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Why “I’m Never Leaving” Means They’re Gone · Taking The Supply Chain Pulse

0:03
SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome to another episode of Picking the Supply Chain Pulse.
0:08
SPEAKER_01: I'm Megan with Steenage Company, and thanks for joining us.
0:11
SPEAKER_01: Today we're excited to feature one of the most influential voices in healthcare, Scott Becker.
0:16
SPEAKER_01: Scott is the founder of Becker's Healthcare, publisher of Becker's Hospital Review and several other publications, and a partner at McGuire Woods.
0:25
SPEAKER_01: Now here's your host, Fred Kranz.
0:28
SPEAKER_02: Uh Scott, thank you for joining us.
0:31
SPEAKER_00: Fred, a great pleasure to be with you today.
0:34
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for having me.
0:35
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and can't wait to get to visit with you some and looking forward to it.
0:39
SPEAKER_02: Well, it's good.
0:40
SPEAKER_02: And uh, I was uh I'm happy to have you here because uh uh I've always in I've always enjoyed uh uh you know the daily stuff about how many hospitals are closing.
0:50
SPEAKER_02: It seemed like last year every uh every Becker's came out with 32 hospitals are closing today and and uh as a as a terrible, terrible scenario.
1:01
SPEAKER_02: But why don't you tell us first off a little bit about yourself?
1:05
SPEAKER_02: Uh I know that you're a you're a partner at Meguire Woods, uh, and uh tell us a little bit about yourself and your background.
1:12
SPEAKER_00: Sure, sure.
1:13
SPEAKER_00: So I I'll I'll I'll take you first to the first thing you said about hospital closures, labor and delivery closures, and so forth in hospitals.
1:20
SPEAKER_00: And it's it's a really challenging spot because more and more, particularly in smaller and rural communities, not enough hospitals, not enough doctors to staff hospitals, can't stay staff labor and delivery rooms.
1:33
SPEAKER_00: So you got more and more departments and hospitals closing, uh often in smaller and mid-sized communities, which makes it very hard to continue to have a great um population in those communities.
1:44
SPEAKER_00: So, yes, I I we do cover a lot of what's going on, and we do it in sort of short form so people can get a sense of here's what's going on in healthcare right now across the board.
1:53
SPEAKER_00: And there's all story on that as well.
1:55
SPEAKER_00: So, yes, my background is I was a lawyer by background, still I am, but don't really practice a lot directly.
2:02
SPEAKER_00: But started Becker's Healthcare 30 plus years ago.
2:06
SPEAKER_00: Really at the time, when I started Becker's Healthcare, it was in one area, the surgery center area originally.
2:12
SPEAKER_00: Then about 10 years later, 20 years ago, 20 plus years ago, we expanded into the hospital's health systems, orthopedic and spine, then later into health IT, and now several different lines and areas.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: Uh, it was started originally as more of a thought leadership type of thing, which we they didn't call it that then, but but just trying to sort of, you know, get myself connected to the world, thought of as a as a as a thinker leader in sort of the business of healthcare, particularly at that time early on in the niche, the business of surgery centers.
2:44
SPEAKER_00: Then we've grown it from what was, you know, we talk about the evolution of a founder often, from me starting it 100 years ago and doing a lot of everything to now there's, you know, a whole team of 30 plus writers, 15 plus salespeople, 20 plus people that do key account management, a ton of people that work on event the event side, and a whole team of people that do a tremendous job of trying to keep people abreast of the core developments in healthcare.
3:13
SPEAKER_00: And that's sort of the gist of it.
3:14
SPEAKER_00: You know, we we're not we're not really overtly clinical.
3:17
SPEAKER_00: We're much more focused on the business of healthcare, the the sort of short.
3:22
SPEAKER_00: We we always position ourselves as trying to be the Wall Street Journal of Healthcare short form, give people a sense, here's what's going on.
3:28
SPEAKER_00: And it helps people a lot to give them a sense of here's what's going on in our community, here's what's going on in another community.
3:35
SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, are we in the same general macro direction or is something are we doing something right or wrong?
3:40
SPEAKER_00: And what can we do differently?
3:41
SPEAKER_00: Just give people a sense of that stuff, not not uh, you know, it's not we don't sell consulting services, we don't sell deep dive stuff.
3:47
SPEAKER_00: We people could we give people a sense of here's what's going on, and then provide an opportunity at our large meetings for people to interact and network with peers and hopefully come away a little bit motivated, a little bit excited, and so forth.
3:58
SPEAKER_00: So that's the gist of it, Fred.
4:00
SPEAKER_02: So uh you have a staff that's out there harvesting and curating uh the news of the day, basically.
4:07
SPEAKER_02: And almost like uh the next day having it on online for uh folks to uh read about in a brief uh format so that uh they can get a full story if they want it.
4:19
SPEAKER_02: Uh uh they can explore more.
4:21
SPEAKER_02: So you serve the you serve uh the role of you know this giving people stuff to think about and and look further into.
4:30
SPEAKER_02: Is that fair?
4:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think that's exactly right.
