Marco Ciappelli interviews Gil Bashe, Chair of Global Health & Purpose at FINN Partners and Author of Healing the Sick Care System: Why People Matter, for An Analog Brain In A Digital Age Podcast.
PODCAST EPISODE | An Analog Brain In A Digital Age With Marco Ciappelli
The United States spends 18.7% of its GDP on health — two to three times what countries like Italy spend. Italy has a longer life expectancy. So what exactly are we paying for? Gil Bashe, Chair of Global Health & Purpose at FINN Partners, former combat medic, and author of Healing the Sick Care System: Why People Matter, joined me on An Analog Brain In A Digital Age to talk about what happens when a system designed to heal people forgets that people exist. This is not a rant. It's a diagnosis — from someone who has seen the system from every angle: the battlefield, the boardroom, the pharmaceutical lobby, and the bedside of his own child.
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Gil Bashe started his career as a paratrooper combat medic. He's also the father of a child with a rare disease. He spent years as a lobbyist for the pharmaceutical industry — and he'll tell you that upfront, without flinching, before explaining why he still thinks that work mattered. He has led billion-dollar global agencies, advised companies that make life-saving drugs, and sat in rooms with the CEOs of hospital systems, pharmacy chains, and insurance companies. He asked them once if they understood each other's business models. The honest answer was: no.
That's the system he's writing about. Not a broken one — a fragmented one. A system where the prime customer of healthcare has become the system itself, and the actual patients have been quietly reclassified as beneficiaries. As Gil puts it: if your washing machine breaks and you call the company and they tell you you're a "beneficiary of our appliance," you'd think they were out of their minds. You paid for it. You're a customer. Treat you like one.
His new book, Healing the Sick Care System: Why People Matter, was born from a long accumulation of observations — 11 or 12 years of writing about the health ecosystem from every angle — and catalyzed by one specific moment: the assassination of the UnitedHealthcare CEO, and the public reaction to it. The fact that the killer had a following. The fact that people were applauding. Gil found that more disturbing than anyone seemed comfortable admitting. When anger reaches that level, something in the system has gone deeply, fundamentally wrong.
I should say: this is a conversation I had some skin in. I'm type 1 diabetic. I know what it's like to sit across from an endocrinologist who tells you things you already know, reads from a checklist, and never quite looks up from the laptop. The human element — the education, the empathy, the sense that this person actually sees you — is often just gone. And I think most doctors started their careers because they wanted to be healers. The system squeezed it out of them. Gil agrees. He says 51% of doctors now report burnout. Nearly 60% of nurses. And that's not a coincidence. That's a design failure.
The AI question we kept circling was the one nobody in healthcare leadership seems to want to answer directly: if artificial intelligence takes some of the administrative burden off doctors' shoulders, does that time go back to patients — or does the system simply use it to push more throughput? More appointments per day, not more minutes per patient. Gil's framework for thinking about this is worth keeping: IQ, EQ, and TQ. Intellectual intelligence, emotional intelligence, and technology intelligence. The doctors we need going forward aren't just the ones who scored highest on their MCATs. They're the ones who can read a room. Who can hear a patient bring in a printout from WebMD and respond with curiosity instead of dismissal. Who understand that a curious patient is a gift, not an inconvenience.
He told me a story from the book — one doctor who cut his wife off mid-sentence and said, "Who are you gonna believe? Me, or a patient?" And another doctor, in Santa Monica, who performed a long and complicated surgery on his daughter, walked into the hospital cafeteria in his surgical scrubs with photographs of every step of the procedure, laid them out on the table, explained everything in plain language, and then left his personal cell phone number. "Call me with any question." They did. He picked up.
That's not technology. That's not policy. That's personality. And Gil's argument — which I think is correct — is that we've built a system that systematically selects against it.
The hopeful part of the conversation surprised me. I expected nuance. What I got was genuine belief. We have the best trained doctors in the world. We are the source of global medical innovation. We spend enough money — the problem isn't resources, it's alignment. The fix, as Gil sees it, starts with every part of the system — payers, pharmaceutical companies, hospital systems, policy makers — looking in the mirror and asking: am I still on mission? And then, slowly, getting back to why this system was created in the first place.
Healing the Sick Care System: Why People Matter is out now. Get the book here. And if this kind of conversation is what you come here for, subscribe to the newsletter at marcociappelli.com.
