Podcasts about UnitedHealth Group

In this episode, Jakob Emerson, Associate News Director, Becker's Healthcare, shares insights from a rare behind-the-scenes visit to UnitedHealth Group's headquarters, exploring how the company is investing in AI, software, and data infrastructure to reshape healthcare.

The 2026 BOMA International Conference & Expo is fast approaching. Incoming chair Kjersten Jaeb sat down with the Buildings Podcast to explore the value of peer networks, her plan to lead with intention—and the must-see events at this year's BOMA conference. 

It's Wednesday, June 10th, A.D. 2026. This is The Worldview in 5 Minutes heard on 140 radio stations and at www.TheWorldview.com. I'm Adam McManus. (Adam@TheWorldview.com) By Jonathan Clark Hindu mob injured 25 Christians during worship service A Hindu mob attacked a Christian worship service in central India last week. The mob injured at least 25 people, including the pastor's pregnant wife. Such attacks are becoming more common in the country's state of Chhattisgarh.  The state's government passed a law criminalizing conversion in March. It is India's second most oppressive state for Christians. Open Doors ranks the whole country as the 12th most oppressive in the world for Christians.    7.8-magnitude earthquake struck Philippines A 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of the southern part of the Philippines on Monday. The quake killed at least 37 people, injured nearly 500, and displaced over 32,000. Christians in the area are jumping into action. International Christian Concern reports, “Local churches have opened their doors and converted their sanctuaries into vital emergency evacuation centers, providing safe shelter, immediate access to drinking water, and essential family food packs to thousands of displaced and traumatized residents.”   In Matthew 5:7, Jesus said, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.” Spanish Anglican church joins Bible-believing Anglican denomination In Spain, the Evangelical Anglican Community of Valencia joined the Global Anglican Communion last week. It's the first church in the country to do so. The Global Anglican Communion is a movement of conservative Anglicans led by churches in the Global South. The group rejects the leadership of the Church of England which has shown support for sexually perverted lifestyles. Julian Milson is the pastor of the church in Valencia. He told Evangelical Focus, “We believe that the Church is called to submit to the authority of Scripture above any cultural pressure.” FDA launched safety study of Abortion Kill Pill In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration launched a safety study of the Abortion Kill Pill, reports The Wall Street Journal.  This comes a year after the Trump administration promised to review the dangers of the abortion drug Mifepristone. The drug is not only part of ending the lives of unborn babies, it also poses health risks to the mothers who take it.  Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri introduced legislation in March to ban the Abortion Kill Pill. Listen to his comments. HAWLEY: “It is time for Congress to give the victims, the survivors -- many of whom are here today -- the right to recover against this company that has inflicted harm on them solely for the purpose of making profits. I'm introducing legislation today that will do just that. And I'm delighted to have with me here today great advocates for women's health and for life.” FBI fired analysts who targeted Catholics under President Biden         MS Now reports that the FBI fired several intelligence analysts who targeted Catholics under the Biden administration. The analysts were involved in a 2023 memo which revealed how the FBI was surveilling Catholics as potential domestic threats.  A recent report from the Justice Department stated, “The Biden Administration's policies regularly clashed with a Christian worldview and burdened traditional religious practices.” Amazon dethroned Walmart Amazon has dethroned Walmart as the largest corporation in the U.S. by revenue. That's according to the Fortune 500 rankings for 2026. Walmart came in second, ending its 13-year reign at the number one spot. Other top 10 companies include UnitedHealth Group, Apple, Alphabet, CVS Health, and Exxon Mobil.  Also, Texas dethroned California as the state with the most Fortune 500 companies this year.  Curaçao soccer player shared Christian testimony And finally, soccer teams from around the world are about to compete for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. The international men's soccer championship is being hosted across the United States, Mexico, and Canada this year. One of teams hails from Curaçao, an island county in the Caribbean. Players from the national team participated in a Christian worship event ahead of the competition.  The team's striker, Kenji Gorré, shared his testimony at the event. Listen. GORRE: “I received Him as my Savior, because I knew that my good works couldn't do enough. I thought that if you're a good person, you'll make it to Heaven. I thought if you're a good person, God will forgive me. He's a loving God. But the love of God goes deeper. “And that's when I heard the true Gospel of Jesus dying for my sins on the cross, bleeding for me, washing me, cleaning me. And He cleaned me from the inside out. But I thank Jesus every single day. And from that day I've never stopped seeking Him.” Gorré also said, “Tonight we don't gather as athletes seeking worldly success, but as children of God who recognize that everything we have belongs to Him.” 1 John 2:15 and 17 says, “Do not love the world or the things in the world. … The world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.” Close And that's The Worldview on this Wednesday, June 10th, in the year of our Lord 2026. Subscribe for free by Spotify, Amazon Music, or by iTunes or email to our unique Christian newscast at www.TheWorldview.com. Plus, you can get the Generations app through Google Play or The App Store. I'm Adam McManus (Adam@TheWorldview.com). Seize the day for Jesus Christ.

Emergency department performance is often shaped long before a patient is admitted, or discharged. This episode features a presentation from the recently held ROI-Centered Care Summit, a half-day virtual summit produced by Bright Spots Ventures in partnership with TytoCare and the American Telemedicine Association (ATA). In this episode, Robert Sumter, PhD, FACHE, EVP / Market Chief Operating Officer at Ascension Illinois, shares how his team redesigned the emergency department front door to improve patient flow, reduce waiting, and strengthen both operational and financial performance.  Rather than treating ED congestion as a staffing problem alone, Ascension focused on redesigning throughput across the full process: front-end intake, middle-care treatment, and back-end disposition and transition. The goal was not simply to move faster, but to build a more coordinated operating model that improves access, creates capacity, and supports a better experience for patients and staff alike.  You'll hear how Ascension Illinois: Uses a "pull to full" model to reduce waiting room congestion by moving patients directly into treatment areas  Combines triage nurse and provider teamwork to accelerate assessment and initiate care earlier  Deploys discharge nurses to free up clinical staff, improve transitions, and arrange PCP follow-up Uses standing order sets, bi-hourly huddles, and dedicated patient transport to reduce bottlenecks and keep patients moving  Focuses on "heads in the bed" to move admitted patients to assigned beds in under 30 minutes and preserve ED capacity  Key topics covered: Why ED throughput is about more than speed The emergency department as the true front door of the health system Reducing overcrowding, LWOT/AMA, and staff burnout through workflow redesign Connecting patient flow to consumer satisfaction and financial sustainability Building operational discipline without compromising quality of care Ascension reported an average door-to-doc time of 4 minutes and median outpatient throughput under 145 minutes, alongside a broader focus on improving patient experience, reducing overcrowding, stabilizing staffing, and increasing capacity without simply expanding footprint.  If you're a hospital operations leader, ED executive, or health system decision-maker working to improve access, throughput, and sustainability, this episode offers a practical look at what it takes to redesign the front door of care in a way that actually performs. Link to Rob Sumter's Presentation: https://www.brightspotsinhealthcare.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Improving-Patient-Access.pdf  Bio: Robert Sumter, PhD has more than 25 years of healthcare leadership experience driving operational excellence, strategic growth, and innovation across hospitals and health systems. He currently serves as Market COO for Ascension, where he oversees operations and strategic initiatives focused on improving patient outcomes, financial performance, and care delivery. Prior to Ascension, Robert served with UnitedHealth Group as the Interim Deputy COO and Chief Operating Officer for UnitedHealthcare Community & State. His leadership experience also includes executive roles at Hawaii Pacific Health, Regional One Health in Memphis, Tennessee, and Spectrum Health, where he served as Chief Operating Officer. Throughout his career, he has consistently led initiatives that improved patient satisfaction, reduced hospital length of stay, increased operational efficiency, and enhanced financial performance. Robert is widely recognized for his ability to lead large-scale operational transformations and build high-performing teams focused on delivering quality care and sustainable growth. His expertise spans hospital operations, healthcare strategy, population health, performance improvement, and executive leadership. Thank You to Our Episode Partner, TytoCare. TytoCare enables health systems and plans to deliver high-quality remote exams anytime, anywhere. Their FDA-cleared devices and AI-powered diagnostic platform support virtual specialty care, school-based programs, and home health models, reducing unnecessary ED visits and improving patient experience. To learn more, visit tytocare.com. Schedule a Meeting with a Senior Leader at TytoCare: To explore how TytoCare can help your organization expand virtual specialty access and improve care coordination, reach out to jtenzer@brightspotsventures.com  to schedule a meeting. About Bright Spots Ventures: Bright Spots Ventures exists to help healthcare organizations accelerate the adoption of what's actually working.   Healthcare does not suffer from a lack of innovation. It suffers from slow adoption, fragmented learning, and limited trust between stakeholders. For example, one health plan or provider may solve a major operational or clinical challenge while others spend the next 5–10 years rediscovering the same answer.   We close that gap by creating trusted environments where health plans, providers, and innovators can share practical strategies, operational lessons, and scalable models that drive measurable improvement.   Through the Bright Spots in Healthcare podcast, leadership councils, executive roundtables, curated events, and strategic advisory work, we help organizations build credibility, strengthen strategic relationships, and accelerate the spread of proven ideas across healthcare.

In this episode, Scott Becker breaks down the five highest revenue-generating U.S. companies and discusses how giants like Amazon, Walmart, Apple, UnitedHealth Group, and Alphabet continue to dominate commerce and growth.

In this episode, Scott Becker breaks down the five highest revenue-generating U.S. companies and discusses how giants like Amazon, Walmart, Apple, UnitedHealth Group, and Alphabet continue to dominate commerce and growth.

This time on CodeWACK! What if the rising cost of health care — the surprise bills, the shrinking choices, the long waits — weren't random at all, but largely the result of quiet, strategic consolidation happening behind the scenes? The Center for Health & Democracy has been working to reveal just this. Founded by former insurance executive-turned-whistleblower Wendell Potter, the organization shines a light on how corporate power shapes the American health care system — and what it means for patients and families. Joining us today is Rachel Madley, the Center's Executive Director. A scientist by training and a federal health policy expert, Rachel also brings lived experience navigating the health system with Type 1 diabetes — giving her unique insight into how policy decisions ripple into real lives. Today, we're talking about the Center's recent Sunlight Report, a first of its kind investigation into the corporate structure and expansion of UnitedHealth Group, the largest healthcare company in the world. The report pulls back the curtain on health care consolidation and reveals how deeply corporate expansion is reshaping who delivers care, how much it costs, and who ultimately benefits. Check out the Transcript and Show Notes for more! And please keep Code WACK! on the air with a tax-deductible donation at heal-ca.org/donate.