4:32
SPEAKER_00: It gives people a quick sense of here's what's going on in their in their world, here's what here's what they're doing, and it and that's that's the uh yeah, that's exactly right.
4:40
SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly that's exactly the goal.
4:42
SPEAKER_00: So were you uh you're from Chicago?
4:45
SPEAKER_00: I am.
4:45
SPEAKER_00: I'm a Chicagoan by background, have spent almost my entire life here, uh, came right back here after school, and just uh, you know, it's home, and so love it.
4:55
SPEAKER_00: And if you you can't, I don't know if you can see my background, but we've got a lot of snow on the ground here in Chicago, and I think you you might where you are as well.
5:02
SPEAKER_00: Uh for you it might be less usual.
5:04
SPEAKER_00: For here, it's typical, but we've got uh a lot of snow and it's uh it's it's beautiful out.
5:10
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm I'm from Cleveland Heights, Ohio.
5:12
SPEAKER_02: It's very usual here.
5:13
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
5:13
SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes, yes, yes.
5:14
SPEAKER_00: And it's exactly the same thing in Cleveland, exactly.
5:17
SPEAKER_00: You got the same thing, you know, uh Great Lakes states where Midwest, lots of snow.
5:22
SPEAKER_02: So I got a question for you.
5:24
SPEAKER_02: It's got nothing to do with what we're talking about.
5:26
SPEAKER_02: But um I have a friend, Rick Barlow, who uh is from healthcare purchasing news and and he's in the bellw from the bellwether league, is uh, and I asked, he went to Northwestern.
5:37
SPEAKER_02: And I said, Rick, uh, what is Chicago's college football team?
5:41
SPEAKER_02: He goes, Northwestern.
5:42
SPEAKER_02: I said, No, it's not.
5:43
SPEAKER_02: He said, University of Illinois, where you went to school.
5:46
SPEAKER_02: No, it's not.
5:47
SPEAKER_02: Am I wrong?
5:47
SPEAKER_02: Isn't Chicago's college football team Notre Dame?
5:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I thought that's where you were going with that.
5:53
SPEAKER_00: That's that's you know, that's that's that's probably that's probably pretty fair.
5:58
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's certainly not Northwestern.
6:01
SPEAKER_00: There's different tribes that are fans of Illinois.
6:04
SPEAKER_00: Of course, we have a ton of alums that went to Illinois.
6:07
SPEAKER_00: I I went to Illinois, a ton of people that went to Illinois.
6:10
SPEAKER_00: So we're fans of Illinois football, we're fans of Illinois basketball.
6:12
SPEAKER_00: Illinois football has been so middling for 40 years right now.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: There was about 40 years ago to the Rose Bowl, had a couple good years, stuff like that.
6:20
SPEAKER_00: Northwestern football, you know, is less than middling.
6:24
SPEAKER_00: Had that year where they went to the Rose Bowl under Gary Barnett, a famous coach.
6:28
SPEAKER_00: And I learned a great lesson from Gary Barnett, which I'll tell you in a second.
6:31
SPEAKER_00: Um, but Notre Dame has a huge following here, of course.
6:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, it's a big, big, you know, a lot of uh Notre Dame grads end up in Illinois, and there's a lot in Chicago.
6:41
SPEAKER_00: You have a lot of um a lot of allegiance to Notre Dame for sure.
6:45
SPEAKER_00: It's a great, it's a great call.
6:46
SPEAKER_00: Gary Barnett was the first coach that I was a fan of because he was a Northwestern coach, and I grew up 10 minutes from Northwestern in a town just west of Evanston.
6:55
SPEAKER_00: And and Gary Barnett, when Illinois, when Northwestern went to the Rolls Ball, he then was recruited to go coach at other schools.
7:03
SPEAKER_00: He was the coach of Northwestern.
7:04
SPEAKER_00: Northwestern had never gone that far, never done that well.
7:07
SPEAKER_00: And Gary Barnett had a press conference and he said, I am never leaving Northwestern.
7:13
SPEAKER_00: And so, of course, me as a young person, as a young person at the time, thought, oh, that's great.
7:18
SPEAKER_00: He's not going anyplace and not understanding the world at that time, just not understanding at all.
7:22
SPEAKER_00: And so what what what that came to mean was he's negotiating his contract with the University of Colorado, and he promptly gave notice, like two days later, that he's going to Colorado.
7:31
SPEAKER_00: So then when I had the coach of the University of Illinois basketball, Bill Self, Bill Self gave a press conference that he said, in the same exact situation, they they gone to the final four, they'd done great or gotten real close to it, had a great season.
7:44
SPEAKER_00: And Bill Self has a press conference, he says, I am never leaving the University of Illinois.
7:50
SPEAKER_00: And this was enough for me to know.
7:51
SPEAKER_00: Now I understood.
7:52
SPEAKER_00: Oh, he's gone.
7:54
SPEAKER_00: We better find a new coach.
7:55
SPEAKER_00: But it was literally, it was it was literally one of those aha moments watching the two of them say at the press conferences, I am never leaving.