— Marco
Co-Founder ITSPmagazine & Studio C60 | Creative Director | Branding & Marketing Advisor | Personal Branding Coach | Journalist | Writer | Podcast: An Analog Brain In A Digital Age ⚠️ Beware: Pigs May Fly | 🌎 LAX🛸FLR 🌍
About Marco
Marco Ciappelli is Co-Founder & CMO of ITSPmagazine, Co-Founder & Creative Director of Studio C60, Branding & Marketing Advisor, Personal Branding Coach, Journalist, Writer, and Host of An Analog Brain In A Digital Age podcast. Born in Florence, Italy, and based in Los Angeles, he explores the intersection of technology, society, storytelling, and creativity — with an analog brain, in a digital age.
About the Guest
Gil Bashe is Chair of Global Health & Purpose at FINN Partners, one of the world's largest independent communications agencies. A former combat medic and paratrooper turned award-winning health communications leader, he has shaped the field across global agencies, trade associations, and private equity ventures over a 40-year career. He is a PM360 Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, named among PRWeek's Top 30 Most Influential People in Health PR, honored as an MM&M Top 10 Innovation Catalyst, and tapped by PRovoke Media as a Top 25 Innovator. He serves on the boards of the American Diabetes Association and the Marfan Foundation, and is editor-in-chief of Medika Life. Healing the Sick Care System: Why People Matter is published by Health Administration Press (February 2026).
All right, here we go. A new background with the flying pig and the clouds and the grass — moving. I didn't even know I could put a video as a background, so I'm very excited. For those of you watching, you can see this bucolic and kind of weird background, and you can see me and my guest. I hope I went for French.
I love it. I hope that works. It'll make it really European, even if —
I —
— should have worn my —
— beret.
You should have, but you didn't know I was gonna go with that.
That's right, my friend.
Next time. How about that? Next time.
Absolutely. And this is the first time I've been on a program with a flying pig. So this is actually my inaugural podcast with a flying pig video. Thank you so much for that.
You know, catch that — it has, of course, a reference to Pink Floyd, if people are about my age and like that kind of music. But we're not here talking about the pig, although there are always some flying pigs here and there, so maybe we'll touch on some of those.
I'm from the "Another Brick in the Wall" generation of Pink Floyd —
— fans.
— exactly.
There you go. And this, of course, is Animals — but we're not here talking about Pink Floyd, although I could talk about Pink Floyd forever.
We could switch the program theme.
No, no, no. We're gonna talk about your book. All right. This is also part of the show called Technology and Society podcast, and this is about healthcare — and I think one of those topics that are really, really hot right now. With the technology we have, we are still running behind. I mean, we're doing good, we're healing people, but I think there is a very big cost in that.
I'm curious to hear what you are talking about in the book. And I'm also curious to know why you decided to write it and who you are. So give us a little background about yourself.
I'll take those questions in reverse. Who am I? The question I continue to ask myself and explore.
I know, it's —
— very —
— philosophical.
I think if we were really going there, you'd need an analyst's couch rather than a flying pig in the background. Because I actually do ascribe to a theory: don't grow old. And that doesn't mean don't get old — but don't grow old. So I'm constantly reinventing and exploring who I am in that regard. I'm organic, and yet I am timeless. I think of that often.
Now, "who am I" often means what have you done with your life? What's your title, what do you do for a living? That describes a piece of who I am, and I'll describe that. I'm Chair of Health and Purpose at Finn Partners, which is one of the world's largest independent communications agencies. It's founded by a gentleman by the name of Peter Finn — Finn Partners. Peter created this organization with a sense of purpose. He's purposeful, the organization is purposeful, and that's why I'm here, why I joined Finn Partners. It's a very big part of my identity. I don't think I could have written this book — not in terms of permission; I've had senior positions for the last umpteen years and could have done whatever I wanted in terms of writing a book — but it's the culture and the spirit here that made me feel like I should write this book.
My career also includes — going backward — I've led large, global communications agencies. I've been a vice chair of strategy for a multi-billion dollar conglomerate. I was a group company CEO of 14 companies, about a billion dollars in revenues. I was in a large private equity group — a $10 billion private equity group today. I was a lobbyist for the pharmaceutical industry for some years. Please don't blame me. But I think I did some very good work to help people during that time, for an industry that does care.
But at the root of this are two things that I think have helped define my trajectory. One: I started in health as a paratrooper combat medic. For those of you who have seen movies about the life of a combat medic — it's service-oriented. It's the person who, when someone screams "medic," has to get up and go. It's someone who sees the trajectory of life sometimes slip through your fingers, no matter how hard you work. That was one piece of my foundational years. At the other end, I'm the father of a child who has a rare disease. So though I've worked in health for 40 years and I've launched many important life-saving brands and led companies in the field — there's something about not being involved in a discipline theoretically, but with your heart and soul and your gut and your wisdom, understanding that your child's wellbeing and life is in play.
