We wrap our latest series on macro-issues facing healthcare with a look back on the series. It intersects with a timely personal story that highlights how upside down our system is and the reasons behind it. In the process, I credit my wife with summarizing it all: "The US Healthcare System just feels like it's one giant trick being played on us all of the time."

The value-based care (VBC) philosophy is centered around improving patient outcomes while reducing costs by rewarding providers for quality over quantity of services. But in reality, it's just this era's term for cost containment and restricted care. And don't get us started on Medicare Advantage VBC programs and how they approach end-of-life care. ...or maybe we'll poke it at it quickly.

In this episode, we explore the unique economic model of U.S. healthcare, contrasting its privatized structure with the government-provided systems of other developed countries. We examine the high costs, inconsistent outcomes, and cultural dynamics that make U.S. healthcare highly unique compared to nearly 200 other countries. The US ranks #1 on only one list, do you know what that is?

In Maurice Sendak’s book, Where the Wild Things are, a boy named Max finds himself in an exotic world of the Wild Things.  In the world of healthcare, understanding “where the customers are” can often seem equally exotic and hard to understand.  We’ll touch upon that in this episode.

There are so many healthcare organizations that say, "It's all about the patient." The reality it's not. And never has been. Yes, the core KPI is patient outcomes, but don't think for a second the patient is the customer. In a number of instances, they are, but in most instances they are not. And we'll explain more in this episode.

In this episode, we’ll talk about how US health insurance isn’t really insurance, and how the US healthcare system -which is largely private- is still heavily influenced by the government.  Begging the question: How private and capitalistic is our healthcare system, and are we really gaining anything compared to other government-run systems?

In this series, Microdosing goes Marco. We'll be talking about economic models, who actually pays for healthcare in the US, who's in control, and what it all means. We'll raise more questions than we'll answer, but understanding these macro forces are important in making successful tactical decisions.

Microdosing isn't a 52-week podcast. We take breaks. We're taking one now and will get back to you after the summer. If you want some Microdosing swag, leave a review wherever you consume podcasts, and email Paul a screen grab. Or DM him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/schrimpf/ (www.md-pod.com also works)

We interviewed a group of terrific product leaders during this time. Looking back, here are a few of our observations.

Product Management guru Alex Moseman discusses his journey in leading digital product innovation, emphasizing problem-solving over product-centric approaches. He talks about transition challenges in product management, embracing failure for innovation, and the power of asking insightful questions for effective management.