This time on CodeWACK! What if the rising cost of health care — the surprise bills, the shrinking choices, the long waits — weren't random at all, but largely the result of quiet, strategic consolidation happening behind the scenes? The Center for Health & Democracy has been working to reveal just this. Founded by former insurance executive-turned-whistleblower Wendell Potter, the organization shines a light on how corporate power shapes the American health care system — and what it means for patients and families. Joining us today is Rachel Madley, the Center's Executive Director. A scientist by training and a federal health policy expert, Rachel also brings lived experience navigating the health system with Type 1 diabetes — giving her unique insight into how policy decisions ripple into real lives. Today, we're talking about the Center's recent Sunlight Report, a first of its kind investigation into the corporate structure and expansion of UnitedHealth Group, the largest healthcare company in the world. The report pulls back the curtain on health care consolidation and reveals how deeply corporate expansion is reshaping who delivers care, how much it costs, and who ultimately benefits. Check out the Transcript and Show Notes for more! And please keep Code WACK! on the air with a tax-deductible donation at heal-ca.org/donate.

This time on CodeWACK! What if the rising cost of health care - the surprise bills, the shrinking choices, the long waits — weren't random at all, but largely the result of quiet, strategic consolidation happening behind the scenes? The Center for Health & Democracy has been working to reveal just this. Founded by former insurance executive-turned-whistleblower Wendell Potter, the organization shines a light on how corporate power shapes the American health care system — and what it means for patients and families. Joining us today is Rachel Madley, the Center's Executive Director. A scientist by training and a federal health policy expert, Rachel also brings lived experience navigating the health system with Type 1 diabetes — giving her unique insight into how policy decisions ripple into real lives. Today, we're talking about the Center's recent Sunlight Report, a first-of-its-kind investigation into the corporate structure and expansion of UnitedHealth Group, the largest healthcare company in the world. The report pulls back the curtain on health care consolidation and reveals how deeply corporate expansion is reshaping who delivers care, how much it costs, and who ultimately benefits. Check out the Transcript and Show Notes for more! And please keep Code WACK! on the air with a tax-deductible donation at heal-ca.org/donate.

En el episodio de hoy de VG Daily, Juan Manuel de los Reyes y Andre Dos Santos arrancan con las declaraciones de Donald Trump sobre Kevin Warsh, el nominado para reemplazar a Jerome Powell al frente de la Reserva Federal, y con el vencimiento del cese al fuego entre Estados Unidos e Irán.Se analizan las implicaciones del hearing de Warsh ante el comité bancario del Senado y los obstáculos políticos que podrían retrasar su confirmación; la situación en el Estrecho de Hormuz; y los datos de ventas minoristas como referencia del estado del consumo.En el bloque corporativo, UnitedHealth Group reporta resultados que superan estimados en revenue, EPS y ratio de gastos médicos; Amazon y Anthropic anuncian una expansión de su alianza con compromisos de inversión y capacidad de cómputo a gran escala; Tim Cook anuncia su salida como CEO de Apple y la transición hacia John Ternus.

Rusty Field, President & CEO of Evenstad Estates (home of Domaine Serene), joins RiskCellar hosts Brandon Schuh and Nick Hartmann for a side-by-side tasting of four wines, two from Burgundy and two from Oregon's Willamette Valley. Rusty shares the career journey that took him from United Health Group and Ameriprise Financial to Upsher-Smith Laboratories, and ultimately to leading one of America's most awarded wineries.The episode covers the science of winemaking. Why Pinot Noir thrives at the 45th parallel in both Oregon and Burgundy, how French oak barrels protect wine through tight grain structure, and why the 2022 Evenstad Reserve Chardonnay won Best Wine by Quality at the 2025 Sommeliers Choice Awards. Rusty breaks down the difference between volcanic Jory soil in the Dundee Hills and Burgundy's limestone-rich gravel terroir.The back half pivots to the 2020 Oregon wildfire vintage, frost candles in Burgundy, mildew wiping out 70% of the 2024 Côte de Nuit crop, and how Evenstad uses library wine inventory as a hedge. Rusty closes with an open invitation to connect on LinkedIn for insider travel guides to both wine regions.Key TakeawaysThe 45th parallel creates nearly identical growing seasons in Oregon and Burgundy, ideal for Pinot Noir2022 Evenstad Reserve Chardonnay: Best Wine by Quality, 2025 Sommeliers Choice Awards (96 pts)French oak's tight grain allows controlled oxygen exchange, Pinot Noir ages 14–18 months, Chardonnay ~12Mildew destroyed 70% of 2024 Côte de Nuit crop; 2020 wildfire smoke taint exposed limits of crop insurance~7,200-member wine club drives ~50% D2C revenue, unusually high for the industryAll Evenstad vineyards are dry-farmed and transitioning to full organic certificationRusty offers personal LinkedIn insider travel guidance for Burgundy and Oregon wine countryChapters00:00 Welcome & Guest Introduction01:00 How Rusty Joined the Evenstad Family04:48 Pharma to Wine: The Career Pivot08:32 Oregon vs. Burgundy Tasting Lineup09:00 First Pour, Château de la Crée "Les Graviers" White Burgundy12:56 Serving Temperature & Chardonnay Chemistry16:58 French Oak Barrel Aging Explained21:52 Second Pour, 2022 Evenstad Reserve Chardonnay (Oregon)23:53 Oregon as a Premier Wine Region28:42 Third Pour, Domaine Evenstad "Le Fusselot" Chambolle-Musigny30:19 Evenstad's Expansion into Burgundy35:07 Wine Club: 7,200 Members & D2C Strategy38:06 Fourth Pour, 2022 Evenstad Reserve Pinot Noir41:33 The 45th Parallel: Why Oregon Mirrors Burgundy43:16 Dry Farming, Organics & Sustainability45:12 Two Truths & A Lie: Wine History48:38 Climate Risk: Fire, Frost, Hail & Disease50:24 The 2020 Wildfire Vintage & Insurance Challenges54:24 Parametric Coverage & Future-Proofing57:07 Joining the Domaine Serene Wine Club59:47 Rusty's LinkedIn Offer: Insider Wine Country Guide01:00:09 Closing & Teaser for Episode Two at the WineryConnect with RiskCellar:Website: https://www.riskcellar.com/Rusty Field:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rustyfield/Website: https://www.domaineserene.com/about/team/rusty-fieldBrandon Schuh:Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61552710523314LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandon-stephen-schuh/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/schuhpapa/Nick Hartmann:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickjhartmann/ 

A man is dead. A father of two. And millions of Americans couldn't bring themselves to feel what they were supposed to feel about it. That's not a political statement. That's a diagnosis. And the disease isn't in the people — it's in the system that broke them.Brian Thompson spent over twenty years at UnitedHealth Group. He grew up in Iowa, raised a family in Minnesota, and by every account lived the kind of life most people would call respectable. His wife is a physical therapist. His boys are teenagers. And when he was killed outside a Manhattan hotel, the country didn't grieve the way it should have. Instead, over a hundred thousand people laughed at the condolence post. Crowds showed up in freezing weather to support the man accused of pulling the trigger. A legal defense fund crossed 1.4 million dollars. Polling showed nearly seven in ten Americans believed insurance company practices bore responsibility for creating the conditions behind what happened.This episode isn't about taking sides. It's about tracing a line from point A — where people trusted the system, called the number, filed the appeal — to point B — where a significant portion of the country watched a man get killed and felt nothing. That line runs through years of denied claims, impossible deductibles, family members who got sicker while waiting for approvals that never came, and an industry that posted record earnings while people rationed medication.The support for Luigi Mangione was never really about him. It was the accumulated pain of millions of people who ran out of places to put it. That's not heroism. That's a warning. And until the people who built this system decide to fix it rather than fortify it, the pressure that created this moment hasn't gone anywhere. It's just waiting.Join Our SubStack For AD-FREE ADVANCE EPISODES & EXTRAS!: https://hiddenkillers.substack.com/Want to comment and watch this podcast as a video? Check out our YouTube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8-vxmbhTxxG10sO1izODJg?sub_confirmation=1Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hiddenkillerspod/Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hiddenkillerspod/Tik-Tok https://www.tiktok.com/@hiddenkillerspodX Twitter https://x.com/TrueCrimePodThis publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice.#LuigiMangione #BrianThompson #UnitedHealthcare #HealthcareCrisis #TrueCrime #InsuranceDenials #HiddenKillers #HealthcareReform #ClaimDenied #TrueCrimePodcast

In this exciting episode of Win the 16, we are thrilled to welcome Willie Diefenbach-Jones as our guest. Willie has built a remarkable corporate career with industry giants such as United Health Group and Cigna. She is a true Legacy Creator and Gratitude Consultant, as well as a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and Six Sigma Master Black Belt. Additionally, she is the co-author of the thought-provoking book, Mindset Matters.Join Dave and Willie as they delve into insightful discussions surrounding her innovative company that focuses on the power of gratitude. They will explore how gratitude can transform lives, the importance of resilience on tough days, the courage to embark on new ventures, and strategies for building impactful referral ecosystems.Don't miss this enriching interview and conversation that promises to inspire and empower!

In this episode, Dr. Margaret-Mary Wilson, Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice President at UnitedHealth Group, discusses engaging patients through social media, addressing rising health risks in younger populations, and building a resilient healthcare workforce through innovation and collaboration.

207. Invisible Divides in the Workplace (with Ivonne Furneaux)   In this episode of The Visibility Factor podcast, Susan's guest is Ivonne Furneaux. She is a keynote speaker, workplace strategist and founder of emPower Up Consulting, where she helps organizations lead through change and close the invisible gaps that undermine trust, engagement and performance. With more than 20 years of experience inside complex, global organizations—including Target, UnitedHealth Group, WeightWatchers, OfficeMax and Anywhere Real Estate—Ivonne has led enterprise communications, employee experience, culture, change and Diversity, Equity & Inclusion during periods of transformation, uncertainty and growth. Grounded in both lived experience and formal training, Ivonne brings a human-centered approach to culture and communication. Using her proprietary “Ghost Gaps” concept and 4I Framework, she equips leaders and employees alike with actionable strategies to build more connected, engaged workplaces and careers. Ivonne Furneaux has a diverse background in corporate communications and DEI. The concept of 'ghost gaps' highlights invisible divides in the workplace. Workplace identity significantly impacts employee engagement and experience. Visibility in the workplace is crucial for connection and engagement. Organizational culture is shaped by the actions of all employees, not just leadership. The 4I framework can help organizations address ghost gaps effectively. Earning buy-in for change requires appealing to both hearts and minds. Sponsorship is more impactful than mentorship for career advancement. Transparency in communication builds trust within organizations. Investing in employees at all levels fosters loyalty and engagement. The book that Ivonne recommends is Fantasticland by Mike Bockoven Article that Ivonne wrote: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/invisible-workplace-divides-sabotaging-employee-ivonne-furneaux-qhkhc Follow Ivonne on social media: Website: https://ivonnefurneaux.com  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivonnefurneaux/ YouTube: @IvonneFurneaux  Instagram: @ivonneinreallife Link to Order Your Journey to Visibility Workbook Thank you for listening to The Visibility Factor Podcast!    Check out my website to order my book and view the  videos/resources for The Visibility Factor book and Your Journey to Visibility Workbook. As always, I encourage you to reach out! You can email me at hello@susanmbarber.com. You can also find me on social media everywhere –Facebook, LinkedIn, and of course on The Visibility Factor Podcast! I look forward to connecting with you!          If you liked The Visibility Factor Podcast, I would be so grateful if you could subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts! It helps the podcast get in front of more people who can learn how to be visible too!       