8:01
SPEAKER_00: And then when the second guy knew it, second guy did it, I knew, oh, he's going.
8:05
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, but no, it was it was great stuff.
8:07
SPEAKER_00: It was a fascinating learning experience.
8:08
SPEAKER_00: I hate Bill Self for life because of it.
8:10
SPEAKER_00: Gary Barnett, I hated for a long time.
8:12
SPEAKER_00: Just because there were coaches that brought two of the teams I love far, and then they immediately left for Greener Pastors.
8:18
SPEAKER_00: And so it is what it is.
8:20
SPEAKER_02: The death of innocence.
8:21
SPEAKER_02: It happens to all of us.
8:22
SPEAKER_02: We we we believe those guys.
8:24
SPEAKER_02: So um you went you went to Illinois, then you went to Harvard.
8:29
SPEAKER_02: And I believe I was reading that at one point you were lecturing classes in which uh Barack Obama was attending.
8:36
SPEAKER_02: Is that true?
8:37
SPEAKER_00: Yes, this is true.
8:39
SPEAKER_00: So I I was um I was a third-year law student, and the third-year law students end up um, and I'm gonna show you a prop in a second now that we've now that you've asked that question, because I got a prop in the room here.
8:49
SPEAKER_00: But but when when I was a third year, I did something called coaching the first years and their moot court, which is their competition for legal studies, legal you know, briefs and negotiations and stuff like that.
9:02
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I also was their teaching instructor for writing for for a period of time, for several months.
9:08
SPEAKER_00: And so I had President Obama was in the class.
9:11
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't president then, he was a first year, and another person in the class, which lawyers will know, is uh uh this guy named Eric Posner, whose father was a famous, famous judge, Richard Posner, Judge Posner.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: There's about 12 kids in the class.
9:26
SPEAKER_00: And Eric and Barack were incredibly more gifted than the rest of us.
9:31
SPEAKER_00: They were just really smart.
9:33
SPEAKER_00: They were really smart.
9:33
SPEAKER_00: So Barack and Eric would say things like, I think this is what Scott means to say.
9:39
SPEAKER_00: I think this is what he's saying.
9:40
SPEAKER_00: And I was not like, they said it in a very gracious way.
9:44
SPEAKER_00: They weren't, they weren't condescending, they were just much smarter than I was, and not that's not false humility, it's just true.
9:50
SPEAKER_00: And I felt like the Saturday live skit where I'm looking at them explaining it to the class, what I'm trying to say.
9:56
SPEAKER_00: And I couldn't be like as it was more like that's exactly right.
10:00
SPEAKER_00: I felt sort of like Chris Farley from the old Saturday live skits trying to explain they're exactly right.
10:05
SPEAKER_00: But I'm going to show you a prop.
10:06
SPEAKER_00: And there's there's a funny story to this if you if you want to deal with it.
10:09
SPEAKER_00: But this is a famous book written by a famous author about President Obama called Rising Star.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: And so I don't know if you could see it or not, but it but a book by a guy who wrote a bunch of famous books.
10:24
SPEAKER_00: It's like a thousand-page book, and this guy's famous for doing deep research.
10:29
SPEAKER_00: So he calls me.
10:30
SPEAKER_00: I'm about 27, 28 years old, a long time ago now, or I don't know, maybe 35, I don't know when it was.
10:34
SPEAKER_00: It's a long time ago now.
10:35
SPEAKER_00: But he calls me, the guy who wrote the book, that wrote this book, he's writing the book, and he says, You showed up in President Obama's notes.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: I'm writing a biography about him, and I'd love to talk to you about some of your experiences with President Obama.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: And so, of course, I think that no one would want to talk to me about my experiences with President Obama because it was just like 100 years ago, you know, in school with him and playing basketball with him and stuff like that.
11:00
SPEAKER_00: And I think it's my law school friends pranking me.
11:05
SPEAKER_00: But but it turns out it's a real author, wrote a real book about the president, um, cited in the book several times.
11:12
SPEAKER_00: And it was uh, you know, it was great fun.
11:14
SPEAKER_00: It was, it was it was just very funny because I didn't think it was somebody really.
11:17
SPEAKER_00: And then he came to Chicago to visit me with some other people about the experiences with President Obama, who was a very nice guy.
11:23
SPEAKER_00: But that that was my that's my that's my claim to fame.
11:26
SPEAKER_00: So you played basketball with Obama?
11:29
SPEAKER_00: Well, we all played basketball at at law school.
11:31
SPEAKER_00: There's a gym, you know, and you have like, and what happens is you're you're you know, you now you got to remember this is a bunch of people that are Harvard lawyers.
11:39
SPEAKER_00: You have most of us are very average athletes at best, you know, at best.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: And then you've got some that were really truly basketball players that were, you know, that played college basketball and then came to Harvard, stuff like that.
11:50
SPEAKER_00: But most of us were not good.
11:51
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but we all we all played in the gym called the wreck up at uh at law school is like a regular thing.
11:57
SPEAKER_00: And and President Obama, for all of his intelligence, was a better um is a better thinker than he was a basketball player, was not like a very particularly good basketball player.
