Podcast Recommendation: Relentless Health Value E356

Let me begin by acknowledging that my original source of this information was an individual whom I admire a great deal: David Balat who shared this particular podcast via LinkedIn. David is a Texan who happens to be one of the foremost authorities on the anti-consumer and anti-competitive behavior of Pharmacy Benefit Managers ("PBM's") and works as Director, Right on Healthcare for Texas Public Policy Foundation and also Executive Director with the nonprofit organization Free2Care. David Balat's LinkedIn profile can be seen at https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidbalat if you're interested in following him on LinkedIn.

This was an episode of the "Relentless Health Value" podcast. FYI: Relentless Health Value is a weekly interview podcast hosted by Stacey Richter, who is a healthcare entrepreneur celebrating fifteen years in the business side of healthcare. Ms. Richter is also a great hostess for the podcast, asking very pointed and relevant questions of her guests, plus her guests are healthcare business luminaries. I also recommend that you might consider subscribing to the overall "Relentless Health Value" podcast. It's available from most of the places where people subscribe to podcasts, but the website is at https://relentlesshealthvalue.com.

The specific episode I am recommending in today's post is Episode 356: "PBMs React to GoodRx, Mark Cuban, and Amazon Pharmacy, With Ge Bai." The podcast episode can be accessed at https://relentlesshealthvalue.com/episode/aee13. I will provide the actual episode itself at the end of this blog post.

The guest in Episode 356 was the real reason for recommending this podcast episode. The guest was Dr. Ge Bai, PhD, CPA who was interviewed, and Dr. Bai is a professor of accounting at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School and professor of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is an expert on healthcare pricing, policy, and management.  Dr. Bai is a real authority on what happens behind-the-scenes with PBM processing insurance claims and her knowledge is really great.

Dr. Ge Bai has a webpage at Johns Hopkins which is assuredly one you might find very informative, particularly with links to her published works. You may visit her page at Johns Hopkins at https://publichealth.jhu.edu/faculty/3887/ge-bai for more details. Also, her LinkedIn page can be found at https://www.linkedin.com/in/ge-bai-16945370/.

One other link: Dr. Ge Bai's Twitter handle can be found at @GeBaiDC and I do recommend following on both platforms. Even if Twitter is (right now, anyway) currently kind of falling by the wayside until the company either formally declares bankruptcy or is foreclosed upon by its many creditors. The reason is because under Elon Musk's failed leadership of Twitter, the social media platform has gone delinquent on virtually all of its bills, including its rent for the company headquarters in San Francisco. Musk recently tried to beg the Saudis to bankroll yet another investment in Musk-led Twitter, and while the Saudis generally support authoritarians who censor content they deem unacceptable, even the Saudis balked at how poorly their first big investment in Musk-led Twitter has gone. 

It's looking like a foreclosure on Musk-run Twitter, or a bankruptcy of the company appears almost certain in the near future. I remain on Twitter, although some people prefer not to provide Twitter any content which the company uses to attract advertisers who generate most of the company's revenue. Twitter has lost more than half of its advertisers since Elon Musk bought the company via a highly leveraged buyout. Recall that Elon Musk was forced to buy Twitter at a price of $46.5 billion even though the company was only worth maybe only about $14 billion because he foolishly signed an agreement to pay that price. Twitter sued him for breach of contract and a Federal judge ruled he had to buy Twitter at the agreed-upon price. Only now, it's looking as if the Emperor Has No Clothes! FYI, I have been finding LinkedIn has really evolved to an excellent social media platform owned and operated by Microsoft. On LinkedIn, I follow virtually everyone I once did on Twitter (and a few who did not have Twitter handles), plus LinkedIn has the added advantage of not being blocked in many corporations, so you can usually find the same content there as you once went to Twitter to get. Also, Elon Musk-run Twitter has aggressively increased the number of posts from users I do not even follow, but it appears to have no strategy for whose Tweets they share; it's haphazard and erratic. For that reason, I am spending much more time on LinkedIn these days although I don't share much of anything on LinkedIn, but I still turn to it for reliable news since I don't find it on Twitter anymore!

Anyway, back to the "Relentless Health Value" podcast. Start by listening to Episode 356 can be accessed at https://relentlesshealthvalue.com/episode/aee13 (or below), and then maybe consider subscribing if you enjoy informative "business of healthcare" related information.