P.M. Edition for Feb. 18. A long-anticipated sale of the Seattle Seahawks is now underway—and the sale price could break NFL records. Plus, Stephen Hemsley, the leader of UnitedHealth Group, for years made private investments in healthcare startups. Journal senior editor Mark Maremont digs into how some of those companies also did business with, or competed against, UnitedHealth. And in his testimony at a landmark social media trial, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended the company's practices. Alex Ossola hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We are excited to welcome Villa Maria Academy alumna Kate Mastrian Kanne ‘89, Senior Vice President of Enterprise Internal Communications at UnitedHealth Group, on as a guestfor The Rambler Podcast.With nearly three decades of leadership experience in health care, business strategy, and communications, Kate shares her journey from her time at Villa to leading enterprise-wideengagement for one of the largest health care organizations in the country. From marketing and brand leadership to shaping culture and employee experience at scale, her career reflects discipline, adaptability, and a deep understanding of how communication drives impact. In this episode, Kate reflects on the foundation built during her years at Villa, the professional pivots that shaped her path, and the leadership lessons she's learned along the way about preparation, resilience, serving others, and staying grounded in what matters most. It's an inspiring conversation for anyone striving to lead with clarity, purpose, and integrity!

In this episode, Scott Becker walks through the year to date performance of several closely followed stocks including Intel, Coca-Cola, Bank of America, UnitedHealth Group, and Palantir.

In this episode, Scott Becker walks through the year to date performance of several closely followed stocks including Intel, Coca-Cola, Bank of America, UnitedHealth Group, and Palantir.

P.M. Edition for Jan. 27. Health insurers like UnitedHealth Group and Humana were shocked after the Trump administration proposed holding Medicare rates nearly steady next year—a move that could be a big hit to their finances. Anna Wilde Mathews, who covers health insurance for the Journal, discusses what that could mean for patients and the industry's next move. Plus, the Trump administration's immigration crackdown has slowed U.S. population growth. And Amazon is closing its Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go stores, but will open 100 more Whole Foods stores. Alex Ossola hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What happens when a kid who didn't speak English and didn't touch a computer until 15 goes on to lead some of the biggest AI and automation programmes in the world? Meet Danilo McGarry — a global AI expert, automation pioneer and digital transformation leader who has worked across organisations like Citigroup, UnitedHealth Group, Royal Bank of Canada and Alter Domus, helping companies redesign how work is done using artificial intelligence. From growing up in Brazil to becoming one of the most recognised voices in AI leadership, Danilo's story is about resilience, obsession with learning, and refusing to accept how things have always been done. In this conversation, we go far beyond buzzwords. We talk about how AI is really being used inside companies, why culture matters more than technology, how automation is reshaping jobs and leadership, and what executives must understand if they want to survive the next decade. We also explore the human side of artificial intelligence — anxiety, burnout, biology, sleep, emotional intelligence, and what it actually means to stay human while machines become more powerful. This is not a hype conversation. This is about execution, responsibility, leadership under pressure, and building a future where AI amplifies people instead of replacing them.We Discuss:00:00 – Danilo McGarry on AI & Leadership03:25 – Danilo's personal story: from Brazil to AI expert12:10 – Using automation to outperform humans in work21:40 – The chaotic banking story & leadership lessons32:15 – Why culture must lead AI adoption42:00 – The 5 pillars of AI transformation58:30 – The biggest myths about AI & singularity1:10:20 – How to manage anxiety in a rapidly changing world1:22:45 – The future of jobs, freelancing & gig economy1:38:10 – The future of hiring: beyond resumes1:50:00 – Why sleep, biology & humanity matter2:00:00 – Danilo's final advice on execution with AIAbout Danilo McGarry: Danilo McGarry is a globally recognised AI expert, automation leader and digital transformation advisor, consistently ranked among the Top 20 Most Influential People in Artificial Intelligence worldwide. He has led large-scale AI and automation programmes across major organisations including Citigroup (Head of AI & Machine Learning), UnitedHealth Group (enterprise automation leadership), Royal Bank of Canada, JPMorgan, BNP Paribas and Alter Domus, delivering measurable business impact across finance, healthcare and enterprise technology.Danilo is also a Strategic Adviser on AI to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) in the UK and a sought-after keynote speaker on AI, leadership, future of work and digital transformation. His work and insights have been featured in publications including WIRED, Financial Times, Bloomberg and Computer Weekly, and he advises governments and global companies on how to adopt AI ethically, practically and at scale.YT: https://www.youtube.com/@aimcgarryIG: https://www.instagram.com/aimcgarry/

While many of you were enjoying the holidays, Kaiser Permanente wasback in the news. This time, another whistleblower case which resulted inan amazing $556 million settlement to resolve allegations that the giantprovider/payer fudged on its Medicare Advantage risk adjustment.Reporting the lead story during the next live edition of Monitor Mondays willbe Liz Soltan, a New York-based senior associate at WhistleblowerPartners. Soltan is a member of the firm's litigation team who representedDr. James Taylor in his landmark False Claims Act (FCA) case againstKaiser Permanente which resolved allegations of Medicare Advantage riskadjustment fraud. Soltan also works on a major Medicare Advantage riskadjustment fraud case against UnitedHealth Group on behalf ofwhistleblower Benjamin Poehling.Broadcast segments will also include these instantly recognizable features: Monday Rounds: Ronald Hirsch, MD, vice president of R1 RCM,will be making his Monday Rounds. The RAC Report: Healthcare attorney Knicole Emanuel, partnerat the law firm of Nelson Mullins, will report the latest news aboutauditors. Risky Business: Healthcare attorney David Glaser, shareholderin the law offices of Fredrikson & Byron, will join the broadcast withhis trademark segment. Legislative Update: Adam Brenman, legislative affairs liaison forZelis, will report on current healthcare legislation.

With the American republic hanging in the balance, Ralph calls on Democrats to pressure Republicans in the House and Senate to impeach Trump before the midterms or suffer the consequences. Then, we welcome Dino Grandoni, co-author of a Washington Post report on the surprising ways various species of animals and plants help advance our own health and longevity.Dino Grandoni is a reporter who covers life sciences for the Washington Post. He was part of a reporting team that was a finalist for the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for coverage of Hurricane Helene. He previously covered the Environmental Protection Agency and wrote a daily tipsheet on energy and environmental policy. He is co-author (with Hailey Haymond and Katty Huertas) of the feature “50 Species That Save Us.”The Democrats—while there are people like constitutional law expert Jamie Raskin (who has said a shadow hearing to publicly educate the American people on impeachment “is a good idea”) he's been muzzled by Hakeem Jeffries and Charlie Schumer, who basically don't want the Democrats to use the word impeachment. So who's using the word impeachment the most? Donald Trump—not only wants to impeach judges who decide against him, but he's talking about the Democrats impeaching him, and he uses the word all the time. So we have an upside-down situation here where the opposition party is not in the opposition on the most critical factor, which is that we have the most impeachable President in American history, getting worse by the day.Ralph NaderIf the founding fathers came back to life today, would any of them oppose the impeachment, conviction, and removal of office of Donald J. Trump, who talks about being a monarch? That's what they fought King George over. Of course, they would all support it.Ralph NaderWhat we have in these cards and in our stories at the Washington Post here are examples of the ways we know, the ways that scientists have uncovered how plants and animals help us. But we don't know what we don't know. There are likely numerous other ways that plants and animals are protecting human well-being that we don't know and we may very well never know if some of these species go extinct.Dino GrandoniI'm always eager to find these connections between human well-being and the well-being of nature and try to describe them in ways that are compelling to readers that get them to care about protecting nature. And also finding those instances (because I want to be objective here) of when human well-being and the well-being of nature might be in conflict, and that might involve some tough decisions that we as a society or policymakers have to make.Dino GrandoniNews 1/16/25* Our top two stories this week concern corporate wrongdoing. First, Business Insider reports that the New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection has released a new report which estimates Uber Eats and DoorDash, by altering their tipping processes in the city – moving tipping prompts to less prominent locations after checkout so upfront delivery costs would appear lower – have deprived gig delivery workers of $550 million since December 2023. As this piece notes, that was the month that New York City's minimum pay law for delivery workers took effect. As a result, “The average tip for delivery workers on the apps dropped 75%...from $3.66 to $0.93, one week after the apps made the changes…The figure has since declined to $0.76 per delivery.” This report presages a new city law that “requires the apps to offer customers the option to tip before or during checkout. Both Uber and DoorDash have sued the City over the law, which is set to take effect on January 26.” Whether the administration will stick to their guns on this issue, in the face of corporate pressure, will be a major early test for Mayor Zohran Mamdani.* Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports UnitedHealth Group “deployed aggressive tactics to collect payment-boosting diagnoses for its Medicare Advantage members.” As the Journal explains, “In Medicare Advantage, the federal government pays insurers a lump sum to oversee medical benefits for seniors and disabled people. The government pays extra for patients with certain costly medical conditions, a process called risk adjustment.” A new report from the Senate Judiciary Committee found that UnitedHealth had “turned risk adjustment into a business,” thereby exploiting Medicare Advantage and systematically and fraudulently overbilling the federal government. Due to its structure, advocates like Ralph Nader have long warned that Medicare Advantage is ripe for waste fraud and abuse, in addition to being an inferior program for seniors compared to traditional Medicare. This report supports the accuracy of these warnings. Yet, Dr. Mehmet Oz Trump's appointee to head the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, is a longtime proselytizer for Medicare Advantage and this setback is unlikely to make him reverse course, no matter the cost to patients or taxpayers.* Yet, even as these instances of corporate criminal lawlessness pile up, the Trump administration is all but abolishing the police on the corporate crime beat. In a new report, Rick Claypool, corporate crime research director at Public Citizen, documents how the administration has “canceled or halted a total of 159 enforcement actions against 166 corporations.” This amounts to corporations avoiding payments totaling $3.1 billion in penalties for misconduct. This report further documents how these corporations have ingratiated themselves with Trump, via donations to his inauguration or ballroom project, or more typical revolving door or lobbying arrangements. As Claypool himself puts it, “The ‘law enforcement' claims the White House uses as a pretext for authoritarian anti-immigrant crackdowns, city occupations, and imperial resource seizures abroad lose all credibility when cast against the lawlessness Trump allows for the pursuit of corporate profits.”* In another instance of a Trump administration giveaway to corporations, the New York Times reports the Environmental Protection Agency will “Stop Considering Lives Saved When Setting Rules on Air Pollution.” Under the new regulatory regime, the EPA will “estimate only the costs to businesses of complying with the rules.” The Times explains that different administrations have balanced these competing interests differently, always faced with the morbid dilemma of how much, in a dollar amount, to value human life; but “until now, no administration has counted it as zero.”* Moving to Congress, the big news from the Legislative Branch this week has to do with Bill and Hillary Clinton. NPR reports Congressman James Comer, Chair of the House Oversight Committee, issued subpoenas to the former president and former Secretary of State to testify in a committee hearing related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. In a letter published earlier this week, the Clintons formally rejected the subpoenas, calling them “legally invalid.” The Clintons' refusal to appear tees up an opportunity for Congress to exercise its contempt power and force the couple to testify. Democrats on the Oversight Committee, who agreed to issue the subpoenas as part of a larger list, have noted that “most of the other people have not been forced to testify,” indicating that this is a political stunt rather than an earnest effort. That said, there is little doubt that, at least, former President Clinton knows more about the Epstein affair than he has stated publicly thus far and there is a good chance Congress will vote through a contempt resolution and force him to testify.* In the Senate, Elizabeth Warren, Chris Murphy and other liberal Senators are “urging their Democratic colleagues to pivot to economic populism by ‘confronting' corporate power and billionaires, warning that just talking about affordability alone won't move swing voters who backed President Trump in 2024,” per the Hill. Senators Adam Schiff of California and Tina Smith of Minnesota also signed this memo. The Senators cited a recent poll that found Americans “increasingly cannot afford basic goods such as medical care and groceries,” but they also warned that “Bland policy proposals — without a narrative explaining who is getting screwed and who is doing the screwing – will not work.” Hopefully this forceful urging by fellow Senators will move the needle within the Democratic caucus in the upper house. Nothing else seems to have driven the point home.* One candidate who seems to understand this message is Graham Platner of Maine. Platner, who is endorsed by Bernie Sanders, has a controversial past that includes a career in the Marines and a stint working for the private military contractor Blackwater. However, he is running as a staunch economic populist and New Deal style progressive Democrat – and the message appears to be working. According to Zeteo, a poll conducted in mid-December found Platner up by 15 points in the primary over his opponent, current Governor Janet Mills. More concerning is the fact that this same poll shows both Platner and Mills in a dead heat with incumbent Republican Senator Susan Collins, indicating this could be a brutal, protracted and expensive campaign.* On the other end of the spectrum, Axios reported this week that former Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney, who once led the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and then served as President Biden's ambassador to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, has accepted a role as CEO and president of the Coalition for Prediction Markets. The coalition is essentially a trade association for betting websites; members include Kalshi, Crypto.com Robinhood and Coinbase, among others. The coalition will leverage Maloney's influence with Democrats, along with former Republican Congressman Patrick McHenry's influence across the aisle, to lobby for favorable regulation for their industry.* Turning to foreign affairs, prosecutors in South Korea have announced that they are seeking the death penalty for former President Yoon Suk-Yeol on “charges of masterminding an insurrection over his brief imposition of martial law in December 2024,” per Reuters. In a stunning courtroom revelation, a prosecutor said during closing arguments that “investigators confirmed the existence of a scheme allegedly directed by Yoon and his former defence minister, Kim Yong-hyun, dating back to October 2023 designed to keep Yoon in power.” The prosecutor added that “The defendant has not sincerely regretted the crime... or apologised properly to the people.” As this piece notes, South Korea has not carried out a death sentence in nearly three decades. Even still, it is remarkable to see how this case has unfolded compared to the reaction of the American judicial system to Donald Trump's attempted self-coup on January 6th, 2021.* Finally, turning to Latin America, many expected the fall of Nicolás Maduro to mean a redoubled energy crisis for the long-embargoed island nation of Cuba. Yet, the Financial Times reports that in fact, “Mexico overtook Venezuela to become Cuba's top oil supplier in 2025…helping the island weather a sharp drop in Venezuelan crude shipments.” CBS adds that “Despite President Trump's social media pronouncement…that ‘there will be no more oil or money going to Cuba — zero,' the current U.S. policy is to allow Mexico to continue to provide oil to the island, according to Energy Secretary Chris Wright.” For the time being, the administration seems open to maintaining this status quo – including maintaining cordial relations with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum – though this appears more strained than ever. Sheinbaum harshly criticized the kidnapping of Maduro, stating “unilateral action and invasion cannot be the basis for international relations in the 21st century,” while Republican Congressman Carlos Gimenez has threatened that there could be “serious consequences for trade between our countries” if Sheinbaum “continues to undermine US policy by sending oil to the murderous dictatorship in Cuba.”This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven't Heard. Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe

Can Therapists Start a Union? The Antitrust Trap, the Shadow Committee, and the Economic Strangulation of American Psychotherapy Analyzing America's Healthcare Regulations and Their Effect on Us: Why the Law Prevents Therapists from Organizing While Allowing a Private Committee to Fix Prices for the Entire Medical System https://gettherapybirmingham.com/can-therapists-start-a-union-spoiler-alert-they-cant/ The Monthly Rage Thread If you hang around therapist forums long enough, you will see it happen. It operates with the regularity of the tides. Someone posts a thread, usually after receiving a contract from an insurance company offering 1998 rates for 2025 work, and asks the obvious question: “We are the ones providing the care. The system collapses without us. Why don't we just all go on strike? Why don't we form a union and demand fair pay?” It is a logical question. In almost every other sector of the economy, workers who feel exploited band together to negotiate better terms. Screenwriters shut down Hollywood to get paid for streaming residuals. Auto workers walk off the line. Teachers fill the state capitol. Nurses at major hospital systems have successfully unionized and won significant concessions. So why, in the midst of a national mental health crisis, does the mental health workforce remain so politically impotent? The answer is not that we lack will. It is not that we lack organization. The answer is that for private practice therapists, forming a union is a federal crime. This is not a political manifesto. It is an analysis of the bizarre regulatory environment that governs American healthcare, a system of antitrust laws, shadow committees, and bureaucratic classifications that effectively strips clinicians of their bargaining power while empowering the corporations that pay them. If you want to understand why corporate tech monopolies are ruining therapy, or why the corporatization of healthcare feels so suffocating, you have to understand the legal straitjacket we are all wearing. And you have to understand the one group that is allowed to set prices, the one group exempt from the rules that bind the rest of us. Part I: You Are Not a Worker, You Are a Standard Oil Tycoon The primary reason therapists cannot unionize dates back to the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons. The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 was designed to prevent massive corporations like Standard Oil from colluding to fix prices and destroy the free market. It prohibits “every contract, combination… or conspiracy, in restraint of trade.” The law was a response to genuine abuses: companies buying up competitors, dividing territories, and coordinating prices to gouge consumers who had no alternatives. Here is the catch: In the eyes of the federal government, a private practice therapist is not a “worker.” You are a business entity. Even if you are a solo practitioner struggling to pay rent in a subleased office, seeing clients between crying in your car and eating lunch at your desk, the law views you as the CEO of a micro-corporation. You are classified as a 1099 independent contractor, not a W-2 employee, and that distinction makes all the difference in the world. If two workers at Starbucks talk about their wages and agree to ask for a raise, that is “collective bargaining,” which is protected by the National Labor Relations Act. But if two private practice therapists talk about their reimbursement rates and agree to ask Blue Cross for a raise, that is “price-fixing.” It is legally indistinguishable, in the eyes of the Federal Trade Commission, from gas stations conspiring to raise the price of unleaded. It sounds absurd, but the FTC takes it deadly seriously. When independent contractors organize to demand higher rates, when they share information about what they are being paid and coordinate their responses, they are engaging in horizontal price-fixing, one of the most serious violations of antitrust law. The Sherman Act provides for criminal penalties, including fines and imprisonment. The law that was meant to break up monopolies is now used to prevent social workers from asking for a cost-of-living adjustment. The irony is crushing. The same regulatory framework that prevents two therapists from discussing their rates allows massive insurance conglomerates to merge repeatedly, concentrating buyer power in fewer and fewer hands. UnitedHealth Group, for example, has acquired dozens of companies over the past two decades, becoming the largest healthcare company in the United States. When they offer a “take it or leave it” contract to providers, they do so with the full knowledge that fragmented, legally prohibited from organizing therapists have no counter-leverage. The antitrust laws, designed to prevent monopoly power, have created a system where sellers are atomized and buyers are consolidated. Economists call this “monopsony,” and it is precisely the market distortion the Sherman Act was supposed to prevent. Part II: The Day the “Learned Profession” Died For a long time, doctors and lawyers thought they were exempt from these laws. They argued that they were “learned professions,” not mere tradespeople, and therefore above the grubby laws of commerce. They believed that their ethical obligations to patients and clients set them apart from the rules that governed steel mills and meatpacking plants. Medicine was a calling, not a business, and surely the government would not regulate the sacred doctor-patient relationship as if it were a commercial transaction. That illusion was shattered in 1975 by the Supreme Court case Goldfarb v. Virginia State Bar. The case involved lawyers, not doctors, but its implications cascaded through every licensed profession in America. The Goldfarbs were purchasing a home and needed a title examination. The Virginia State Bar had established a minimum fee schedule for such services, and every lawyer they contacted quoted the exact same price. They sued, arguing that this fee schedule was illegal price-fixing. The Supreme Court agreed. In a unanimous decision, the Court ruled that professional services, including legal and medical advice, are “trade or commerce” subject to antitrust laws. The “learned profession” exemption, which had been assumed but never explicitly established in law, was declared a myth. “The nature of an occupation, standing alone,” the Court wrote, “does not provide sanctuary from the Sherman Act.” This ruling was intended to lower prices for consumers by preventing lawyers from setting minimum fees, and in that narrow sense it was a good thing. But in healthcare, it had a catastrophic side effect: it made it illegal for doctors and therapists to band together to resist the pricing power of insurance companies. The “learned profession” exemption is dead. We are now just businesses, and businesses are not allowed to hold hands. This creates the illusion of progress: we have “free market” competition among providers, but monopsony power among payers. It is a market where the sellers are forbidden from organizing, but the buyers are allowed to merge until they are too big to fail. The result is not a free market at all. It is a market designed to transfer wealth from one class (providers) to another (insurers and administrators), with the law itself serving as the enforcement mechanism. Part III: The Cartel in the Basement If therapists cannot collude to set prices, surely nobody else can, right? Wrong. There is one group in American healthcare that is allowed to meet in a room, decide what every doctor's time is worth, and set prices for the entire industry. It is called the RUC, the AMA/Specialty Society Relative Value Scale Update Committee. And understanding the RUC is the key to understanding why talk therapy is dying in the medical model, why psychiatrists abandoned the couch for the prescription pad, and why your insurance company offers you a ghost network of providers who never answer the phone. The Birth of a Shadow Government To comprehend the current crisis in mental health economics, one must excavate the foundations of the physician payment system. Prior to 1992, Medicare reimbursed physicians based on a system known as “Customary, Prevailing, and Reasonable” charges. Under this system, physicians were paid based on their historical billing charges. It was inherently inflationary; it rewarded those who raised their fees most aggressively and created wide geographic disparities for identical services. In response to spiraling costs, Congress passed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1989, mandating a transition to a fee schedule based on the resources required to provide a service. This birthed the Resource-Based Relative Value Scale. The intellectual architecture for this system was developed by a team of economists at Harvard University, led by William Hsiao. Hsiao's team sought to create a “unified theory” of medical value, attempting to quantify the “work” involved in disparate medical acts, comparing the cognitive intensity of a psychiatric evaluation with the technical skill of a hernia repair. The Harvard study was revolutionary. It promised to level the playing field, suggesting that cognitive services, the thinking and talking that comprises primary care and mental health, were vastly undervalued relative to surgical procedures. Had Hsiao's original recommendations been implemented purely, the income gap between generalists and specialists might have narrowed significantly. But the administrative complexity of assigning values to over 7,000 Current Procedural Terminology codes overwhelmed the Health Care Financing Administration. Into this administrative vacuum stepped the American Medical Association. The AMA, fearing that the government would unilaterally set prices, proposed a “partnership.” They would convene a committee of experts to maintain and update the relative values, providing this labor-intensive service to the government at no cost. The government accepted. Thus, in 1991, the RUC was born, not as a government agency, but as a private advisory body with unparalleled influence over public funds. The Architecture of Control The RUC's claim to legitimacy rests on its status as an “expert panel.” But a structural analysis of its composition reveals a profound bias that mimics the governance of a cartel designed to protect incumbent interests. The committee consists of 32 members, but power is concentrated in the 29 voting seats. Of these, 21 seats are appointed by major national medical specialty societies. The distribution is not proportional to the volume of services provided to Medicare beneficiaries, nor is it proportional to the physician workforce. Instead, it is frozen in a historical moment that favored high-technology specialties. Primary care physicians, who perform roughly 45 to 50 percent of Medicare work, hold approximately 4 to 5 seats, giving them about 17 percent of the vote. Procedural and surgical specialties, including surgery, radiology, and anesthesiology, hold 15 to 18 seats, giving them roughly 60 percent of the vote despite performing only 35 to 40 percent of Medicare work. The American Psychiatric Association holds a single seat. One seat. This lone representative must negotiate with a supermajority of specialists, neurosurgeons, cardiothoracic surgeons, radiologists, and ophthalmologists, whose financial interests are often diametrically opposed to the valuation of cognitive work. The cartel dynamic is enforced by a statutory requirement of budget neutrality. The Medicare Physician Fee Schedule is a zero-sum game. If the total relative value units projected for a given year exceed the budget, a “scaler” is applied to reduce the conversion factor, effectively cutting everyone's pay. Therefore, any proposal to increase the value of psychotherapy, which would increase the total RVU spend, effectively asks every surgeon in the room to take a pay cut to fund the raise for psychiatrists. Given that a two-thirds majority is required to pass a recommendation, the procedural bloc holds absolute veto power over any redistribution of wealth. The Secret Chamber A hallmark of cartel behavior is the restriction of information. For nearly two decades, the RUC operated in near-total secrecy. While recent years have seen minor concessions to transparency, such as the publication of vote totals, the core deliberative process remains opaque. RUC meetings are private. The public, the press, and even non-RUC physicians are largely barred from attending the deliberations where billions of tax dollars are allocated. Participants, including the specialty advisors who present data, must sign strict non-disclosure agreements. These agreements prevent them from discussing the specific tradeoffs, deals, or arguments made within the chamber. A former RUC participant described these agreements as “draconian,” designed to insulate the committee from public accountability. The Government Accountability Office and the Center for American Progress have noted the inherent conflict of interest. The individuals setting the prices are the same individuals who receive the payments. Unlike a regulatory agency, where officials are salaried and divested of industry assets, RUC members are practicing physicians whose personal incomes are directly tied to the decisions they make. This secrecy serves a functional purpose: it allows for “logrolling.” A representative from Orthopedics might support an inflated value for a Cardiology code in exchange for Cardiology's support on a Knee Replacement code. This “I'll scratch your back” dynamic creates an upward pressure on procedural values that excludes those outside the dominant coalition, specifically primary care and mental health. The Antitrust Shield Why has the Department of Justice not broken up this cartel? The legal shield is the Noerr-Pennington Doctrine. This Supreme Court doctrine establishes that private entities are immune from antitrust liability when they are petitioning the government. Because the RUC technically only “recommends” values to CMS (that is petitioning), and CMS “decides” (that is government action), the RUC is protected by the First Amendment right to petition. This legal loophole allows the RUC to operate with monopolistic characteristics without fear of prosecution, provided CMS continues to go through the motions of “reviewing” the recommendations. And CMS accepts those recommendations over 90 percent of the time. Because private insurance companies generally base their rates on Medicare, this private committee effectively sets the price of healthcare for the entire country. If independent therapists did this, if they gathered in a room and agreed on what their services should cost, they would face criminal prosecution. But because the RUC operates under the fiction of “advising” the government, it is protected. The same regulatory framework that criminalizes therapist solidarity provides cover for industry-wide price coordination by the most powerful medical