad diets

* committing to “healthy fad diets” (lean meats, sugar-free Chips Ahoy, Greek yogurt)

* May 19, 2013 and the moment that changed everything

* the pain of the unsustainable

* “my pain got bigger than my excuses”

* getting rid of the “obviously bad foods”

* “I can't just wish for it or want it”

* jettisoning the “Saran-wrapped version of myself”

* Dr Fuhrman – “eat real food”

* “Is this a joke?” – how could this lifesaving information be kept from us?

* action steps vs focusing on end goals

* “What do I have to do right now that can move me forward?”

* crush one step, then focus on the next

* how grandma's quilts can help us achieve our big goals

* the biggest shift: am I open or closed to life?

* the four key meals: soup, salad, stir-fry, and smoothie

* overcoming food addictions

* the Domino's pizza incident, and what it taught Bethany

* and much more…

Enjoy, add your voice to the conversation via the comment box or audio recording box below, and please share – that's how we spread our message and spread our roots.

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Links

Bethany's website: LoveChard.com

Mrs Love Chard on Facebook

Eat to Live, by Joel Fuhrman, MD

Transcript

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Lesley Paterson, aka the "Scottish Rocket," is a three-time world champion in off-road triathlon, an Ironman triathlon champ, a professional mountain biker, an athletic coach, and a world-class slinger of profanity.Simon Marshall, her husband, is a sport and exercise psychologist at San Diego State, performance psychologist for BMC Racing, and a self-described "mid-pack age-group endurance athlete."Together, Lesley and Simon comprise Braveheart Coaching, a service that gets athletes performing to their potential in spite of the "3-pound lump of crazy" that lives in their cranium.

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New cohort of the WellStart Big Change Program starting end of April or beginning of May! Email me (*protected email*) for information. Open to the public. Also, if you're a healthcare provider looking for a disease prevention or reversal program for your clients or patients, check us out: WellStartHealth.com.

Lesley Paterson, aka the “Scottish Rocket,” is a three-time world champion in off-road triathlon, an Ironman triathlon champ, a professional mountain biker, an athletic coach, and a world-class slinger of profanity.

Simon Marshall, her husband, is a sport and exercise psychologist at San Diego State, performance psychologist for BMC Racing, and a self-described “mid-pack age-group endurance athlete.”

Together, Lesley and Simon comprise Braveheart Coaching, a service that gets athletes performing to their potential in spite of the “3-pound lump of crazy” that lives in their cranium.

They've written a fantastic book called The Brave Athlete: Calm the F*ck Down and Rise to the Occasion. In our conversation, I made the unwarranted assumption that the asterisk was standing in for the letter U, of which Simon quickly disabused me.

I will warn you that we do drop a bunch of f-bombs during the interview (facks and ficks and fecks, of course ;), so this is NSF work or day care or church or, possibly, first dates.

Here's what you need to know about Lesley and Simon: they're hilarious. They're brilliant. They honor evidence over anecdote and conjecture. They aren't afraid to call bullshit when they see it (or bullsh*t, if you prefer).

They have fantastic accents (especially Lesley; sorry, Simon). And they have the experience and content knowledge to help you achieve your athletic goals. If you don't consider yourself an athlete, they invite you to reconsider, and then act like one.

In our conversation, we covered:

* the surprising benefits to swearing

* athletes engage in volitional competition

* “our other choices conform to our identity”

* athletes are humans first

* we all experience thoughts and feelings that we don't want, and that's ok

* Lesley on retiring at age 20 as a big failure

* the bedside manner problem of many elite coaches

* the ability to give harsh feedback with compassion

* talent and the Rudy Syndrome

* sport allows us to look deep into our souls

* we're most vulnerable when we're in pain, so that's where our biggest discoveries lay

* most of us have lost our sense of suffering, so we reconnect with it through ultra endurance events

* walking your first 5k still makes you an athlete – if you own it

* the 7 characteristics of a mature athlete (and why that's different from – and preferable to – a “strong” athlete)

* the Chimp, the Professor, and the Computer – a highly simplified brain science metaphor

* how to intentionally replace fight or flight with “brave” habits

* “can you see failure as an opportunity and source of feedback?”

* finding your “fuck-it” moment

* how to not fixate on outcome even in high-stakes events

* “effort and attitude are always within your control”

* the four levels of the “Me-Tree”

* the problem with athletic hyper-specialization

* the “holy trinity” of psychological death: embarrassment, humiliation, inadequacy

* slaying the meme-turds

* when the “participant mindset” is a cop-out

* “don't compare yourself to others” – nonsense

* motivation is a warm bath that soon goes cold

* the secret of The Brave Athlete: these are life skills

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This episode is special to me, as I share the next phase of my journey and mission.I've just joined WellStart Health as a co-founder, along with CEO Olivia Kelly, Chief Medical Officer Bojana Jankovic Weatherly, and Chief Brand Ambassador Josh LaJaunie. Our mission is, in Olivia's words, to "put chronic disease out of business."We're doing this through a potent combo of evidence-based protocols (like, eat more whole plants and less garbage), behavioral science (my title is Chief Behavioral Science Officer), crackerjack technology, and a network of coaches like Josh who have street cred based on their own struggles and journeys.

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