Or at the very early stages, when I was youthful, caring for enemy soldiers without understanding their language — understanding that health and healing is a language without words. How you engage, how you touch, how you look. Your expression is a language. And so I've always retained those extremes. I've always retained a sense of empathy — obviously for my own child, but for other people's parents and children and loved ones when they're suffering, because I've seen suffering. I'm not immune to that. And I am also appreciative of the language beyond the written word: listening, caring. That's all part of my orchestra of life — the background that gave me the platform to think through this book.
Now, there are other aspects I do touch on in the book. My wife is a clinical psychologist, and my father-in-law — who was one of my mentors — was an outstanding, renowned psychiatrist. Safe to say that the question of "why are you doing that?" or "why did you say that?" was very much a part of my breakfast, lunch, and dinner table and holiday table, where I was under analysis from all ends. Either my father-in-law, who was an analyst at heart, was asking me questions, or my wife was giving me suggestions of how I could be a better person.
So all of that is what made me in this journey. Now, why did I write the book? A lot of people who know about my life would say, "You should really write a book." And what they really meant was, "Write a book about yourself — you've had a very interesting life." And I abhorred the idea. I did not want to write a book about myself. I had already written a book, many years ago — around the year 2000 — on the health system, and I wanted to write a very different book. And I struggled with it — really struggled with it for about a year before I decided to look at my laptop screen and write down a few words.
I had been thinking about this book for a long time. For maybe 11 or 12 years, I've been writing about what we call the health ecosystem — about payers and providers and the patient saga and policy leaders and product innovators. I've been writing about all of these, and that writing led me to a place of convergence where I started to think: I'm writing about technology, I'm writing about innovation, I'm writing about money, I'm writing about the practice of medicine — why is it that we're so unhappy with the medical system here?
And I was asked to write — by the industry — a commentary piece, a long commentary piece on the tragic murder of Brian Thompson from United Healthcare. He was assassinated here in New York City, and I was really taken aback by the amount of enthusiasm that the assassin had — he actually had a following. I wrote about that, and then I felt it was time to write the story of the sick care system. Because let's face it, when people are so angry — it's horrible and it's wrong — but they're so angry that they're applauding murder. What has become of the system? That was kind of the "Gil, get off the couch and write this book" moment.
I love that. Let me jump on this, because you put together a lot of different elements — but you used the word that I love when I talk about technology, innovation, and the point we are at in society at a specific time: convergence. For me, that's the key word. You've got on one side the technology, the AI — which to me is a way to reflect on our humanity and who we are. It's like the analog versus the binary, and everything in between — that gray area. And I feel like sometimes you need to read through the lines, through the numbers, through the data, which on paper seems perfect, but it's zero and one. In reality, the people — who are the continuum in between — they're not feeling it. They're missing something. So I can see how that particular moment for you was the revelation: we need to do something about this.
Yeah. And to what you're saying about convergence — we actually have a divergent health system rather than a converged one. We should have convergence.
Right.
But it's so fragmented and so separate. Many years ago — it's in the book — I was asked to host and moderate a gathering with CEOs from major health companies, major pharmacy chains, hospital systems, pharmaceutical companies, government officials — the crème de la crème. We were not talking about economics — that's forbidden, that's a trade secret issue. But I asked them a question: "Do you know each other's business model? Do you know how each other's business model works?" And the truthful answer was: no.
Now if — you helped rebirth the iconic Vespa motorcycle brand here in the United States, so you know brands very well — if I were to ask you about the supply chain of the creation of a Vespa, from the sourcing of the tires and the mechanics and the handlebars and the paint, Vespa knows down to the lira, to the penny, how the machine is built, where the supply chain is, the cost, and how much they can sell at a sale. They know everything about the pricing of that motorcycle. Everything.
If you were to say to someone, "What is the pricing for hip replacements?" — from the titanium hip to the surgery to the anesthesia — no one knows. So we've got a supply chain that people are clueless about. The doctor's time: is the doctor worth this or that? How much is the titanium? It changes from place to place, from procedure to procedure. So we've got a system that has not found its place of convergence.
