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Recorded live at the Pen & Pencil Club in Philadelphia one week before the midterms, former insurance executive Wendell Potter joins us on stage to talk about the perfect storm brewing in healthcare right now, how to spot and counter propaganda, and how to hold our elected officials accountable for change.

For more on Wendell's work, check out Health Care un-covered on Substack.

Stories are the heart of advocacy. They're why messages hit home and data comes to life. Chip Fleisher, Senior Editor of Steerforth Press, an imprint of Pushkin Press, helps us break down the elements of a great story and how to tell it so people will listen.

According to the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, "PE has invested over $1 trillion in the US healthcare sector over the last decade, touching virtually every corner of the industry – including hospitals, outpatient providers, clinical research, durable medical equipment, home health and hospice, prison healthcare, and more". Jim Baker, Executive Director of PESP, joins us to talk about how the landscape of private equity is changing and what that might mean for healthcare."

In guiding our kids along the traditional path to professional success, are we really setting them up for failure? College is heralded as necessary for a promising career, but many colleges today can't deliver on the promises they make - and they know it. New York Times reporter Noam Scheiber joins us to talk about his book Mutiny: The Rise and Revolt of the College Educated Working Class, and our collective responsibility to the next generation.

Conflict is inevitable, but lip service in lieu of resolution doesn't need to be. Dr. Donna Hicks, Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University and author of "Dignity", walks us through the key elements that contribute to positive outcomes in conflict resolution, and how we can maintain our dignity - and the dignity of others - while at the negotiating table.

It took forty years of neoliberal policy choices to dig the 'profits over patients' hole the American health care system has fallen into today. How long will it take to dig us out of it? And how can we do it? John McDonough, professor of practice in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health tries to answer all of those questions in our conversation about his new book, America's Wrong Turn: US Health Care in the Neoliberal Era.

Vertical integration, loss of competition, and encroachment of cartels. Sound familiar? What drove our nation to Prohibition, and why and how we emerged from it a hundred years ago, have uncanny resonance today. In this special summertime episode, Wendy and Matt break down what the lessons of Prohibition can teach us about the business of healthcare.

What does it sound like when two seasoned podcasters, who admire each others' work but don't pull punches, sit down for a chat? In this special crossfeed drop, we're bringing you the unedited version of a recent episode of How I Doctor with Graham Walker featuring our very own Wendy Dean. It's an hour-long master class in moral injury you don't want to miss.

What does a morally defensible, healthy, legal, commercial marketplace look like, and how can we design one for healthcare? Nobel laureate Alvin Roth, Professor of Economics at Stanford University and the George Gund Professor of Economics and Business Administration Emeritus at Harvard University, joins us to about his new book, Moral Economics: From Prostitution to Organ Sales, What Controversial Transactions Reveal About How Markets Work.

What do golf, horses, and healthcare have in common? Private equity, baby. And whether you're a patient, a practitioner, a player - or, goodness help you, all three - chances are you've experienced a change in service, quality, and delivery. Buckle up, Wendy and Matt have a rant straight from the heart for this one.

Will and Kristin Flanary are internet sensations as Dr. and Lady Glaucomflecken, posting hilarious and pointedly insightful videos about the physician and patient experience. What's less known is the how the families of patients and physicians share in those experiences along the way. Kristin joins us to talk about her work advocating for humanity centered healthcare for all involved in the healthcare system, and her personal experience as a co-survivor of medical trauma.

Reflection and introspection are not a daily practice for many of us. But would it be worth strengthening those skills if they helped mitigate moral injury? Wendy and Matt discuss how such practice can keep everyday work grounded in our oaths and alert us to the earliest signals of a slide toward transgression.

Forced arbitration is the secret justice system you've never heard of, and it's likely working against you. Brendan Ballou, former DOJ prosecutor and author of When Companies Run the Courts: How Forced Arbitration Became America's Secret Justice System exposes these little known clauses hidden in practically every service agreement we sign, explains the harms they can create, and tells us when and how to fight them.

Lieutenant General (Ret.) Mark Hertling spent decades leading soldiers in combat and across cultures before he transitioned to healthcare leadership when he retired from the US Army. He joins us to talk about the professional parallels he's witnessed along the way: the oaths we take, the life and death situations, the bonding among colleagues, the importance of our institutions, and the betrayals that threaten them both.

Leadership matters. Steve Edwards, former President and CEO of CoxHealth, a $2 Billion Missouri-based health system, joins us to talk about his 30 years of leadership in healthcare, and how he balanced the books while never losing sight of the mission.

Sebastian Junger is a master storyteller whose vast body of work speaks to our humanity and collectivism – loyalty, belonging, meaning, connection - and what we lose without them. Junger joins us to talk about what he's learned from war, history, and a near-death experience, and that whether as physicians or soldiers, we ultimately strive to live "in a world where human relations are entirely governed by whether you can trust the other person with your life."

For more, follow TRIBE with Sebastian Junger on Substack.

DPC. Concierge Care. Upselling services. Are these new models the answer? Wendy and Matt break down what these new approaches mean for physicians and patients and how overturning a section of the ACA may be the best place to start.

Dr. Victor Montori, Professor of Medicine at Mayo Clinic's KER Unit, and author of Why We Revolt, joins us to talk about his patient revolution and why 'deliberate' care is one of the strongest acts of defiance we can deploy against a broken healthcare system.

Investigative journalist Gardiner Harris joins us to talk about No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson, an explosive expose of an organization whose image as a ""child-friendly" baby company" contrasts against "reams of evidence showing decades of deceitful and dangerous corporate practices that have threatened the lives of millions."

Our news feeds are rife with stories of betrayal, and as physicians, many of those stories feel shockingly familiar. We outline three levels of moral injury that can follow betrayal and offer strategies to prevent and mitigate that harm.