12:06
SPEAKER_00: But nor was I, but but but but you know, so the the the thoughts of him being a uh great athletic uh basketball player, that's overstated, but brilliant, yes.
12:17
SPEAKER_00: Great basketball player, no.
12:19
SPEAKER_02: I always thought that he always went to his left because he was left-handed.
12:22
SPEAKER_02: And and uh you guys as lawyers, you didn't call fouls, you called torts, right?
12:27
SPEAKER_00: Exactly, exactly.
12:29
SPEAKER_00: But the thing is, you're you're you're it's so funny you say that because he did only go to his left.
12:34
SPEAKER_00: He did only go to his left and he's left-handed, and he couldn't go to his right, and he wasn't a very talented basketball player.
12:40
SPEAKER_00: I mean, superbly nice person, incredible personal skills, whether you like his politics or not, and I'm somewhere in between.
12:47
SPEAKER_00: He was a very nice person and very bright.
12:50
SPEAKER_02: Okay, well, we've gotten completely off the subject.
12:52
SPEAKER_02: Now let's see if we can get back on it.
12:54
SPEAKER_02: Um, you've sponsored some excellent events and for the healthcare industry.
12:59
SPEAKER_02: Uh you uh you have some of the most intriguing and influential speakers uh present and presenting at your at your sessions.
13:09
SPEAKER_02: Could you tell us a little bit about that?
13:11
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
13:11
SPEAKER_00: So I mean, literally 30 plus years ago we started doing events, then about 15 years ago, we started for our events adding big keynote speakers.
13:19
SPEAKER_00: And there's two types of keynote speakers.
13:21
SPEAKER_00: So it's obviously the the first and most important type of keynote speakers is people that are leaders in the industry, so CEOs of hospitals and health systems and and and sort of the people that have a perspective, uh, really bright people from the largest systems.
13:36
SPEAKER_00: And so that's that's one.
13:37
SPEAKER_00: The the second keynote speakers that we work with are often highly famous celebrities and and people of that sort.
13:45
SPEAKER_00: So at this meeting, we've got coming up in April, and I don't know when this will be released, but in April we've got Mark Cuban speaking, President Bush speaking.
13:53
SPEAKER_00: We're working on a couple of other big keynote names and speakers.
13:57
SPEAKER_00: We'll see if we can nail those down or not.
13:59
SPEAKER_00: Uh this past year, I had a chance to interview Wayne Gretzky at one of our meetings.
14:03
SPEAKER_00: Jack Nichols was there too, Caitlin Clark, um, you know, John McEnroe spoke this past year.
14:09
SPEAKER_00: We've had President Clinton, Hillary Clinton.
14:12
SPEAKER_00: Um, we have not had Jeff Epstein, but we did have President Clinton and Hillary Clinton.
14:16
SPEAKER_00: But but we we we did have uh we've had President Bush, we've had Laura Bush, uh, we've had we've had a ton of great speakers.
14:23
SPEAKER_00: Um, you and I were talking basketball earlier.
14:25
SPEAKER_00: We had Karim Abdullah Jabbar speak several years ago.
14:28
SPEAKER_00: It was a real pleasure.
14:29
SPEAKER_00: You and I were both there one year when Bobby Knight and Lou Holtz spoke.
14:34
SPEAKER_00: This goes back some time.
14:36
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, it it really provides um you know another level of energy.
14:40
SPEAKER_00: Venus Williams, a tennis player, spoke a couple years back.
14:43
SPEAKER_00: We we we've had um, I mean, a ton of really, you know, a ton of um uh fun and interesting speakers.
14:51
SPEAKER_00: And most of them are really a pleasure, regardless of your politics.
14:55
SPEAKER_00: You know, President Bush is a pleasure, Hillary Clinton's a pleasure.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: Regardless of your politics, they're they're a pleasure of people, they're the great personal skills and a pleasure to be with, regardless of what you see on TV.
15:06
SPEAKER_00: They're just very, very nice people and they have great personal skills.
15:09
SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, it gives an extra flavor to the meeting, it makes it exciting.
15:13
SPEAKER_00: We try and have uh, you know, you know, everybody you have a little excitement every day in addition to the learning and the and the networking around the the work that everybody does, you know, we try and have highlights every day, too.
15:25
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I I've I've enjoyed it.
15:27
SPEAKER_02: I I uh I I wish I could go more frequently, but I I'm unable to do that.
15:33
SPEAKER_02: Um the other thing I'd like to get into, I know I know you've got a book coming out, and I want to talk about that, uh, another book coming out.
15:41
SPEAKER_02: Uh but you know, from your daily oversight of the healthcare industry, what do you think are the three or four most pressing issues that we have to deal with, that we have to resolve or surmount for us to have the best healthcare uh delivery system we could have in this country?
16:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I think it's I think it's a great question.
16:03
SPEAKER_00: I sort of look at two right away.