In my earlier writings that led to the book, I talk about: what are we gonna do here to make it better? And I said the convergence point is us — people. People have to be in the center of the health system. But it's almost like we're outside the health system. The system is the customer of the system, and oh by the way, there are some people we've gotta do stuff to. And so I explore what happens when the system becomes so transactional that the prime reason the system exists — you and me — are not even secondary considerations. We're tertiary. The system's first job is the system: the money of the system, the profitability, warding off competitors from other sectors from encroaching on your part. And nobody's saying, "Wow, they're so angry at us."
The companies that make miracle medicines — biopharmaceutical companies that have overcome AIDS and hepatitis C and turned some cancers into chronic conditions — they're on the low end of the Fortune most-respected list, near cigarette companies and oil companies. Yet they're making drugs that save our lives, but they're not applauded for that any longer. Or payers who are judge, prosecutor, and jury: your doctor calls up and says, "Hey, I want to do an MRI on this patient," and they say no. The doctor says, "I want to speak to a peer." So you get a doctor on the line with the other doctor, explaining why he wants to do the MRI. And the other doctor says no. The first doctor says, "What sort of doctor are you?" He says, "I'm a dermatologist." And the orthopedic surgeon says, "I'm an orthopedic surgeon. How am I gonna do surgery without the MRI? Figure it out — maybe he needs PT."
So you've got systems that are suddenly protecting systems instead of asking: what does this particular patient need, based on this doctor's expertise? The system is no longer converging at all — it's bifurcating. And we've gotta get back to healing ourselves. And how do we do that? You and I and everybody listening — we've gotta heal the sick care system. Why? Because people matter. The system has to focus on us, on people.
We're called "beneficiaries" — supposedly benefiting from the system. I have a different premise. If you bought a washing machine and there's a problem with it, you call up and they say, "You're a beneficiary of our washing machine — I'll get to you when I can." You'd say, "What sort of appliance store is this? I bought this washing machine." I pay every month for health insurance. I'm not a beneficiary of something I paid for — I'm a customer. Treat me like a customer.
And so the book goes through the human experience of navigating all of this through stories. It's not a rant, it's not an attack. It's designed to get everybody to look closely in the mirror, and then look to their left and right and realize: I'm off-mission. I've gotta get back on mission — whether I'm a payer, a pharmaceutical company, a doctor, a hospital system, or a policy maker. I've gotta get back to why this system was created in the first place: to take care of you and me.
So — I said we'd go for 20 minutes, but we're gonna go a little longer. Okay, let's do it. This is going deep, and my brain is going: there is the psychology side of this, there is the sociological part, and there is the technological part. I feel like technology — which could have helped lower the cost of care, could have helped the system run smoother, could have gotten you that MRI — is getting a wrench thrown in its spokes. Because the system is so deep into economics, or bureaucracy, or the way it's always been done, that it's lost touch with reality.
But you also said to me before we started that you compare the US healthcare system with other systems around the world in order to understand what's going on here. You also look at —
The NHS and —
— others. Yeah. So what are the first takeaways when you put one next to another? I have my opinion, because I live in Europe as well as in the United States.
We're in dialogue, my friend — go ahead.
But —
If I look at what makes a system a great system, it's doctors who are truly inspired to be healers and are actually given the freedom to be healers. Once upon a time — maybe you remember this — doctors actually visited people in their homes. They had a black bag. They came to see you when you were ill. And that's a holdover from the sense of the hospice — when nuns or healers would go around and help when there were no medicines per se. So what was the healing power? It was caring.
And so the first element of technology that the health professional always has at their fingertips is to care. Now, when doctors are placed in a situation where they no longer have authority over the wellbeing of the people they care for — where the state, or the private payer, or the government becomes the intermediary of the healing process — one of the things I talk about in the book is: in an age of documentation, when I go to visit my doctor, I watch how much time they spend looking at the laptop, asking, "How's your weight? Are you getting enough sleep?" — they're not even looking at me anymore.
They have a set group of questions they've gotta go through. As a result, it's like — I could have put a talking doll in the room with a good large language model voice, and they would think I was there, and they'd just keep on typing and staring at their laptop screen.
Oh, we're definitely —
— getting there —
— really soon.
But that's not medicine anymore. That's going through the motions. And part of it is we don't have a system that really thinks through: hey, you may be alive, God willing, 80-plus years. What do I need to do, as a system or as a doctor, to make sure those 80-plus years of life are as healthy as possible so you can enjoy your longevity?