specialties. Part IV: The Mechanics of Suppression To control a market, one must control its currency. In American medicine, that currency is the Relative Value Unit. Every medical service, from a 15-minute therapy session to a heart transplant, is assigned a total RVU value. This value is the sum of three components: the Work RVU, which accounts for physician time, technical skill, mental effort, and judgment; the Practice Expense RVU, which covers overhead costs like rent, staff, and equipment; and the Malpractice RVU, which reflects professional liability insurance costs. The Work RVU, which comprises roughly 50 to 55 percent of the total value, is determined by RUC surveys. When a code is flagged for review, the relevant specialty society distributes a survey to a sample of its members. These respondents are asked to estimate the time and intensity of the service compared to a “reference service.” This methodology violates several principles of statistical validity. The surveys are voluntary and distributed by the specialty societies themselves. The respondents are typically those most active in the society and most invested in maximizing reimbursement, advocates rather than neutral observers. The sample sizes are often shockingly small; RUC surveys frequently rely on fewer than 50 or 70 respondents to set the price for services performed millions of times annually. A sample of 30 orthopedic surgeons might determine the value of a procedure costing Medicare billions. The Time Arbitrage The most critical variable in the RUC equation is time. The Work RVU is conceptually derived from the formula: Work equals Time multiplied by Intensity. Therefore, inflating the time estimate is the most direct route to inflating the price. Independent studies by RAND and the Urban Institute, often using objective data like Operating Room logs, have consistently shown that the RUC overestimates the time required for surgical procedures. A procedure valued by the RUC as taking 60 minutes may, in reality, take 30 minutes. This creates an arbitrage opportunity. If a gastroenterologist can perform a “60-minute” colonoscopy in 20 minutes, they can effectively perform three procedures in the time allotted for one. They bill for three hours of work in one hour of real time. This “efficiency gain” is captured entirely by the physician as profit. Psychotherapy cannot utilize this arbitrage. CPT codes for psychotherapy are explicitly time-based in their definition. Code 90832 requires 16 to 37 minutes. Code 90834 requires 38 to 52 minutes. Code 90837 requires 53 minutes or more. A psychiatrist cannot perform a 60-minute therapy session in 20 minutes; doing so constitutes fraud. Therefore, the revenue of a psychotherapist is capped by the linear passage of time. They can sell, at maximum, roughly 8 to 10 units of labor per day. A proceduralist, aided by RUC-inflated time assumptions, can sell 20 or 30 units of “RUC time” in the same day. This structural discrepancy creates a widening income gap that no amount of “hard work” by the therapist can close. It is not a market failure. It is market design. The “Thinking” Penalty The RUC's bias is not merely structural; it is philosophical. The committee, dominated by surgeons and proceduralists, consistently values “doing things to people,” cutting, scanning, injecting, far more highly than “talking to people,” diagnosing, counseling, managing complex chronic conditions. This creates a regulatory environment that functions as a de facto wealth transfer from cognitive care to procedural care. In 2013, a major revision of psychiatry codes exposed this bias in stark relief. Previously, psychiatrists used codes that bundled the medical evaluation with the psychotherapy. The new system required psychiatrists to bill an E/M code for the medical management plus an “add-on” code for psychotherapy. While intended to improve transparency, this change exposed psychotherapy to the raw mechanics of the RUC's valuation bias. By isolating the “therapy” component, the committee could subject it to rigorous cross-specialty comparison. And the committee, dominated by surgeons, views “talking to a patient” as low-intensity work compared to “operating on a patient.” The economic signal was clear. This created the 15-minute med check culture not because psychiatrists stopped caring, but because the regulatory environment made relational care financial suicide. It effectively “illegalized” the practice of deep, slow psychiatry for anyone who wanted to take insurance. Part V: The “Messenger Model” and Other Legal Fictions When therapists ask about collective bargaining, lawyers will often point them to the only legal loophole available: the “Messenger Model.” In this model, a third party (the messenger) acts as an intermediary between a group of providers and an insurance company. The messenger takes the insurance company's offer and conveys it to each therapist individually. Each therapist must then make a unilateral, independent decision to accept or reject it. The messenger is strictly forbidden from negotiating. They cannot say, “The group rejects this.” They cannot say, “We want 10% more.” They cannot advise the therapists on what to do. They can only carry messages. This is why “Independent Practice Associations” are often toothless. In the 2008 case North Texas Specialty Physicians v. FTC, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals made clear that if an IPA actually tries to leverage its numbers to demand better rates, it violates antitrust laws. If it follows the messenger model, it has no leverage. It is a “heads I win, tails you lose” regulatory structure designed to protect payers, not providers. The only exception is “clinical integration,” where providers genuinely merge their practices, share infrastructure, and accept joint financial risk. But this requires substantial capital investment and essentially means ceasing to be an independent practitioner. It is a legal pathway available mainly to large physician groups and hospital systems, not to solo therapists working out of rented offices. Part VI: Market Distortions and the Flight to Cash When a cartel sets a price below the market equilibrium, suppliers exit the formal market. This is precisely what has happened in psychotherapy. Mental health providers generally have lower overhead than surgeons. They do not need MRI machines or sterile surgical suites. And they face high consumer demand; the national mental health crisis ensures a steady stream of people seeking services. This gives them an “exit option” that proceduralists do not have. They can refuse to accept insurance and operate as cash-only businesses. The statistics are stark. Nearly 50 percent of psychiatrists do not accept commercial insurance, compared to less than 10 percent of other specialists. A 2023 survey indicated that 64 percent of private practice therapists planned to increase their cash-pay rates. Research published in Health Affairs Scholar found that patients are 10.6 times more likely to go out-of-network for mental health care than for medical/surgical care. This mass exodus is a rational economic response to RUC-suppressed rates. If the RUC says an hour of therapy is worth $100 via the RVU-to-dollar conversion, but the market demand is willing to pay $250, the provider will leave the RUC-controlled sector. They are not abandoning their profession; they are abandoning a pricing regime that values their work at less than half its market rate. Ghost Networks The RUC's pricing failure creates “Ghost Networks,” directories filled with providers who are ostensibly “in-network” but are functionally inaccessible. They are either full, not accepting new patients, retired, have moved, or simply do not respond to inquiries from insurance-based patients because the administrative burden of prior authorizations and clawbacks outweighs the suppressed fee. This is not a “shortage” of providers in the absolute sense. There is no shortage of therapists in private practice. There is a shortage of therapists willing to work at the RUC-determined price point. The insurance directories are graveyards of phantom availability, creating the illusion of access where none exists. The Cost Paradox The central thesis of the RUC's defenders is that they “control costs.” By strictly managing RVUs, they claim to save taxpayer money. In psychotherapy, this logic backfires catastrophically. By suppressing reimbursement rates to a level that drives providers out of the network, the RUC forces patients into the cash market. The theoretical in-network cost might be a $20 copay with the insurer paying $100. The actual out-of-network cost is $250 cash out-of-pocket, paid in full by the patient. Thus, the “cost of therapy” for the consumer skyrockets. Therapy becomes a luxury good, accessible only to those with disposable income. For the poor and middle class, the “cost” is effectively infinite, because the service becomes inaccessible. The RUC's cost-control measure for the system becomes a cost-multiplier for the patient. It shifts the financial burden from the risk pool, where it belongs, to the individual, where it causes maximum harm. The Signal to Students The RUC sends powerful economic signals to medical students making career decisions. When a student observes that a dermatologist or radiologist can earn $500,000 working regular hours, while a psychiatrist earns $240,000 handling emotional trauma and on-call emergencies, while a primary care doctor earns even less, the choice is clear for those motivated by financial security. The undervaluation of cognitive codes discourages the best and brightest from entering mental health and primary care. The cartel's pricing structure creates a perpetual labor shortage in the fields most needed for public health, while creating a surplus in high-margin procedural specialties. We then wonder why there are not enough psychiatrists, why primary care is in crisis, why mental health access is collapsing. The answer is in the price signal, and the price signal is set by a committee of proceduralists meeting behind closed doors. The Hands Are Tied The question “Why can't therapists start a union?” is not just a labor question. It is a window into the broken soul of American healthcare. We have built a system where a secret committee of proceduralists can legally fix prices to favor surgery over therapy, but a group of social workers cannot band together to ask for a living wage. We have utilized laws meant to break up Standard Oil to break up the solidarity of caregivers. The same regulatory framework that criminalizes therapist coordination provides legal cover for industry-wide price coordination by the most powerful medical specialties. The result is a regulatory environment that drives doctors crazy, burns out therapists, and leaves patients navigating a fragmented, assembly-line system that was never designed to heal them. It was designed to process them. Until we confront the legal architecture of this system, the RUC, the Sherman Act, the 1099 trap, we will remain powerless to change it. And the reality of therapy is that quick fixes, whether in treatment or in policy, usually end up costing us more in the end. Some states are beginning to push back. New York and California have implemented strict network adequacy standards requiring mental health appointments within 10 business days. These regulations force insurers to expand their networks, which means they must attract providers, which means they must raise reimbursement rates above the RUC/Medicare floor. It is effectively a state-level override of the RUC cartel, forcing capital back into the mental health labor market. The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission has long advocated for stripping the RUC of its power, proposing the use of empirical data, tax returns, payroll records, practice invoices, to set values automatically. But these are patchwork solutions to a systemic problem. The fundamental issue remains: we have created a healthcare system that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. We have engineered a system where the only way to survive is to stop acting like a healer and start acting like a factory. And we have wrapped this system in a legal framework that criminalizes resistance while protecting the status quo. The hands are tied. But at least now we can see the ropes. Bibliography For those interested in the primary sources and legal texts that underpin this analysis, the following external resources provide high-trust verification of the claims made above: Goldfarb v. Virginia State Bar, 421 U.S. 773 (1975): The Supreme Court decision that ended the “learned profession” exemption from antitrust laws. Read the Oyez Summary. The Sherman Antitrust Act (15 U.S.C. §§ 1–7): The foundational text of US antitrust law prohibiting restraint of trade. Read the Document at the National Archives. North Texas Specialty Physicians v. Federal Trade Commission (5th Cir. 2008): A key ruling establishing that independent physicians cannot collectively bargain on fees without financial integration. Read the Court Opinion. FTC/DOJ Statements of Antitrust Enforcement Policy in Health Care (1996): The federal guidelines explaining the “Messenger Model” and the narrow exceptions for clinical integration. Read the Guidelines (PDF). The RUC (AMA/Specialty Society RVS Update Committee): The AMA's own description of the committee structure and its role in valuing physician work. Visit the AMA RUC Page. “Special Deal” by Haley Sweetland Edwards (Washington Monthly, 2013): An investigative deep-dive into how the RUC operates and its impact on primary care vs. specialty pay. Read the Investigation. The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA): The law governing the right to unionize, which specifically excludes independent contractors. Read the NLRA. Laugesen, Miriam J. Fixing Medical Prices: How Physicians Are Paid. Harvard University Press, 2016. The definitive scholarly analysis of the RUC's history, structure, and influence on American healthcare pricing. Government Accountability Office. “Medicare Physician Payment Rates: Better Data and Greater Transparency Could Improve Accuracy.” 2015. GAO's critical analysis of RUC methodology and conflicts of interest. Center for American Progress. “Rethinking the RUC.” 2015. Policy analysis of the RUC's structural bias against primary care and cognitive services. Health Affairs Scholar. “Insurance Acceptance and Cash Pay Rates for Psychotherapy in the US.” 2023. Empirical research on out-of-network utilization in mental health care. Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC). “Report to the Congress: Medicare and the Health Care Delivery System.” 2024. Annual policy recommendations including proposals for reforming physician fee schedule methodology. Joel Blackstock, LICSW-S, is the Clinical Director of Taproot Therapy Collective in Hoover, Alabama. He specializes in complex trauma treatment and writes at GetTherapyBirmingham.com.  