16:05
SPEAKER_00: Uh first is we've got this evolving shortage of specialists and physicians in our country, uh, which is increasingly a disaster.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: And and the thing about healthcare, which I love, is that every single one of us is a consumer.
16:19
SPEAKER_00: So every single one of us sees this.
16:21
SPEAKER_00: Every single one of us has a friend, a family member, a relative who has been sick with tough diseases like cancer.
16:29
SPEAKER_00: Uh, we all know that it's harder and harder to find the right specialist for what you need.
16:34
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you have to know somebody, and even when you know somebody, it's hard.
16:37
SPEAKER_00: And the depth of specialists is increasingly very shallow in our country.
16:41
SPEAKER_00: And so that is a that is a I think about that every single day.
16:44
SPEAKER_00: I had a dermatologist from Minnesota on our podcast last year.
16:48
SPEAKER_00: She's the one dermatologist in the area of 500,000 people in northern Minnesota, where there's a ton of skin cancer uh in in Texas, had a neurologist on.
16:57
SPEAKER_00: He's the one neurologist for an area of 500,000 people in a time when we've got increased amount of dementia, Alzheimer's, everything else, but across the board.
17:06
SPEAKER_00: Cancer, uh, you know, dermatology, neurology, psychiatry across the board.
17:12
SPEAKER_00: We're just getting into more and more uh shortages, and it's daunting.
17:17
SPEAKER_00: And I look at it in terms of like a brain surgeon, you know, it the depth in specialties is very, very shallow.
17:25
SPEAKER_00: You get through the top brain surgeon in Chicago, there's one other one.
17:29
SPEAKER_00: It's not, there's just not enough for the complexity of what's going on in our aging population.
17:33
SPEAKER_00: That's one.
17:33
SPEAKER_00: The second thing is the cost of health care, and cost of healthcare is horrendous for itself, and it's also horrendous for sort of health equity.
17:41
SPEAKER_00: The third thing I talk about is closely related to the second, which is I would call the tiering of healthcare.
17:46
SPEAKER_00: And so you used to have two big tiers of healthcare: people that are on commercial insurance, people that are on Medicaid, Medicare, governmental, or didn't have insurance, there were two big tiers.
17:56
SPEAKER_00: Now you've got multiple different tiers.
17:58
SPEAKER_00: In the commercial side, you've got people that are in concierge, which creates one real tier for you know the people with lots of money.
18:07
SPEAKER_00: Um, and that means the people on general commercial insurance have more and more excess trouble, and then people on Medicare and Medicaid have more and more access trouble.
18:14
SPEAKER_00: So what you're seeing is this, and it goes with cost, it goes with supply and demand, it goes with the tiering of healthcare, you know, just increasing harder and harder to have supply and demand meet up with each other and make those work.
18:27
SPEAKER_00: I think those are just real, real challenges.
18:29
SPEAKER_00: Horrible healthcare inflation.
18:31
SPEAKER_00: You know, I I I lay off when I see the government, I I laugh because it's easier than crying, when I see the government interrogating the insurance companies about health care, when it's the government that handed over so much of healthcare to the insurance companies, both commercial and Medicare and Medicaid, it's sort of a great joke.
18:51
SPEAKER_00: You got the senators and congress people interviewing the CEOs of the health system, the of the of the insurance companies, taking shots at them.
18:59
SPEAKER_00: They're not innocent either.
19:01
SPEAKER_00: There's all kinds of problems, but the whole thing has been developed because the government has turned over so much of health care to these middle people, the insurance companies, and it just is uh it's it's caused tremendous inflation.
19:12
SPEAKER_00: So the concept of the government investing in the insurance companies, it should be rather we should be investigating both of them in the financial relationship between the government and the insurance companies, not not um, you know, not not I mean that it just it's almost comical.
19:26
SPEAKER_00: But anyways, those are three or four of the big issues that we look at constantly.
19:30
SPEAKER_00: And then there's pharmaceuticals, there's AI, there's other developments, there's lots of positives too.
19:35
SPEAKER_00: And I put it in the context of we're the third largest country in the world.
19:39
SPEAKER_00: Our health care is still dramatically better than the two largest countries in the world.
19:44
SPEAKER_00: And and when people say, oh, we should have a healthcare system like Sweden, we should have a healthcare system like Vermont, we whatever, they're there are apples and oranges.
19:51
SPEAKER_00: So we have a very complex, challenging problem in our country, 350 million people or so.
19:57
SPEAKER_00: Uh we we do it much better than India and China do, even though they do a great job of producing doctors, and we're lucky to have them.
20:03
SPEAKER_00: But it's it's a very hard challenge.
20:05
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's not it's not simple, and the politicians are stuck on platitudes versus usefulness, and so it's uh versus problem solving.
20:12
SPEAKER_00: So it's it's it's it's complicated.
20:15
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20:41
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and you know, uh I've been in healthcare now for 60 years.
20:46
SPEAKER_02: And um, you know, I it's hard to be in this business this long without becoming cynical.
20:52
SPEAKER_02: Right.
20:52
SPEAKER_02: And part part of that cynicism is it seems to me that uh part of the problem in America is there's a lot more money to be made treating symptoms than there is in curing disease.
