Turn on the Lights Podcast

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Latest Episodes:

Why The US Pays More For The Same Medications Than Everyone Else with Dr. Jerry Avorn Feb 06, 2026

Show notes

America’s drug crisis isn’t a science problem; it’s a pricing and policy problem that blocks patients from medicines that already exist.

In this episode, Dr. Jerry Avorn, a professor of medicine and leading expert in pharmacoepidemiology and medication policy, discusses why many patients still can’t afford essential treatments even as breakthrough drugs for cancer and inflammatory disease proliferate. He shares a personal case where “nonadherence” was really unaffordability, then unpacks how US exceptionalism in drug pricing, patent “thickets,” and delayed competition keep costs unsustainably high. Dr. Avorn also contrasts access failures with overuse concerns, explores why other countries negotiate on the basis of value, and addresses objections to innovation and rationing, including a sobering example of cystic fibrosis in the UK. Finally, he explains how academic detailing spreads evidence-based prescribing and evaluates recent US attempts to let Medicare negotiate prices alongside more deal-driven approaches.

Tune in and learn how drug prices, patents, and public funding shape what patients can actually access!

Resources:

Connect with and follow Dr. Jerry Avorn on LinkedIn.
Follow Harvard Medical School on LinkedIn and explore their website!
Learn more about Brigham and Women’s Hospital on LinkedIn and visit their website.
Visit Dr. Avorn’s personal website.
Buy the Rethinking Meds book here and learn more about it here.

The Power of Everyday Mindfulness: Healing, Community, and Public Health Impact with Brother Phap Luu Jan 30, 2026

Show notes

Mindfulness isn’t a “nice-to-have”; it’s a low-cost public health lever that changes how people handle pain, emotions, and community life.

In this episode, Brother Phap Luu, a monk in the Plum Village tradition founded by Thich Nhat Hanh, discusses how mindfulness can be practiced as “everyday meditation” through breathing, walking, eating, and even cultivating awareness of dreams. He shares his personal journey from activism and disillusionment to depression, and then to healing through mindful breathing and finding community at Plum Village. Brother Phap Luu explores the roots and global reach of Plum Village, why mindfulness naturally fosters compassion, and how “watering” emotions like anger through rumination can prolong suffering. He also unpacks mindfulness as an “invitation,” the challenge of scaling it, through training, ethics, trauma sensitivity, and limited profit incentives, and its potential integration into schools of public health and policy.

Tune in and learn how mindful breathing, community practice, and compassion can become practical tools for healthier lives and societies!

Resources:

Connect with and follow Brother Phap Luu on LinkedIn.
Learn more about Plum Village on their LinkedIn and explore their website.

Beyond Compliance: Vivek Garg on Patient-Centered Quality and Real-Time Improvement Jan 27, 2026

Show notes

Quality measurement matters only if it helps patients and clinicians deliver better care in real time, not just prove compliance after the fact.

In this episode, Vivek Garg, President and CEO of NCQA, reflects on how growing up with an immigrant physician father, living with his mother’s undiagnosed bipolar disorder, and training in internal medicine shaped his commitment to patient-centered improvement. He explains why he pursued “edge-case” primary care roles at innovative organizations and how those experiences led him to focus on quality, value-based care, and complex populations. Vivek also clarifies NCQA’s role in convening standards, accrediting health plans and practices, and validating performance through audits and support. He critiques today’s bloated measurement ecosystem and argues for digital, interoperable, clinically meaningful metrics that reduce burden and truly improve care delivery.

Tune in and learn how quality standards can evolve from checklists into a continuous improvement engine that patients can actually feel!

Resources:

Connect with and follow Vivek Garg on LinkedIn.
Learn more about the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) on their LinkedIn and website.

Medicaid Work Requirements and the Unraveling of Health Coverage with Ben Sommers Jan 16, 2026

Show notes

Millions of Americans could lose health coverage in the coming years, and the consequences may be more profound than most people realize.

In this episode, Dr. Ben Sommers, the Huntley Quelch Professor of Health Care Economics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham & Women’s Hospital, talks about how new federal policies, including Medicaid work requirements and the rollback of Affordable Care Act subsidies, are reshaping access to health insurance in the U.S. Drawing on extensive research, he explains why these changes are expected to increase uninsured rates without meaningfully boosting employment. Dr. Sommers also shares evidence from prior state experiments showing that administrative red tape, not a lack of willingness to work, drives coverage loss. He outlines the ripple effects on patient health, safety-net providers, and hospitals, especially in rural and underserved communities.

Tune in to understand what these policy shifts mean for patients, providers, and the future of the U.S. health care system.

Resources:

Follow the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health on LinkedIn and explore their website!
Learn more about the One, Big, Beautiful Bill here!

Who Guards Healthcare AI? Inside CHAI’s Push for Trust and Transparency with Dr. Brian Anderson Jan 09, 2026

Show notes

Trust in health care AI won’t happen by hype. It will be earned through transparent standards, independent evaluation, and real-world performance monitoring.

In this episode, Dr. Brian Anderson, President & CEO and Co-Founder of the Coalition for Health AI (CHAI), discusses why health care needs a technically specific, use-case-by-use-case definition of “good” AI and how CHAI is building voluntary consensus-driven guidelines around fairness, transparency, safety, robustness, and privacy. He shares how his frustration with bloated EHR workflows pushed him into digital health innovation, then into pandemic-era public-private coordination during Operation Warp Speed, where rapid collaboration revealed what’s possible when incentives align. Brian explores CHAI’s “AI nutrition labels” (model cards), an emerging registry, and why vendors may opt into scrutiny to speed sales cycles and prove value. He also digs into ambient clinical documentation, performance metrics that matter to clinicians, cost pressure through apples-to-apples comparisons, agentic AI to expand rural access, and the alignment and biosecurity risks that demand vigilance.

Tune in and learn how to build and verify AI that improves care without sacrificing safety, equity, or trust!

Resources

Connect with and follow Brian Anderson on LinkedIn.
Learn more about the Coalition for Health AI (CHAI) on LinkedIn.
Explore CHAI’s website.

From Chaos to Care: Dr. Gary Kaplan on Leading with Quality Jan 02, 2026

Show notes

What happens when a health system decides that quality comes first?

In this episode, Dr. Gary Kaplan, who retired as the longtime CEO of Virginia Mason and currently serves on the Board of Stewardship Trustees of CommonSpirit Health, discusses leading one of America’s most influential physician-led health systems through a radical transformation focused on quality, safety, and patient-centered care. He reflects on Virginia Mason’s roots as a Mayo Clinic–style group practice and why shared purpose and clinician leadership created a fundamentally different culture of care. Dr. Kaplan explains how adopting Lean management principles reshaped chaotic health care systems, reduced waste, and supported clinicians in delivering safer, more reliable care. He also discusses why fee-for-service medicine drives unsustainable costs, his advocacy for value-based and capitated payment models, and how market consolidation ultimately led to Virginia Mason's merger, despite its strong performance and independence.

Tune in to explore what it truly takes to redesign health care systems around patients, clinicians, and value, rather than volume.

Resources:

Connect with and follow Dr. Gary Kaplan on LinkedIn.
Follow CommonSpirit Health on LinkedIn and explore their website!

Patient Safety in the Age of AI: Risks, Rewards, and Reality live at the IHI Forum Dec 19, 2025

Show notes

The energy is electric at the IHI Forum, even before the forum officially begins.

In this episode, co-hosts Kedar Mate and Don Berwick discuss how AI, patient safety, and administrative waste are shaping the future of health care. They explore the excitement and uncertainty around AI’s growing role in diagnostics, coordination, and clinical decision-making. They discuss why clinicians need real training to use AI safely and effectively, and how learning health networks are driving continuous improvement. They also delve into the persistent administrative burdens, especially in Medicaid and fee-for-service systems, that hinder true efficiency in health care.

Tune in to hear how innovation, policy, and technology are colliding at this year’s IHI Forum!

Resources

Connect with and follow Kedar Mate on LinkedIn or reach out via email!
Connect with and follow Don Berwick on LinkedIn or reach out via email!
Check out the Turn on the Lights podcast!

The Cost of Not Listening: How Medical Silencing Harms Patients with Dr. Rageshri Dhairyawan Dec 12, 2025

Show notes

What happens when clinicians stop hearing the very people they’re trying to help?

In this episode, Dr. Rageshri Dhairyawan, a Consultant Physician in Sexual Health and HIV Medicine at Barts Health NHS Trust and Deputy Director of the SHARE Collaborative at Queen Mary University of London, discusses how patients are often disbelieved or dismissed in healthcare. She shares her own experience of being ignored during a painful hospitalization, which revealed how difficult it can be for even a senior doctor to speak up when vulnerable. Dhairyawan argues that medicine has a long-standing culture of skepticism toward patient testimony, which harms trust, exacerbates inequities, and undermines care. She urges systemic and educational reforms, more time, continuity, staff wellbeing, training in true listening, and structural support for patient voices. While acknowledging resource constraints, she emphasizes that listening is both therapeutic and essential to restoring humanity in healthcare.

Tune in to hear Dr. Rageshri Dhairyawan unpack why patients often feel unheard, and how listening might be healthcare’s most powerful, yet overlooked, tool.

Resources

Connect with and follow Dr. Rageshri Dhairyawan on LinkedIn and visit her website!
Follow Barts Health NHS Trust on LinkedIn and explore their website!
Follow Queen Mary University of London on LinkedIn and discover their website!
Check out Dr. Dhairyawan’s book, Unheard: The Medical Practice of Silencing, here!

From Bankruptcy to Rescue: Dr. Gregg Meyer on the Emergency that Transformed Massachusetts Healthcare Dec 05, 2025

Show notes

The collapse of a major hospital system set off one of the most complex healthcare emergencies Massachusetts has ever faced.

In this episode, Dr. Gregg Meyer, Incident Manager for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, discusses how the state responded to the unprecedented Steward Health Care crisis and worked to protect patients, communities, and hospital staff. He explains how years of debt, real estate deals, and private equity extraction destabilized the system and pushed it into bankruptcy. He shares what it took to manage a months-long VUCA public health emergency, including on-site monitoring, emergency closures, and the transfer of six hospitals to new nonprofit operators. He also reflects on the human and financial toll the crisis left behind, as well as why stronger oversight and policy reform are urgently needed.

Tune in to learn how Massachusetts led one of the most challenging hospital rescue operations in U.S. history!

Resources

Follow the Massachusetts Department of Public Health on LinkedIn and explore their website!

Medicaid: What’s at Risk, and Why It Matters Now More Than Ever with Cindy Mann Nov 21, 2025

Show notes

Medicaid is a massive, life-sustaining program whose new work requirements and funding cuts risk stripping coverage from millions of people who can’t afford to lose it.

In this episode, Cindy Mann, partner at Manatt Health and former director of the Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services, explains how Medicaid was created alongside Medicare in 1965 and has grown into the nation’s largest public coverage program, serving nearly 80 million people across diverse populations. She details the state–federal financing structure, explains why match rates vary, and highlights how Medicaid remains foundational to the Affordable Care Act’s coverage continuum. Cindy breaks down the proposed Medicaid cuts in HR1 and the impact of work requirements, illustrating how administrative barriers lead to people losing coverage and increasing uncompensated care costs without improving employment outcomes. She also challenges the “deserving versus undeserving poor” narrative and highlights efforts by states and providers to protect coverage gains.

Tune in and learn how Medicaid’s design, politics, and future will shape health, budgets, and justice in America!

Resources