This week, we interviewed Dave Sparkman. Dave is the founder and managing director of SPARK Your Culture, a corporate culture advisory services firm, specializing in helping organizations transform and flourish through healthy, high-performance cultures. In his corporate career, Dave served as the SVP, Culture at UnitedHealth Group, a Fortune 5 public company based in Minnetonka, MN.  Over 9 years in that role, he led efforts to infuse an over 300,000 person organization with a corporate mission and values that would improve corporate results, including the customer and employee experience.   Prior to UnitedHealth Group, Dave lived in Los Angeles and served as the partner responsible for the West Region Human Resources function at Arthur Andersen, a worldwide audit, tax, and consulting firm.  He also currently serves as the volunteer Executive Director and Board Chair for Crossroads Career, a faith-based, job transition ministry dedicated to helping people who are unfulfilled or unemployed.  Dave and his wife, Carrie, have four adult children and five grandchildren.  

In der heutigen Folge sprechen die Finanzjournalisten Lea Oetjen und Holger Zschäpitz über weitere Hiobsbotschaften für Tesla, gewinnende Chip-Aktien und eine verdächtige Wette bei Polymarket. Außerdem geht es um BYD, Salzgitter, Thyssenkrupp, Aurubis, Valero Energy, Phillips 66, Chevron, ExxonMobil, SAP, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Micron Technology, ASML, Lam Research, Arm Holdings, Nvidia, Siemens, AMD, Aeon, Fast Retailing, Seven & i Holdings, Amundi ETF MSCI EM Latin America (WKN: A2H58P), IBM, Cisco Systems, McDonald's, Nike, UnitedHealth Group, Home Depot, Verizon, Merck & Co., Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Amgen, Johnson & Johnson, Flutter Entertainment und Heineken. Wir freuen uns an Feedback über aaa@welt.de. Noch mehr "Alles auf Aktien" findet Ihr bei WELTplus und Apple Podcasts – inklusive aller Artikel der Hosts und AAA-Newsletter. Hier bei WELT: https://www.welt.de/podcasts/alles-auf-aktien/plus247399208/Boersen-Podcast-AAA-Bonus-Folgen-Jede-Woche-noch-mehr-Antworten-auf-Eure-Boersen-Fragen.html. Der Börsen-Podcast Disclaimer: Die im Podcast besprochenen Aktien und Fonds stellen keine spezifischen Kauf- oder Anlage-Empfehlungen dar. Die Moderatoren und der Verlag haften nicht für etwaige Verluste, die aufgrund der Umsetzung der Gedanken oder Ideen entstehen. Hörtipps: Für alle, die noch mehr wissen wollen: Holger Zschäpitz können Sie jede Woche im Finanz- und Wirtschaftspodcast "Deffner&Zschäpitz" hören. +++ Werbung +++ Du möchtest mehr über unsere Werbepartner erfahren? Hier findest du alle Infos & Rabatte! https://linktr.ee/alles_auf_aktien Impressum: https://www.welt.de/services/article7893735/Impressum.html Datenschutz: https://www.welt.de/services/article157550705/Datenschutzerklaerung-WELT-DIGITAL.html

About Madhu Pawar:Madhu Pawar is a board director and cross-disciplinary technology leader operating at the intersection of healthcare, data, and product innovation. She serves on the Board of Directors at Talkspace (NASDAQ: TALK) and is the Chief Product Officer for Optum Insight, where she drives product strategy and platform innovation across UnitedHealth Group's most critical assets. Prior to Optum, she spent over six years at Google leading the global SMB Ads product ecosystem—overseeing AI-driven insights platforms, multi-billion-dollar revenue lines, and large-scale engineering, product, and operations teams across multiple continents. Madhu also teaches consumer analytics in healthcare as an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Earlier in her career, she was a partner in McKinsey's Global Healthcare Practice, where she built and scaled technology and services businesses for payers, providers, and fast-growth health companies. She began her career in software engineering at Hewlett-Packard Labs, earning patents in authentication and location-aware computing, followed by roles at PwC in security and technology. Madhu holds graduate degrees from Stanford School of Medicine and Carnegie Mellon University and a bachelor's in computer engineering from Nanyang Technological University.Things You'll Learn:Real-time data exchange between payers and providers can significantly reduce the confusion, delays, and costs associated with today's claims processes. AI-enabled reasoning over contracts and encounters improves accuracy from the start.Optum Real aims to bridge the transparency gap by connecting stakeholders through a multi-party hub, enabling real-time understanding of coverage and reimbursement. Early pilots show tangible reductions in denials and improved patient clarity.The majority of first-time denied claims are avoidable, signaling an industry-wide opportunity to remove unnecessary rework. Solving this problem increases efficiency for providers, payers, and patients.Real-time intelligence opens the door for more effective value-based care arrangements. When providers can see financial implications instantly, incentives align more naturally.The long-term vision includes real-time payment flows, AI-driven clinical decision support, and improved patient engagement. Breaking down paper-based silos will unlock entirely new use cases at scale.Resources:Connect with and follow Madhu Pawar on LinkedIn.Follow Optum on LinkedIn and visit their website.