21:03
SPEAKER_02: That's number one.
21:04
SPEAKER_02: Number two is um in a capitalist society that's based on marketing and consumption, it's an awful lot easier to sell crap that's bad for people's health than to encourage people to live a healthy lifestyle.
21:19
SPEAKER_02: And when you look at the um the average life expectancy by um by I don't want to say race, but by by human groupings, Asian Americans have the have the highest.
21:32
SPEAKER_02: And uh I think they're like uh eighty some are in the eighties.
21:36
SPEAKER_02: Average uh life expectancy at at birth is seventy eight years in uh in America, seventy six plus for males, eighty over for females.
21:46
SPEAKER_02: Uh and we do we do little to nothing to um to encourage uh a health system.
21:54
SPEAKER_00: We support a sick system, if you know what I mean.
21:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we we do, and it's and it's Very complicated because what happens is 350 million people, and I believe the government should use their pulpit for health, for pushing health, like they used to when we were growing up, they had all the presidential fitness tests and all these kinds of things.
22:15
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's a good thing.
22:16
SPEAKER_00: I think every school should have gym, should have fitness class, should have physical fitness.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: You know, make you know, this concept constantly talking about physically and mentally healthy as a core concept for life is very, very important.
22:27
SPEAKER_00: I completely agree.
22:28
SPEAKER_00: I'm a big believer in what I would say is trust plus plus verify.
22:32
SPEAKER_00: Those countries that have moved totally towards prevention as their sort of way of trying to avoid hospitalization and sickness have largely failed at it.
22:40
SPEAKER_00: So it doesn't, it you need both.
22:42
SPEAKER_00: I believe we should all be working on prevention.
22:45
SPEAKER_00: I believe GLTs and all of us losing 10 pounds is fantastic for the heart, for cancer, for so many different things, for structure, for the knees, for everything.
22:52
SPEAKER_00: I believe it's great.
22:53
SPEAKER_00: Prevention is very important.
22:55
SPEAKER_00: But we better have enough doctors and nurses just in case.
22:57
SPEAKER_00: I mean, China and India are the great example of prevention, but during COVID, they didn't have enough nurses and doctors, so the countries had a really horrible time.
23:05
SPEAKER_00: China had to close down everything for a period of time because they just couldn't afford it.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: People get contagious because they didn't have doctors and nurses to take care of people.
23:11
SPEAKER_00: And India just got crushed for a couple summers because they just don't have doctors and nurses.
23:16
SPEAKER_00: So I'm I'm a big fan of prevention.
23:18
SPEAKER_00: Totally agreed.
23:19
SPEAKER_00: But I think it's prevention plus doctors and nurses.
23:21
SPEAKER_00: I don't think it's one or the other.
23:23
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
23:24
SPEAKER_02: That's a very interesting point.
23:25
SPEAKER_02: And now we come to the part that has become a new sort of segment of my podcast.
23:32
SPEAKER_02: Uh my friends that write books have been asking me to tell them to talk about the books they're writing so they can sell their books.
23:40
SPEAKER_02: Uh, that includes my friend Mark Van Sumren, uh, who recently wrote about uh leadership in the time of AI.
23:47
SPEAKER_02: And I know that you have a uh a new uh book coming out soon calling called Building Great Businesses that you have written with Molly Gamble.
23:58
SPEAKER_02: And I'm wondering, said it says with Molly Gamble.
24:01
SPEAKER_02: That makes me ask the question, did you write this or did she?
24:05
SPEAKER_00: No, yeah, yeah, yeah.
24:06
SPEAKER_00: It's a it's a it's a it's a it's a fair question.
24:08
SPEAKER_00: No, and she'll tell you this is as true as day is I wrote the book uh and then she helped me edit it and improve it and clean it up.
24:14
SPEAKER_00: 100%.
24:15
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, it's not AI written, it's me writing three months last summer, sitting down a few hours a day writing the book, 100%.
24:21
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's the seventh book I've written, so it's not a new thing for me.
24:24
SPEAKER_00: I know.
24:24
SPEAKER_00: And and I've not yet moved towards writing it by AI or something like that.
24:28
SPEAKER_00: No, I I really write the book for better or for worse.
24:30
SPEAKER_00: So when you see the flaws in it, you'll know it's me.
24:33
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's me.
24:33
SPEAKER_00: And so in this book was an iteration.
24:37
SPEAKER_00: Long time ago, I wrote about a bunch of healthcare books that were healthcare business legal books.
24:43
SPEAKER_00: This goes back a long time ago.
24:45
SPEAKER_00: More recently, the last several years, I've written more business type books.
24:50
SPEAKER_00: The first business book I wrote was so bad I had to take it off the shelves.
24:54
SPEAKER_00: The second one was an improvement, and this is the third one.
24:57
SPEAKER_00: And the third one comes out of getting some professional guidance on here's how you got to do this to make this more readable, to make this better, to improve this.
25:05
SPEAKER_00: And so we spent a decent amount of time last summer writing this book, and it comes out in June.