Our system is based on kicking the can down the road. Maybe you won't get sick on my watch — get sick on someone else's watch, or another health insurer's watch. People don't look at it holistically. I'll give you an example. You're probably familiar with the GLP-1 drugs — the obesity medications. There are complications to consider beyond side effects. Often people at that level of weight are also pre-diabetic. You can't just reduce the weight and suddenly they're a healthy person. But to get one of those drugs, you can't just be pre-diabetic — you actually have to graduate to become diabetic.
When you say to yourself: someone who's 300 pounds and pre-diabetic is probably going to become type 2 diabetic — why do I want to wait until they're really sick? Maybe I should engage when they're pre-sick. But instead we wait until they're sick sick. When you think about that, it's counterintuitive to how we want to use innovation. We want innovation to ask: what do we need to do to keep people from getting sick, and therefore not cost us a lot of money, and therefore have lives filled with happiness and health? Our system, our society, is not structured that way.
What we say is, "I've saved money by not doing." But we've just passed the bill to another part of government or another insurance company. We haven't saved any money — we've swept the problem under the rug until it's a big problem. Then we say, "Well, diabetes is epidemic." It's epidemic because we actually allow the epidemic to spread.
And the book explores the human dynamic of decision-making, of leadership, of compassion. What I do write about are some of the world-class doctors I found — doctors who are famous not just because of their skill, but because of their personality. I document in stories those doctors who are passionate about being healers. If you call them at nine o'clock at night and need help, they're there. It's in their soul — as opposed to a system that's squeezing that out of a lot of other doctors. That's why 51% of doctors claim they're burned out. Almost 60% of nurses claim they're burned out. Well — how's that working for us?
So this burnout — and I love that you brought up diabetes. I'm actually type 1 diabetic — so I know it pretty well. I was diagnosed late-stage but insulin-dependent. I understand how when you go to an endocrinologist, they pretty much tell me what I already know, because I already have a monitor system, a pump, everything. So I'm like: you're just telling me stuff I already know. There's not even that human element — the education about the lifestyle — for people who are maybe diagnosed at the beginning, going through that psychological pressure and change in their life. They're just being given some numbers and some rules and told to go with it. "Here's a book with all the steps: 1, 2, 3, 4." But you're missing the empathy.
And I go back to that. My question for you is — and I want to be optimistic — I believe most doctors decided to become doctors because they want to do good.
I —
— agree with you. But they get sucked into the system. They get tied down because otherwise they're gonna get sued. They've got lawyers telling them not to do this or that. There are lawyers for the UCLA group, for the Anthem group. I mean, I've talked to Robert Pearl quite a bit — he's a former CEO.
Great doctor.
Yeah, great leader, great —
— doctor.
Yeah. We had many episodes where he talked about doctor AI, and he's one of those who's spoken about the burnout — and how people now feel more empathy talking to ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini, because they actually get the time to get answers. And that's a risky situation to me.
When you trust the digital more than the analog — because you don't get that analog relationship — you're missing that psychology, the reading, the looking at you in the face and saying, "I understand what you're going through," or "Here are some tips I can give you personally, because I've seen other patients going through this." It's all by the numbers. It has become a binary system — ones and zeros. The gray isn't there anymore.
You're absolutely right. What you just said — you should write a book. But there's a lot to unpack there, because doctors in the hospital system are often given, depending on their specialty, between 12 and 16 minutes per patient.
Yep.
And some patients may need much more than that to get on track. Doctors are very conscious of the fact that if they're not seeing patients, they're not billing, and the hospital isn't making money. And they'll be penalized. The flip side is those patients might be doing better if they had more time with their doctor.
And one of the questions I've asked about AI — I'm a big fan of AI — is: if AI is taking some of the burden off the doctor's shoulders, will the system say, "Great, now you can spend four more minutes per patient"? Or will they say, "Great, you can see two more patients per day —"
— squeeze —
— more, and be even more efficient with your time. And so it's a question of how do we use the time that's given back to us? Is it for the system to have more throughput, or more impact? That really has to be considered.
The other aspect — once upon a time, a patient comes in with pages from Dr. Google, and the doctor looks at that and says, "Hey, Dr. Google doesn't know anything." What I say is: a patient who comes in with pages from WebMD, Dr. Google, or large language models — ChatGPT — is a curious patient. A smart doctor is gonna use that curiosity and say, "I see you brought in a lot of information. That's great. Tell me what's on your mind. Tell me what you found." And the doctor can pivot.
So one of the things I say in the book is we've gotta retrain doctors differently. Yes — they want curious patients. You want patients who are doing their homework. The doctor's job is to separate the important from the relevant. The patient may have collected a lot of important information. The question the doctor then has to determine is what's relevant for this patient. Because we select doctors on the basis of their MCATs, their school — we do an interview — but we have a system that cherishes memorization.
