In 2009, David Goldhill’s father died of a hospital-acquired infection. And he realized that preventing medical errors was not an economic imperative in the American healthcare system. In fact, our third-party payment system creates a misalignment of incentives, making insurers and governments the customer rather than the patients themselves.

So, David wrote a cover story for The Atlantic entitled ‘How American Health Care Killed My Father’ which expanded into a book, Catastrophic Care: Why Everything We Think We Know about Health Care Is Wrong. Since then, David has become a leading voice for healthcare advocacy and founded Sesame, a company that is revolutionizing healthcare with a direct-pay marketplace that delivers high quality healthcare at half the price.

On this episode of The Beat, David joins hosts Dr. Jessica Shepherd and Dr. Gautam Gulati to explain who uses the marketplace and how competition drives down prices on Sesame without compromising quality of care. David discusses what attracts providers to the Sesame model and describes the criteria for joining the platform as well as its rigorous rating system.

Listen in for insight on maintaining continuity of care in telehealth and learn how David is bringing a revolution of consumerism to healthcare in the US and around the world.

Topics Covered:

• How Sesame eliminates the third-party payment system from healthcare
• The breakdown of who uses Sesame’s direct pay marketplace
• How competition drives down prices on Sesame without compromising quality of care
• The personal experience that inspired David’s healthcare advocacy
• How the third-party payment system causes a misalignment of incentives in healthcare
• Why insurance- and safety net-based healthcare systems are outdated 
• What attracts healthcare providers to the Sesame model
• The criteria for providers to join Sesame and the platform’s rigorous rating system
• How David thinks about maintaining continuity of care in telehealth
• How Sesame handles the transference of health records and information
• What David admires about the current healthcare system in America
• David’s vision for bringing a revolution of consumerism to the healthcare industry

Connect with David Goldhill

• Sesame
• David at Sesame
• David on LinkedIn

Resources

• ‘How American Health Care Killed My Father’ in The Atlantic
• Catastrophic Care: Why Everything We Think We Know about Health Care Is Wrong by David Goldhill
• Atul Gawande
• ‘The Cost Conundrum’ in The New Yorker
• ‘The Heroism of Incremental Care’ in The New Yorker
• ‘In Health Care, America Is the World’s Indispensable Nation’ in The Washington Post