25:10
SPEAKER_00: And it's it's for me, it's a um, you know, with multiple different pieces to it.
25:14
SPEAKER_00: But the the original book was set up to provide a lot of my business and investment thoughts in one place, largely for my kids and for others, and as a reference point for myself, uh, this is a third iteration that tells more of the story of business and also about different advice and thoughts on building businesses.
25:32
SPEAKER_00: And you know, we help people come away, just uh they enjoy it and they come away a little bit entertained and a little bit motivated.
25:38
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
25:39
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, that's the idea.
25:40
SPEAKER_02: The I when I was uh when I was at the University of Miami, uh one of my English professors told me that the object of great writing is to educate and entertain.
25:51
SPEAKER_02: And and if you just educate, nobody's gonna read your book.
25:55
SPEAKER_02: You better be able to entertain as well, you know.
25:58
SPEAKER_00: Well, you see, but but that's exactly right.
26:00
SPEAKER_00: That's why at our conference is to take us back why years ago we started moving towards big keynotes because we want people to have teach and entertain.
26:07
SPEAKER_00: We want them to come away, learn something.
26:09
SPEAKER_00: They got to do all the business sessions and hopefully get entertained.
26:12
SPEAKER_00: I mean, one year we had Jay Leno and Arnold Schwartz over there.
26:15
SPEAKER_00: We want people to come away, both teach and entertain.
26:17
SPEAKER_00: Exactly right.
26:18
SPEAKER_00: That's gotta be like it's it's gotta be easy to read, a pleasure to read, learn something and come away with a little motivation, maybe you know, pick up something that is most people know a lot of this stuff.
26:28
SPEAKER_00: It's just categorizing it for people.
26:30
SPEAKER_00: It's not like, you know, it's not there's there's there's not really there's geniuses amongst us.
26:34
SPEAKER_00: I I'm not one of them.
26:35
SPEAKER_00: I assume you're not one of them.
26:36
SPEAKER_00: You might be, I don't know, but but there's geniuses amongst us, but I'm not one of them.
26:39
SPEAKER_00: This is more just hopefully help people think through like here's different ways of looking at things, here's a couple things that, oh, that worked for him.
26:45
SPEAKER_00: I should work with that.
26:45
SPEAKER_00: Or this is what I do that I do well.
26:47
SPEAKER_00: So you ought to double down on that.
26:49
SPEAKER_00: Whatever it is that you do that you do well.
26:51
SPEAKER_00: So no, it's a great pleasure.
26:53
SPEAKER_02: And I was just I was just pulling your chain about the col with the with thing, because uh I I knew uh I used to attend the same church as John Underwood, who uh was who wrote uh two books with Ted Williams, you know, My Turn at Bad and The Science of Hitting.
27:09
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
27:09
SPEAKER_02: Uh and I know that I know that Ted didn't write the book.
27:12
SPEAKER_02: We all know that.
27:13
SPEAKER_02: John John Underwood was the was a sports illustrator writer.
27:16
SPEAKER_02: So I was just pulling your chain a little.
27:18
SPEAKER_02: I I I hope you don't take offense to it.
27:20
SPEAKER_00: We we never take offense.
27:22
SPEAKER_00: We appreciate the question because I take great pride in the fact that I actually sit down and actually wrote it.
27:26
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, we we you know it is what it is.
27:28
SPEAKER_00: When people read it, they'll know I wrote it.
27:29
SPEAKER_00: It's got my it's it it's me talking and writing.
27:32
SPEAKER_00: So no, it's it's great.
27:35
SPEAKER_02: That's good.
27:35
SPEAKER_02: You know, I've always thought too that when that when you write, if you write uh in a true way, a way that's true to yourself, when people read what you write, they're gonna hear your voice.
27:47
SPEAKER_02: That that that's the way I've always felt.
27:50
SPEAKER_00: That's the hope.
27:51
SPEAKER_00: That's the hope.
27:51
SPEAKER_00: And what happens is, you know, it's so much when you say that because once you get through a couple editorial processes and and the editor editor tries to sort of refine it in a way, I had to get very good.
28:02
SPEAKER_00: I've been writing for a long time, and I write a lot, and I had to get very good a long time ago about telling the people that are editing with me, don't rewrite, clean up, don't rewrite.
28:13
SPEAKER_00: Because what happens is people would rewrite versus clean up, and then it would it would might sound good, but didn't sound like me.
28:21
SPEAKER_00: And the the ideal world, the ideal writer to me, sounds like they're speaking to you.
28:27
SPEAKER_00: Actually, it sounds like it's it's you.
28:28
SPEAKER_00: And and and there's books that I've done.
28:30
SPEAKER_00: I've done books where a year or two ago we had to record an audiobook of one of my books, and when you sit down and have to record the audiobook of one of your books, it's a laborious process.
28:40
SPEAKER_00: But worse than that, when you go and do it and record it, uh, an audiobook that you've written, it can feel very stilted if if you know, and you really get a different sense of like, oh God, I wish I didn't write that like that.
28:53
SPEAKER_00: I wish I didn't prove that.
