Healthcare is Stupid

Last episode, we sat down with Dr. TR Levin — the gastroenterologist who built one of the most effective colon cancer screening programs in the country — and worked through why screening is so much harder to understand than it looks. Some tests find things that would never have hurt you. A simple test sent to your home may work better as a screening program than a more invasive procedure, mostly b...

Cancer screening saves lives, and it has been thoughtfully constructed to do so. But the version of cancer screening that some of us experience is one where nobody explains the odds, nobody mentions the alternatives, and a positive result sends you into a cascade of procedures that may or may not have been necessary. That version feels stupid. And there’s another version of screening, where someon...

“Will AI replace doctors?” makes for a great headline, a great dinner party argument, and a great way to stress out a podcast co-host. It’s also, unfortunately, the wrong question. In a follow up to our last episode, we respond to our listeners’ feedback. We put co-host and radiologist Jonathan Mates on the spot and use radiology as our test case — the specialty that’s been at the center of this c...

One in four ChatGPT users — roughly 200 million people a week — use it for health questions. About a third of them end up changing their medications or requesting referrals based on what it tells them. Is that brilliant, terrifying, or both? In this episode, we dig into the question everyone is asking themselves, whether they want to or not: How should my doctor be using AI? And how should I? We b...

People are sharing medical results from their online portals, just like they do with college acceptances and baby gender reveals. How did we get to this point? And what are the real effects on how patients understand their medical records and how doctors document them? In this episode, we explore how technology and regulatory changes have shaped our relationship to healthcare from the inside and o...

We’ve all had this experience: you go to your doctor or hospital’s web page to do something. Maybe you want to make an appointment. Maybe you want to refill a prescription. Maybe you just want to know when the lab opens. What should be a simple task—something you can easily do on any other website—instead turns into a frustrating ordeal that leaves you yelling: “Why?!” Why is something so simple s...

Doctors’ ability to see inside their patients with lab and imaging tests is one of the miracles of modern medicine. Without tests, we’re just guessing!  But the unsaid truth is that doctors overtest patients, and that may be doing more harm than good to patients, doctors, and the entire health care system. In this episode, we sit down with cardiologist Dr. Jeff Sobel to understand the forces...

Nothing says 'quality care' like showing a stranger your throat via a grainy webcam while your cat walks across the keyboard. Telehealth — or medical care without the doctor and patient being in the same room — has exploded, partly enhanced by the COVID pandemic. Some say that this is the beginning of a new paradigm in medical care. For others, the experience feels more like putting more technolog...

If a Primary Care physician is the quarterback of our healthcare system…OUCH!…they’re getting sacked time and time again by some burly bureaucratic linebackers. Primary care medicine is meant to be the foundation for a high-functioning health system. Yet why do so many primary care physicians and their patients experience angst and disappointment with that system? In this episode, we sit down with...

In this short trailer, pediatrician Rahul Parikh and radiologist Jonathan Mates introduce Healthcare is Stupid . We’ll explore the absurdities of American healthcare—how we got here, the incentives and structures that quietly shape it, and what practical, incremental improvements might actually move things in a better direction. If you work in healthcare, depend on it, or simply wonder why so much...