34 episodes

Where does a medical cure come from? 100 years ago, it wasn't uncommon for scientists to test medicines by taking a dose themselves. As medical technologies get cheaper and more accessible, patients and DIY tinkerers are trying something similar—and mainstream medicine is racing to catch up. Prognosis explores the leading edge of medical advances, and asks who gets—or should get—access to them. We look at how innovation happens, when it fails, and what it means to the people with a disease trying to feel better, live longer, or avoid death.

Prognosis Bloomberg

    • Science

Where does a medical cure come from? 100 years ago, it wasn't uncommon for scientists to test medicines by taking a dose themselves. As medical technologies get cheaper and more accessible, patients and DIY tinkerers are trying something similar—and mainstream medicine is racing to catch up. Prognosis explores the leading edge of medical advances, and asks who gets—or should get—access to them. We look at how innovation happens, when it fails, and what it means to the people with a disease trying to feel better, live longer, or avoid death.

    Engineering Your Own Pancreas (Rebroadcast)

    Engineering Your Own Pancreas (Rebroadcast)

    We're revisiting some of our favorite episodes, starting with our very first. More than a million Americans suffer from Type 1 diabetes. The disease occurs when the pancreas mysteriously stops producing insulin, the hormone that converts food into energy. Modern medicine has been able to recreate insulin, but not the finely calibrated delivery mechanism of the pancreas. Now a group of like-minded do-it-yourselfers have gotten together on the internet and—working outside the purview of organized medicine—have figured out how to link a pump, glucose monitor and smartphone to simulate a functioning pancreas. The results have been spectacularly successful.

    • 26 min
    How to Buy a Better Birth

    How to Buy a Better Birth

    The average cost of having a baby in the United States is $11,000 for people on private health insurance. But the price tag can vary by tens of thousands of dollars, depending on what hospital you go to and what doctor you see. And high-price medical care isn’t necessarily better: In the U.S., regardless of how much they or their insurance company pays, women experience unexpected problems related to pregnancy and childbirth at alarming rates.
    The problem, of course, isn’t limited to maternity costs. Across the health-care system, wide differences in price and quality for the same procedures have led many economists and policymakers to conclude that the marketplace for medical care is broken. This week on Prognosis, we look at one health plan’s attempt to make it work better. It’s pushing hospitals to improve maternity care while keeping costs in check. These efforts bring to light a lot about what’s wrong with American health care, and one ambitious attempt to fix it.

    • 26 min
    Fixing Health Care for the People It Often Fails

    Fixing Health Care for the People It Often Fails

    In America, poverty is linked to shorter lifespans. The wealthiest 1% of Americans live more than a decade longer than the poorest 1%, and the longevity gap has expanded in recent years. The medical community is increasingly examining the role that poverty and difficult social circumstances play in illness. Some people are asking whether the health care system could do more to address the things that influence people’s health beyond their medical care.
    This week on Prognosis, we look at one startup that’s trying to redesign care for some of the most vulnerable patients, taking into account the complex realities of their lives. The company is trying to improve care for people and communities the medical system often fails – and it believes that fixing those failures will not only make people healthier, it will also save money.

    • 23 min
    The Doctor, the Patient, and Everything in Between

    The Doctor, the Patient, and Everything in Between

    Independent doctors are a vanishing breed. Hospitals have spent decades scooping up physician groups to build large, powerful health-care systems. The rationale was to increase efficiency and save money but often the opposite occurred. In fact, lots of evidence shows that consolidation in health care has driven prices higher. And both physicians and patients increasingly feel that big health systems and insurance companies have too much sway over what happens in the exam room. A few years ago, a group of doctors in Charlotte, North Carolina, decided they’d had enough. They split from the big hospital system that owned their practice to strike out on their own. They’re betting that they can be more competitive, and serve their patients better, independent of their former owners. In this episode of Prognosis, we tell the story of how one doctors’ group bucked the trend toward more concentrated health-care markets, and what it might mean for the future of the U.S. health-care system.

    • 25 min
    How U.S. Health Care Broke The Bank

    How U.S. Health Care Broke The Bank

    In 2020, Americans will spend almost $4 trillion on health care. Yet for all that spending, Americans overall tend to be less healthy and die younger than citizens of other wealthy nations. The cost of health care has become so burdensome that people all across the United States are forced to make difficult choices every day: forgo urgently needed medicines or treatment for serious injuries out of fear the cost, even with insurance, could bankrupt them. How did the U.S. health-care system get this way? And what are some people trying to do to change it? This season’s Prognosis explores these questions. 

    • 24 min
    Introducing Prognosis Season 4: America's Broken Health-Care Costs

    Introducing Prognosis Season 4: America's Broken Health-Care Costs

    Americans are paying more and getting less for their health care than ever before. On the new season of Prognosis, reporter John Tozzi explores what went wrong. 

    • 2 min

Customer Reviews

keeptryan87 ,

Personable Stories, abrupt ads

I enjoy listening to the stories in the podcast but find that the midstory ads are intrusive and lack transitions, breaking my concentration.

OhioFolklore ,

Illuminating and empowering

This podcast offers powerful insights into the US health system. It boils down incredibly complex processes into digestible portions. That’s the first step toward thinking about how we might try to fix it. Well done.

Jen's_Atari2600 ,

K. V. Brown’s voice

What little content I heard, was intriguing & well-produced. But halfway through my very first episode today, I found myself laughingly trying to imitate Kristen V. Brown’s scratchy “valley-girl” drawl. I used to talk like this in junior high. :) I’m sorry to discover it is permissible to narrate like this. Thank you for your efforts, & for unintentionally bringing up funny memories of my preteen days. I am apparently too shallow to appreciate the rest of your work.

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