Fixing Healthcare Podcast

Just before the Thanksgiving holiday, co-hosts Dr. Robert Pearl and Jeremy Corr dedicated Episode #25 to addressing the most prevalent conspiracy theories about Covid-19. The show dove deep into the most frequently cited rumors and false assertions from all across the internet. Lots of listeners wrote in with comments and questions of their own. Today, in response to one of the most popular episod...

Welcome to episode 25 of “Coronavirus: The Truth,” a podcast that focuses on the facts surrounding COVID-19. Today’s show breaks from our traditional format. It is dedicated to addressing the most prevalent rumors, claims and conspiracy theories about Covid-19: from miracle cures to media hoaxes. We’ll look at frequently cited examples of disinformation, pseudoscience and false assertions from acr...

Back in June, a young Black physician stood outside the Sterling Hall of Medicine at Yale University with a sign in her hands that read: “Stop Killing Black People.” Then she set down the sign, removed her mask, grabbed a megaphone and opened people’s eyes. “My name is Dr. Amanda Calhoun,” she told the crowd, “and I am a Pediatrics and Psychiatry intern at Yale. But long before I was a docto...

Podcast cohost Jeremy Corr is the father of a four-year-old son. Like many parents, Jeremy is inundated with information (much of it conflicting) about the coronavirus, its spread among children and the threat of transmission between kids and adults. In this episode of Coronavirus: The Truth , Jeremy and his cohost Dr. Robert Pearl discuss the latest scientific findings, including an interesting Y...

Last Thursday, Dr. Anthony Fauci warned Americans to rethink their Thanksgiving plans . Reactions have been mixed. Some people agree with public health officials. Others are outraged. Regardless of the reaction, one thing’s for sure: People are already feeling down about the holidays. According to one recent poll, less than a quarter of Americans are equally or more excited about the upcoming holi...

In this episode, Fixing Healthcare hosts Dr. Robert Pearl and Jeremy Corr welcome their first returning guest, Zubin Damania, a physician and entertainer known to his legions of followers as ZDoggMD. Damania hosts the internet’s No. 1 medical news and entertainment show , reaching tens of millions of people weekly. He is a leading voice for patient-centered healthcare, focusing on prevention and t...

President Donald Trump tweeted today that he will soon leave Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where he has been receiving treatment for Covid-19. Trump’s physician said the president is not “ entirely out of the woods yet ” but that the patient could continue his ongoing treatment regimen from the White House. In this episode Dr. Robert Pearl and Jeremy Corr examine the available fact...

There has been no shortage of surprising statistics to emerge from this pandemic. Dr. Robert Pearl’s upcoming Forbes article, “Three Misleading, Dangerous Coronavirus Statistics” ( available here on Tuesday, Sept. 21), examines a trio of figures that are based on actual data but have proven to be misleading and hazardous to the nation’s health. This episode of Coronavirus: The Truth features sever...

No expert has gained more insight into the organizational factors associated with physician and health-system performance than Stephen M. Shortell. He is a graduate school professor and dean emeritus of UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health. He is currently conducting research on Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) integrated care models, innovations in healthcare delivery, and examining the app...

In this, the 20th episode of Coronavirus: The Truth , hosts Dr. Robert Pearl and Jeremy Corr address the most pressing questions concerning the COVID-19 pandemic. What are “super spreaders”? Will the FDA approve a COVID-19 vaccine before phase-three testing wraps up? What do we know about latest testing controversy enshrouding the CDC? And how did Iowa, of all places, become the latest coronavirus...

Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, Americans have time and again seen highly touted solutions fall short of their hype. Remdisivir, once thought to be a miracle treatment, was recently determined to be statistically no better than standard care . Meanwhile, Russia’s Vladimir Putin announced with great fanfare the production of a Covid-19 vaccine. Yet Western critics point out that the drug “ Spu...