Memorization may be less important right now. What might be more important is a balance of IQ and EQ — and something close to your heart; I'll call it TQ: technology knowledge. Emotional knowledge. And intellectual knowledge. John Nosta really perfected this concept of TQ. He has a great new book coming out, by the way. But we have to look at doctors today and say: are you a doctor for the new environment of the informed, curious patient?
I'll tell a story from the book. It happened to me. I mentioned I have a child with a rare disorder. We were at a well-known doctor in a major metropolitan area. I don't name doctors by name when citing problems in the book. I do champion by name the doctors who are doing amazing work. And this doctor was doing all the right physical things — sitting down in a chair, looking at my daughter eye to eye. My wife is on the phone and says, in relation to my daughter's case, "Our patient advocate suggests we—" We have a patient advocate who works with us because it's a rare condition. The doctor cuts her off and says, "Who are you gonna believe? Me, or a patient?" — I'm quoting. "Me, or a patient?"
Well, my daughter is the patient. It's basically saying, "I don't care about what you say. I care about what I say." Instead of saying, "What does the patient advocate recommend?" and "That's a good point — here's why I'm going in this direction."
My daughter was crushed by what the doctor said. She was heading toward needing a feeding tube. We flew out to the West Coast to another doctor, Danny Shoub, in Santa Monica. He ended up performing a very specialized surgery. After the surgery — it was a long surgery — my wife and I are in the cafeteria. He calls my wife's cell phone, says it's Danny — the surgery was a great success. He says, "I want to come down and brief you. Where are you?" My wife says, "The cafeteria." He says, "Don't move. I'll find you."
He comes into the cafeteria — still in his surgical garb — with photographs of the surgery. He puts them down on the table and goes through each step, speaking in terms anybody could grasp. And then at the end, after we've asked our questions, he says: "You may have more questions today or tomorrow. Here's my personal cell phone number."
Right.
"Call me with any question." Now, we did have a question. We called him. He picked up the phone.
Yep.
And so — one doctor says, "Don't believe a patient." The other doctor says it's all about the patient. What is that? It's not technology, it's personality. We need to find and train doctors who have the personality to be healers. And the system — this divergent, not convergent system — has to get its act back together and say: we need to let doctors have a real connection with their patients and not overly interfere.
Yeah. Listen, first of all, I want to have you back — I think we should do an episode two — but to finish this one, we haven't gotten to the most important question, and I want to get there in a few words. Is there hope?
Absolutely. We talked in the virtual green room about how we're both works in progress, right?
Yep.
And I'd like to believe that through the decades I've improved the broken me and made myself a little bit better. Maybe you feel the same about yourself?
Yep.
I think the reason is we're not dealing with the next intervention. We're not dealing with spending more money. We spend 18.7% of our GDP on health in this country — at least two to three times what countries like Italy spend. And Italy has a longer life expectancy than the United States. So go figure. It's not about money. And we're the source of innovation from around the world. It's not about more invention. We're doing it and we're helping the world, and we've got the best trained doctors in the world. How many doctors from Europe want to come to the States and do a postdoc in their specialty? Tons. So we've got the trifecta there.
What's a miss? We've gotta work on ourselves, my friend. I think the system can wake up, look at itself in the mirror, and say: let's do better. How? Let's make ourselves better as people — more mindful, better leadership, passionate about combining mission and business priorities together. I think we can do it, and I think we will. Let's start — you and me — tomorrow.
Great way to wrap this conversation with a little bit of hope. I think you brought a lot of humanity, and that's what I love. I love technology. Like you, I love artificial intelligence — I think it's a way to look into ourselves. Robotics as well. And I think we need to bring back that mission, that vocation that you started with. I mean, you weren't doing combat medic work for the money, right?
Absolutely not.
It's good to make a good living, and the role of doctor is extremely important — but they need to be themselves. And your example about the doctor who took care of your daughter: that's why it stays with you. It did something really positive — versus "I know everything, I have the numbers." You read the room. A doctor needs to read the room, right?
And —
I think there's more to talk about, but the book is Healing the Sick Care System: Why People Matter. And I was very honored to have you on the show, and I hope to have you again.
I'd be honored. And I was equally honored to be on the show with you, my friend. Thank you so much.
Thank you. And everybody — stay tuned. There'll be more. Keep looking up for flying pigs. You never know. You may see some. Take care.
Take care.