What happens when a class clown from Monaghan builds one of the most quietly impactful healthtech companies in Europe - and then takes on the U.S. healthcare system? In this year-end episode of The Shot of Digital Health Therapy, we sat down with Neill Dunwoody

Medicare spends as much on falls as it does on cancer—but 30-50% of those fall-related costs are preventable. Amanda Rees watched her grandmother develop a "goose egg" from a fall while gardening, then watched the shame make her stop gardening altogether, spiraling into depression and isolation. A decade of caregiving radicalized how this Princeton-trained engineer thought about aging. So she built Bold, a company now serving 10 million older adults—with a leadership team and cap table that's "very, very female" in a notoriously male-dominated space. But first, she had to stop making herself small. "You're really good at making yourself seem small," someone told Amanda early in her fundraising journey. The irony wasn't lost—she was downplaying a Princeton engineering degree, $100M in energy investment experience, and a decade caring for her grandmother while running a company literally called Bold. She only needed to hear that feedback once. What followed was a masterclass in building with intention. Amanda raised funding from Rethink Impact, the largest fund dedicated to investing in women, and assembled a predominantly female leadership team—not through quotas, but through mission alignment. "Women tend to be the frontline caregivers for a lot of families, and they see it. They understand that's a very real problem," she explains. In this conversation, Amanda dismantles the preparation myth holding women founders back: "If you have the itch and you wanna do it, do it. Don't go get an extra degree or do this thing before I'm ready." She explains why your first pitch will be terrible, why pitch five is the hardest, and how objection handling refines not just your deck but your entire business model. She also shares why she only hires people who'll stay "when things are tough, when the challenges ahead look really big and scary"—because fair-weather teams crumble, and resilience must be embedded from day one. Key Takeaways: Stop waiting to be "ready"—the best data comes from actually doing it, not preparing endlessly Making yourself small doesn't help anyone, especially not you—authenticity beats false modesty Build your team and investor base with people who deeply connect to your mission, not just the opportunity Your first pitch will suck; by pitch fifty you'll be excellent—you just have to survive pitch five The DNA of the people you hire becomes the DNA of your company—choose accordingly When older adults lose independence, it's the shame and isolation that does the damage, not just the physical limitation About the Guest: Amanda Rees is the CEO and Co-founder of Bold, a pro-aging health company serving over 10 million older adults through Medicare partnerships with organizations like UnitedHealth Group. Bold's platform has demonstrated a 46% reduction in falls and 182% increase in weekly physical activity in peer-reviewed research. A Princeton graduate with a degree in biological and chemical engineering, Amanda previously managed a $100M renewable energy portfolio at The Schmidt Family Foundation and has been selected for The Aspen Institute's 2025 class of Finance Leaders Fellows. Health Podcast Network Chapters 00:00 - Introduction at Health Conference 00:55 - From Caregiver to Founder: The Bold Origin Story 03:35 - Keeping Humanity in Fall Prevention 08:12 - Building a Female-Led Company and Cap Table 10:08 - Fundraising Advice: Just Start Pitching 13:41 - The Feedback That Changed Everything: Stop Making Yourself Small 15:21 - AI and the Future of Aging 16:52 - Building Your Team: The DNA of Your Company Guest & Host Links Connect with Laurie McGraw on LinkedIn Connect with Amanda Rees on LinkedIn Connect with Inspiring Women Browse Episodes | LinkedIn | Instagram | Apple | Spotify

In der heutigen Folge sprechen die Finanzjournalisten Anja Ettel und Holger Zschäpitz über das Microsoft-Barometer und seine Folgen, das Inditex-Luxusproblem und gute Stimmung bei Salesforce. Außerdem geht es um Eli Lilly, AbbVie, Johnson & Johnson, Novo Nordisk, AstraZeneca, Abbott Laboratories, UnitedHealth Group, Bristol Myers Squibb, Dexcom, Align Technology, ResMed, Hims & Hers, JD Health International, iRhythm Technologies, Pro Medicus, Oscar Health, Xtrackers MSCI World Health Care (WKN: A113FD), Amundi S&P World Health Care Screened (WKN: A3DSTC), Franklin Future of Health and Wellness (WKN A3EFKW), Global X Telemedicine & Digital Health (WKN A2QKQ1), Xtrackers MSCI Genomic Healthcare Innovation (WKN: DBX0R2), Agilent, Roche, Vertex, Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Salesforce, SAP, Snowflake, Inditex, H&M, Next, LVMH, Hermès, Aumovio, TKMS, Hellofresh, Gerresheimer, Ottobock, Tonies, PSI Software, Verbio, LPKF, Stratec, Thyssenkrupp Nucera, Procredit, Amadeus Fire, Bayer, BASF, Corteva, Syngenta, Formycon und PNE. Die aktuelle "Alles auf Aktien"-Umfrage findet Ihr unter: https://www.umfrageonline.com/c/mh9uebwm Wir freuen uns an Feedback über aaa@welt.de. Noch mehr "Alles auf Aktien" findet Ihr bei WELTplus und Apple Podcasts – inklusive aller Artikel der Hosts und AAA-Newsletter.[ Hier bei WELT.](https://www.welt.de/podcasts/alles-auf-aktien/plus247399208/Boersen-Podcast-AAA-Bonus-Folgen-Jede-Woche-noch-mehr-Antworten-auf-Eure-Boersen-Fragen.html.) [Hier] (https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6zxjyJpTMunyYCY6F7vHK1?si=8f6cTnkEQnmSrlMU8Vo6uQ) findest Du die Samstagsfolgen Klassiker-Playlist auf Spotify! Disclaimer: Die im Podcast besprochenen Aktien und Fonds stellen keine spezifischen Kauf- oder Anlage-Empfehlungen dar. Die Moderatoren und der Verlag haften nicht für etwaige Verluste, die aufgrund der Umsetzung der Gedanken oder Ideen entstehen. Hörtipps: Für alle, die noch mehr wissen wollen: Holger Zschäpitz können Sie jede Woche im Finanz- und Wirtschaftspodcast "Deffner&Zschäpitz" hören. +++ Werbung +++ Du möchtest mehr über unsere Werbepartner erfahren? [**Hier findest du alle Infos & Rabatte!**](https://linktr.ee/alles_auf_aktien) Impressum: https://www.welt.de/services/article7893735/Impressum.html Datenschutz: https://www.welt.de/services/article157550705/Datenschutzerklaerung-WELT-DIGITAL.html

The 5 things you need to know before the stock market opens today: President Trump says he's made his choice for next chair of the Federal Reserve, Disney had brought in more than $500 million globally on the “Zootopia 2” box office, South Korean police are investigating a data breach at e-commerce site Coupang, data analytics firm Databricks is in talks to raise $5 billion at a valuation topping $134 billion, and UnitedHealth Group will reportedly sell off its last South American business. Squawk Box is hosted by Joe Kernen, Becky Quick and Andrew Ross Sorkin.  Follow Squawk Pod for the best moments, interviews and analysis from our TV show in an audio-first format. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This time on Code WACK! Will Humana and UnitedHealth Group be found by the courts to have prematurely denied or cut off physician-ordered post-acute care for Medicare Advantage members using AI models with error rates as high as 90%? And could these same AI tools, which over 60% of doctors allege systematically deny patients necessary care, be used in Traditional Medicare as well? The answer is YES, depending on where you live. To learn more, we spoke with Jeremy White, author of InHumana: An American Healthcare Story, published recently by White Lines Press. Jeremy and his wife, Edie, founded the award-winning satirical publication Red Shtick Magazine and its online version, The Red Shtick. They live in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. This is the second episode of a two-part series with Jeremy about his new book. Check out the Transcript and Show Notes for more! And please keep Code WACK! on the air with a tax-deductible donation.

Since 80 percent of a person's health is influenced by factors outside of medical care, it is critical that a healthcare system has an understanding and appreciation for the circumstances of patients' daily lives that impact their health outcomes, referred to as the social determinants of health (SDoH). During the next live edition of Talk Ten Tuesday, Lauren Montwill, Vice President of Community Health and Social Impact for the UnitedHealth Group, will report on how her organization is collaborating on the delivery system to collect reliable SDoH data, as well as the effort to build health analytics infrastructure to benchmark, monitor, and track progress toward improving health outcomes and quality measures.The broadcast will also feature these instantly recognizable panelists, who will report more news during their segments:Social Determinants of Health: Tiffany Ferguson, CEO for Phoenix Medical Management, Inc., will report on the news that is happening at the intersection of medical record auditing and the SDoH.CDI Report: Cheryl Ericson, Senior Director of Clinical Policy and Education for the vaunted Brundage Group, will have the latest clinical documentation integrity (CDI) updates.The Coding Report: Christine Geiger, Assistant Vice President of Acute and Post-Acute Coding Services for First Class Solutions, will report on the latest coding news.News Desk: Timothy Powell, ICD10monitor national correspondent, will anchor the Talk Ten Tuesdays News Desk.MyTalk: Angela Comfort, veteran healthcare subject-matter expert, will co-host the broadcast. Comfort is the Assistant Vice President of Revenue Integrity for Montefiore Health.

This time on Code WACK! Will Humana and UnitedHealth Group be found by the courts to have prematurely denied or cut off physician-ordered post-acute care for Medicare Advantage members using AI models with error rates as high as 90%? And could these same AI tools, which over 60% of doctors allege systematically deny patients necessary care, be used in Traditional Medicare as well? The answer is YES, depending on where you live.  To learn more, we spoke with Jeremy White, author of InHumana: An American Healthcare Story, published recently by White Lines Press. Jeremy and his wife, Edie, founded the award-winning satirical publication Red Shtick Magazine and its online version, The Red Shtick. They live in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. This is the second episode of a two-part series with Jeremy about his new book. Check out the Transcript and Show Notes for more! And please keep Code WACK! on the air with a tax-deductible donation.

This time on Code WACK! Will Humana and UnitedHealth Group be found by the courts to have prematurely denied or cut off physician-ordered post-acute care for Medicare Advantage members using AI models with error rates as high as 90%? And could these same AI tools, which over 60% of doctors allege systematically deny patients necessary care, be used in Traditional Medicare as well? The answer is YES, depending on where you live. To learn more, we spoke with Jeremy White, author of InHumana: An American Healthcare Story, published recently by White Lines Press. Jeremy and his wife, Edie, founded the award-winning satirical publication Red Shtick Magazine and its online version, The Red Shtick. They live in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. This is the second episode of a two-part series with Jeremy about his new book. Check out the Transcript and Show Notes for more! And please keep Code WACK! on the air with a tax-deductible donation.

Send us a textIf you don't know where the patient's data is at every moment, you really can't protect it yet. That's the reality many healthcare organizations are facing. Regulations can help but legacy siloed systems keep patients exposed.In this episode of the HealthBiz Podcast, David Williams is joined by Aimee Cardwell, CISO-in-residence at Transcend. Aimee breaks down why compliance doesn't equal security, how legacy architectures and vendor ecosystems create hidden vulnerabilities, and what modern, identity-centric, AI-enabled security should look like.