28:54
SPEAKER_00: Because when you actually have to read for record the audiobook, you're like, oh goodness, that doesn't sound how I want to sound.
29:02
SPEAKER_00: You know, it doesn't it doesn't feel like me talking, it feels like something different.
29:07
SPEAKER_00: And it's challenging when you go from, you know, in in the old days, you would dictate a lot of stuff, give it to a secretary, she'd she'd transcribe it, and it would really, your writing would really sound like you.
29:18
SPEAKER_00: And then as that dictation sort of gone out of style again, you move back towards writing on the phone, writing on the computer, writing on these things, and it could sound different than you actually sound because you're you know, you're you're you're stuck writing in the on the on the computer and stuff like that versus talking and being yourself.
29:33
SPEAKER_00: It's really interesting.
29:34
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's a whole different discussion, but it's a fascinating discussion, I find.
29:38
SPEAKER_02: No, it is.
29:38
SPEAKER_02: Uh I do a lot of I've had a I've done an awful lot of writing across my career, and and people say, hey, when I read what you when I read your stories, that first off the word stories is in there and I like that.
29:50
SPEAKER_02: You know, I I do I I I like what I call uh didactic storytelling, you know, where you you you're gonna have someone learn something, but you want to entertain them.
30:02
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
30:03
SPEAKER_02: And if they're not entertained, they got other things to do.
30:06
SPEAKER_02: That's why that's why your daily short uh shortened uh uh stories about what's going on that can make people want to read the bigger ones if they want to are important.
30:16
SPEAKER_02: People have a very uh brief attention span.
30:20
SPEAKER_02: And and if you can hook them, you got them.
30:22
SPEAKER_02: If you can't hook them, you know, they're gonna go anyway, right?
30:26
SPEAKER_00: No, and you you've you've nailed something about today's entertainment world as well.
30:31
SPEAKER_00: If you go on Netflix, you go on HBO, whatever streaming service you watch, and you're watching a new show, it literally, if something exciting doesn't happen in the first few minutes, the first 10 minutes, first five minutes, people move on to something else.
30:44
SPEAKER_00: And so you you you have this constant challenge today to keep people interested.
30:48
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the amount of Netflix shows that start with some kind of murder is extraordinary.
30:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
30:53
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's it's it's like literally insane.
30:55
SPEAKER_00: But it's why they used to say on the news, the old adage was if it leads, it bleeds.
31:01
SPEAKER_00: If it bleeds, it leads.
31:03
SPEAKER_00: Because you had to catch people's attention, and there's just and it's gotten so much worse today because people have so many different options for where to where to spend their time.
31:10
SPEAKER_00: It's it's a hundred percent right.
31:12
SPEAKER_02: Well, Scott, number one, where can people uh get an advanced purchase of your of your book that's coming out?
31:20
SPEAKER_00: Sure, no, thank you.
31:22
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I uh I the the place we'd love you to order it from is to go on Amazon, pre-order it.
31:28
SPEAKER_00: The book is called Building Great Businesses.
31:31
SPEAKER_00: Uh Create Momentum, Overcome Setbacks, and Scale with Confidence.
31:36
SPEAKER_00: So it's Scott Becker with Molly Gamble.
31:39
SPEAKER_00: If people want to reach me, the easiest way to get in touch with me is on LinkedIn, Scott Becker, you know, uh founder of Becker's Healthcare, partner McGuire Woods.
31:47
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but love to visit with people all the time.
31:50
SPEAKER_00: What a great pleasure.
31:51
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
31:52
SPEAKER_02: And uh number two, um stay with me when uh after I write the uh wrap on this because I got something else I wanted to uh mention to you.
32:01
SPEAKER_02: But uh number two, thanks for everything.
32:04
SPEAKER_02: Uh I will I know that you're sending out the information about your meetings and they're always well attended.
32:11
SPEAKER_02: I would like to I'd love to go again.
32:13
SPEAKER_02: Uh I really enjoyed those.
32:14
SPEAKER_02: Uh I wanted to talk to Mark Cuban a couple years ago when he was there and ask him why anyone would uh would uh trade for Kyrie Irving after he's uh ruined pretty much every team he's ever played for.
32:26
SPEAKER_02: But anyway, that's neither here nor there.
32:27
SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much for being here, and it has been an honor to have you on the show.
32:32
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
32:33
SPEAKER_00: Fred, it's a privilege to be with you, and what a pleasure.
32:35
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for having me.
32:36
SPEAKER_00: What a pleasure.
32:40
SPEAKER_01: Well, that's all for today.
32:41
SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much for joining us.
32:43
SPEAKER_01: And don't forget to hit that subscribe button and connect with us online so you'll never miss an episode and can catch up on all the ones you might have missed.
32:50
SPEAKER_01: Got a topic you're fired up about, or maybe you want to be a guest on the show?
32:54
SPEAKER_01: Fred would love to hear from you.
32:56
SPEAKER_01: Just reach out at F C R A N S at S T O N G E.com.
33:02
SPEAKER_01: See you next time.