Fans of Coronavirus: The Truth have lauded the show’s unbiased, fact-based approach to delivering COVID-19 news and information. But finding unbiased, fact-based info isn’t easy amid today’s politically charged news environment. Says co-host Jeremy Corr, “I keep getting more and more disheartened about how politicized the pandemic has been.” In this episode, Corr and co-host Dr. Robert...

Anne Wojcicki is a biologist, entrepreneur and the CEO of 23andMe, the leading consumer genetics and research company with more than 12 million customers worldwide.  On this episode, Wojcicki spoke with Dr. Robert Pearl and Jeremy Corr about exciting developments in genetic testing, the possibility for at-home coronavirus testing, her company’s fight with the FDA and what she believes will s...

“Voters look to elected officials to lead in times of war,” says co-host Dr. Robert Pearl in this episode of Coronvirus: The Truth . “In the minds of most Americans, this is war. As such, voters will gaze beyond the traditional questions of (insurance) coverage and clinical care” toward questions of leadership amid a national health crisis. In 2020, Pearl sees three pandemic-related factors influe...

Four months after President Trump announced a “state of emergency,” Americans are still as confused as ever about the true state of the pandemic. Our confusion starts with the news: Every morning, TV anchors around the country list off the latest numbers of newly confirmed cases. Podcast co-host Dr. Robert Pearl says, “We pretend the number of positive tests per day has significance. Don’t get me...

Exactly what went wrong? Exactly when? Exactly how did we fail and exactly what could have been done to prevent it? Exactly which errors did U.S. healthcare officials make between the first known cases in China and the first recorded coronavirus death on U.S. soil? And, exactly what can we do to minimize the damage going forward?  This month’s episode of Fixing Healthcare offers the most thor...

“One step forward, two steps back,” is how Dr. Robert Pearl describes the recent rise in coronavirus cases throughout the country. He notes that further attempts to hurry the nation’s reopening along will produce similar setbacks. Take pro sports, for example. Major League Baseball is moving closer to locking in a 60-game schedule to start in July, despite dozens of players already testing positiv...

Looking back on the coronavirus pandemic and the national response, Dr. Robert Pearl says, “I believe that historians will judge the American people well and nearly all of our leaders poorly.” Robert’s co-host and fellow history buff Jeremy Corr notes that past outbreaks led to significant social and political shakeups: “Epidemics are the kinds of events in history that set off a chain reaction of...

As head of the Food and Drug Administration from 1990 to 1997, Dr. David A. Kessler went to war with cigarette companies, approved life-saving HIV/AIDS medications, and introduced consumers to Nutrition Facts. He is the author of several books, including his latest, “Fast Carbs, Slow Carbs: The Simple Truth About Food, Weight, and Disease.” In this interview, Kessler comments on what it will take...

For prestigious, peer-reviewed medical journals, the retraction of an article is an incredibly rare event. Last week, it happened twice: in The Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine . Both articles examined the effects of potential COVID-19 treatments and, following publication, had both an immediate and a significant influence on healthcare delivery in the United States. The data, it tur...

Recent demonstrations and violence sparked by the death of George Floyd are “like a river,” as Dr. Robert Pearl puts it, with many streams coming together to form a powerful current. Floyd’s preventable death at the hands of Minneapolis police is the most recent stream. Others go back much farther. They include systemic racism and generations of unfair treatment by law enforcement. There is yet an...

The past week brought promising news from Moderna, a biotech company that announced the results of its early vaccine trials—an announcement that sent the firm’s stock price up 30%. However, it didn’t take long for the company to receive intense backlash from the scientific community for refusing to release all its testing data. Is Moderna simply trying to maintain an advantage over its competitors...

Based on current facts, Dr. Robert Pearl and Jeremy Corr examine what the “new normal” might like in the United States come spring 2021.

With so much disinformation causing so much confusion in the United States, this episode offers a medical and economic survival guide for all of us.

As CEO, John Sculley helped turn Apple into a multi-billion-dollar enterprise alongside Steve Jobs. Now he has his sights set on healthcare.