During the last week in August, Noah’s Ark found a new home in Houston. Unfortunately, it didn’t deliver medical supplies. Between August 25th and 29th, Hurricane Harvey dropped an almost biblical 52 inches of rain on beleaguered Houston, flooding vast swaths of the metropolitan area. GPS data indicates the weight of that 33 trillion gallons of water depressed the surface of the affected region by 2 centimeters.[1]

Cancer has been humanity’s most persistent nemesis. Bone fragments and written records indicate that cancer afflicted people in ancient Rome, Greece and Egypt. Today, cancer is America’s second leading killer, closing in on heart disease. It accounts for one quarter of U.S. deaths. [1]

Sky-rocketing drug prices have captured the nation’s attention. President Trump echoes Senator Bernie Sanders when he asserts that drug companies are “getting away with murder.”[1] Republican and Democratic legislators alike assert that the pharmaceutical industry engages in price-fixing and advocate that Medicare should negotiate directly with drug manufacturers to lower costs.

Sky-rocketing drug prices have captured the nation’s attention. President Trump echoes Senator Bernie Sanders when he asserts that drug companies are “getting away with murder.”[1] Republican and Democratic legislators alike assert that the pharmaceutical industry engages in price-fixing and advocate that Medicare should negotiate directly with drug manufacturers to lower costs. 

It was an eventful July 4th weekend in the Land of Lincoln. The Illinois Senate over-rode Governor Bruce Rauner’s veto to pass its first state budget in over two years. This was the longest state budget impasse in the nation since the Great Depression.
 
Meanwhile, the mean streets of Chicago remained mean. The City recorded 15 homicides during the holiday weekend and over 100 shootings. Although down slightly, Chicago is on pace to record over 700 murders in 2017.
 

Senator Mitch McConnell is the most effective Senate Majority Leader since Lyndon Johnson. A tactical maestro, McConnell faces the seeming impossible task of uniting the Republican party’s divergent conservative and moderate wings to pass health reform legislation. Growing numbers of Republican senators have indicated they cannot vote for the legislation as currently drafted.

Co-authored with Kurt Waltenbaugh.

In the western suburbs outside Minneapolis, two men lead average lives. Surveying them as part of the general population, no health system, insurer or policy maker would notice anything that might be alarming. Yet, when it comes to the healthcare costs they will incur over the next few years, they are ticking time bombs waiting to go off.

Co-authored with Wyatt Ritchie, a senior banker focusing on Post-Acute Care and Outsourced Services.  

Nature thrives on symbiosis. Its many ecosystems would not exist without important relationships between sometimes strange bedfellows. The oceans’ most colorful coral reefs, for example, are often found in clear water relatively devoid of nutrients.

Co-authored with Gaurov Dayal and Jeff Smith of Lumeris.

In an ideal state, a well-functioning healthcare delivery system should provide the right care at the right time and the right place, while being accountable for clinical and financial outcomes.

In a March 29th New York Times article, author Elizabeth Rosenthal chronicles America’s dystopian system for coding and billing medical treatments. Rosenthal concludes that the medical-billing system itself is a primal cause of the nation’s sky-high medical costs,