In this episode, Scott Becker breaks down the performance of Walmart, Amazon, and UnitedHealth Group & pushes back against popular advice on X that encourages taking on debt to build wealth.

In this episode, Scott Becker breaks down the performance of Walmart, Amazon, and UnitedHealth Group & pushes back against popular advice on X that encourages taking on debt to build wealth.

You can't communicate your way out of a values problem. Yet every day, communications leaders are expected to do precisely that. In this episode of The Trending Communicator, host Dan Nestle sits down with ⁠Emil Hill⁠, principal of The Creshiem Group and a public affairs strategist with 25+ years navigating the intersection of business, government, and communications. From guiding the W.K. Kellogg Foundation through Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation to helping Papa John's face their reckoning, from UnitedHealth Group to the National Education Association, Emil's been the strategist organizations call when quick fixes won't cut it. Emil and Dan explore why the consolidation of corporate communications, investor relations, government relations, and research under corporate affairs* umbrellas is the recognition that every stakeholder now connects to every other stakeholder. They dig into why crises reveal values misalignment, why your stock price timeline and your actual problem timeline are incompatible, and why "calm, clarity, and precision" matters more when everything's moving faster. *Dan says “Public Affairs” but means “Corporate Affairs” throughout the episode. He apologizes, especially to Megan Noel, for his confusion. Listen in and hear about... Why corporate affairs consolidation signals a fundamental shift in stakeholder connectivity How a finance background changes how you diagnose communications problems The gap between executive timelines and the time real organizational change requires Why quick crisis fixes usually miss what's actually broken Navigating uncertainty with optimism when change is inevitable Notable Quotes On The Power of Immersive Partnership: "I don't know if you can really be a good partner to any client if you don't immerse yourself in their business, understand who their competitors are, try to get a sense for their DNA and try to advise based on those understandings. If you don't have that, yeah, you're going to fall short every time." — Emil Hill [00:07:53 → 00:08:17] On The Future of Local News: "I am craving a deeper dive into, into local news that the Washington Post cannot provide for me and Mary about what's going on here that's not in the news. And it feels like with the evolution of technology, some enterprising business person is going to figure out a way to cobble together more information and news about particular parts of the country, city, state and local in a way that we used to." — Emil Hill [01:00:27 → 01:01:03] On Navigating Economic Uncertainty: "I think businesses, individuals and communities around the country, I think you want to hold on to your optimism. I think you should get active, but ride it. And this too shall pass." — Emil Hill [01:06:59 → 01:08:08] Resources and Links Dan Nestle Inquisitive Communications | Website The Trending Communicator | Website Communications Trends from Trending Communicators | Dan Nestle's Substack Dan Nestle | LinkedIn Emil Hill Emil Hill | LinkedIn Timestamps 0:00:00 Introduction – Rise of Public Affairs and Emil Hill's Expertise0:06:15 Pathways into Public Affairs – Problem Solving and Business Acumen0:11:03 Consolidation of Corporate Communications Functions0:16:44 Stakeholder Connections in a Rapid News Cycle0:23:19 Measuring Audience Sentiment and Internal vs. External Messaging0:29:22 Persuading Stakeholders – Importance of Data and Explanation0:34:57 AI's Role in Communications – Data, Analysis, and Domain Expertise0:42:32 Brand Missteps and the Limits of Research0:47:13 Real Audience Research vs. Social Media Noise0:53:42 New Corporate Affairs Capabilities – Local Sentiment and Crisis Response0:58:44 Local News Evolution and Technology's Impact1:04:39 Ideas for AI-Driven Local News Coverage1:08:08 Optimism, Change, and Closing Thoughts1:09:36 Outro and Subscription Info (Notes co-created by Human Dan, Claude, and Castmagic) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

¡Emprendeduros! En este episodio Rodrigo nos da una actualización de mercado donde habla del estatus del mercado, del viaje del Presidente Trump en Asia y dela junta de la Reserva Federal. Nos da los reportes de ingresos de United Health Group, UPS, DR Horton, Visa, Starbucks, Eli Lily y los gigantes tecnologicos. Después habla de la burbuja de Inteligencia Artificial, una fusion en microchips y de los bonos de catastrofe. Finalmente contestara unas preguntas de los Emprendeduros. ¡Síguenos en Instagram! Rodrigo: https://www.instagram.com/rodnavarro Emprendeduros: https://www.instagram.com/losemprendeduros Para mas información sobre nuestro fondo visita: https://emprendedurosventures.com/

Air traffic controllers spoke to travelers at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport Tuesday about going unpaid while working during the federal government shutdown. A St. Paul man is charged with threatening to kill U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi. Notices filed with the state show Minneapolis-based Target is laying off at least 815 of its corporate employees in the Twin Cities. That includes more than 500 workers at Target's downtown headquarters and nearly 300 workers at its northern campus in Brooklyn Park. Target says the layoffs are set to take effect Jan. 3.Eden Prairie-based UnitedHealth Group reported better-than-expected earnings in its third quarter as it seeks to regain its footing. Last spring, the company suspended its financial outlook for the year amid higher-than-expected medical costs from its customers. UnitedHealth is dropping some of its Medicare Advantage programs next year resulting in about one million fewer customers.Minnesota members of the Caribbean Disaster Relief Fund say they've been working nonstop since before Hurricane Melissa made landfall Tuesday as a Category 5 storm. The hurricane brought destructive winds and flooding rain. A community altar honoring the Mexican Day of the Dead opens this evening at the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis. It's part of a larger project connecting art, ancestry and ancient traditions.

In this episode of the Gist Healthcare Podcast, the nation's second-largest measles outbreak continues to expand along the Arizona–Utah border. Family job-based health insurance premiums hit an average of $27,000 in 2025, while UnitedHealth Group launches an AI tool designed to accelerate medical claims processing. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to another insightful episode of CISO Tradecraft! In this episode, host G Mark Hardy engages with Aimee Cardwell, an accomplished cybersecurity expert with an impressive portfolio including UnitedHealth Group, AMEX, eBay, and more. Tune in as they dive deep into the increasing concerns of privacy, the evolving role of AI in cybersecurity, and the importance of data governance. Learn practical strategies for managing the complexities of AI and privacy, explore the intersections between cybersecurity and privacy, and get invaluable tips for aspiring CISOs. Don't miss this episode packed with expert advice and forward-thinking perspectives!Aimee Cardwell's Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/acardwell/

Welcome to another insightful episode of CISO Tradecraft! In this episode, host G Mark Hardy engages with Aimee Cardwell, an accomplished cybersecurity expert with an impressive portfolio including UnitedHealth Group, AMEX, eBay, and more. Tune in as they dive deep into the increasing concerns of privacy, the evolving role of AI in cybersecurity, and the importance of data governance. Learn practical strategies for managing the complexities of AI and privacy, explore the intersections between cybersecurity and privacy, and get invaluable tips for aspiring CISOs. Don't miss this episode packed with expert advice and forward-thinking perspectives! Aimee Cardwell's Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/acardwell/ Chapters 01:07 Guest Background and Career Journey 03:00 Cybersecurity and Privacy Integration 08:04 AI's Impact on Cybersecurity and Privacy 12:32 Data Retention Challenges and Solutions 17:56 Improving Data Visibility 19:28 GDPR Compliance and Data Breaches 19:55 Challenges of Data Management in Large Enterprises 21:02 AI and Cloud Governance 22:52 Encouraging AI Literacy in the Workplace 25:39 AI Policy and Legal Protections 28:56 AI's Limitations and Risks 31:48 The Importance of AI Literacy Across Functions 35:23 Final Thoughts and Advice for CISOs

Carl Quintanilla, Scott Wapner and Mike Santoli discussed UnitedHealth Group leading the Dow to a new all-time high -- after Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway disclosed a $1.6 billion stake in the health insurer, whose stock remains the Dow's worst performer this year. The anchors also reacted to reports the Trump Administration is in talks with Intel to have the U.S. government acquire a stake in the chipmaker. Also in focus: Applied Materials tumbles on weak guidance, July retail sales rise, what Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee told CNBC about tariffs and rate cuts, software stocks slump, Target downgraded, Trump-Putin summit. Squawk on the Street Disclaimer

P.M. Edition for July 24. President Donald Trump took a rare step visiting the Federal Reserve. The $2.5-billion renovation to its headquarters has gotten renewed attention this month as Trump has ramped up pressure on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. WSJ White House reporter Meridith McGraw discusses what this might mean for the Fed's meeting next week. Plus, Walmart has built dozens of artificial intelligence agents to interface with everyone from customers to suppliers. Now the retailer is overhauling its approach; WSJ enterprise technology reporter Isabelle Bousquette explains why. And, for the first time, UnitedHealth Group has confirmed it's responding to Justice Department probes. Alex Ossola hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

But some large component stocks dragged on the Dow Jones Industrial Average, including UnitedHealth Group. The health conglomerate disclosed that it is cooperating with criminal and civil investigations by the U.S. Justice Department. Plus: Tesla shares slid after Elon Musk's electric vehicle-maker said car sales continued to fall for another quarter. Danny Lewis hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Congress holds another hearing on antisemitism, and university leaders once again allow politicians to dictate university policies and faculty decisions. Plus: New York Times reporter and author David Enrich exposes the sinister ways UnitedHealth Group censors its critics online.  ------------ Watch full episodes on Rumble, streamed LIVE 7pm ET. Become part of our Locals community Follow System Update:  Twitter Instagram TikTok Facebook  

This week: The stock market is coming back after its post Liberation Day fall. Felix Salmon, Emily Peck, and Elizabeth Spiers discuss what this does, and mostly doesn't, signal about the economy under Trump. Then, one stock that is not doing well at all is the UnitedHealth Group. The hosts explain the perfect storm the company has found itself in, and examine if that's actually the reason for its decline in the market. And finally, did you know there was insurance for self-defense shootings and AI chatbot errors? In the Slate Plus episode: Can a (very expensive) calendar fix your marriage?  Want to hear that discussion and hear more Slate Money? Join Slate Plus to unlock weekly bonus episodes. Plus, you'll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Slate Money show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/moneyplus to get access wherever you listen. Podcast production by Jessamine Molli and Cheyna Roth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode 584: Neal and Toby recap Walmart's Q1 earnings and how tariffs will likely cause price hikes. Then, Dick's Sporting Goods acquires Foot Locker for a massive $2.4B that may open the door into international markets. Meanwhile, the Dog of the Week is UnitedHealth Group and the Stock of the Week is Coinbase. Also, Harvard has been unknowingly sitting on top of an original Magna Carta when it thought it was a copy…this whole time!  Subscribe to Morning Brew Daily for more of the news you need to start your day. Share the show with a friend, and leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. Visit endthecampaign.com for more Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.swap.fm/l/mbd-note  Watch Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow 00:00 - Apple Vision Pro on Price is Right  03:15 - Walmart Price Hikes  07:40 - Dick's Purchases Foot Locker  11:00 - SOW: Coinbase  15:45 - DOW: UnitedHealth Group  19:00 - Magna Carta at Harvard  22:00 - Headlines  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices