The Dose The Commonwealth Fund

This year in the United States, an estimated 2 million people will receive a new cancer diagnosis, and a growing proportion will be younger adults and people of color. Many of these cases could be prevented — nearly 60 percent of colorectal cancers, for example, could be avoided with early detection.

Physician and UCLA researcher Dr. Folasade May is trying to understand why cancer screening rates are lagging, and what we can do to get people these potentially lifesaving tests. 
In the newest episode of The Dose podcast, host Joel Bervell talks to Dr. May about what might be behind the rise in colorectal cancer among younger people, the barriers to widespread cancer screening — especially for underserved communities — and her work empowering people to save their lives. This episode kicks off a new series of conversations with leaders at the forefront of health equity.

Overtreatment is a big problem in American health care. The proliferation of unnecessary medical tests and procedures not only harms patients but costs the United States billions of dollars every year. Between 2019 and 2021, Medicare spent as much as $2.4 billion on unnecessary coronary stents alone. At some hospitals, it’s estimated that more than half of all stents are unwarranted.
For this week’s episode of The Dose podcast — the latest in our series on the affordability of health care — host Joel Bervell talks to Vikas Saini, M.D., a cardiologist and the executive director of the Lown Institute, a think tank that examines overspending and overtreatment in the health care system. Dr. Saini unpacks how health care practices are misaligned with patient needs and discusses strategies for “rightsizing” U.S. health care.

Health care is a $4.3 trillion business in the United States, accounting for 18 percent of the nation’s economy. It should come as no surprise then that the industry has become attractive to private investors, who promise cost savings, expanded use of technology, and streamlined operations.
But according to Yale University’s Howard Forman, M.D., “most private equity money does seem to be making matters worse rather than better.” One issue is that investors chase the healthiest and most profitable patients, undermining another kind of equity — health equity — in an already deeply unequal health care system.
In the latest episode of The Dose podcast, host Joel Bervell charts a wide-ranging discussion with Dr. Forman, a professor of radiology and biomedical imaging, public health, management, and economics, about private equity’s growing role in American health care. This is the second episode of our new series of conversations about health care affordability.

Nearly one in five Americans has medical debt. Black households are disproportionately affected, carrying higher amounts of debt at higher rates.
Berneta Haynes, senior attorney with the National Consumer Law Center, describes Black Americans’ medical debt burden as a continual cycle fed by higher rates of chronic illness and lower rates of wealth. As a result, many are left without savings or family resources to tap into when faced with an unexpected medical bill. 
Join host Joel Bervell on the newest episode of The Dose podcast, where he talks to Haynes about the history of medical debt and efforts to ease pressure on the families and communities hit hardest, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s initiative to change what kinds of medical debt can show up on a person’s credit report.
This episode kicks off a new series of conversations about affordability, including everything from the role of private equity in health care to why Americans pay more for care than any other high-income country. 

Forty-four percent of U.S. women now live with some form of heart disease, a number that’s been climbing steadily over the past decade. And although it’s the leading cause of death among women, just 14 percent of cardiologists are women.
This week on The Dose podcast, host Joel Bervell interviews cardiologist Martha Gulati, M.D., associate director of the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center at Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles and president of the American Society for Preventive Cardiology. She talks about women’s historical exclusion from clinical trials for heart disease, why sex and gender matter in the search for better treatments, and the persistent gaps in women’s cardiology care and research — especially related to women of color.

“In cardiology, we are still thinking about men more than we are about women,” Dr. Gulati says.

Even though the U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rate of any developed country, federal programs that have been proven to improve maternal health outcomes are often the target of budget cuts.
This week on The Dose podcast, guest host Rachel Bervell speaks with Dr. Jamila Taylor, president and CEO of the National WIC Association, the nonprofit voice of the federal program that provides nutritious foods to more than 6.3 million women, infants, and children. They discuss the potential policy and funding solutions that can advance health for women, especially women of color.
Their conversation ranges from the debt ceiling legislation’s impact on WIC to the pending “Momnibus” package of measures for improving health equity and quality of care for Black mothers.
“Those essential programs are always the first to be on the chopping block,” Taylor says. “That's something that we really need to change in our approach to funding.”