The only reason you’re reading this essay by me is because of a man named Stan Brock, – whose work inspired me to leave my old job as an insurance executive. Few people in my life have been as consequential as Stan. And he’s been even more...
Part of the planning process before entering into a military engagement is called “shaping the battlefield.” It’s a strategic maneuver that aims to create a warfighting environment in which your strengths are optimized and your weaknesses are mitigated. With the election of Joe Biden as President, it...
10 years ago today, on the first anniversary of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), I wrote about the good things the law did, but stressed that we needed to view it as only the starting point of a journey toward needed reform. Unfortunately, we have not made...
The Chamber of Commerce brand is synonymous with small town pride and locally-owned businesses, but a new report reveals that these business organizations are really working for the corporate health insurance industry. The report from the Campaign for New York Health and the New...
We know that our healthcare system is broken. We need transformative solutions to fix and repair this system, but right now, we need Congress to take immediate action while millions of Americans are left with zero coverage in the middle of a global health crisis. In...
As of January 1 of this year, under the UN Charter, nuclear weapons have been declared illegal — both their possession and their use, putting them in the same status as chemical and biological weapons, but because none of the 86 signatory nations have nukes, and because...
I applaud the Biden team and the Equity Research & Innovation Center (ERIC) at Yale for focusing on equity in the vaccine rollout and working to address what this pandemic has been a harsh reminder of: Too many Americans of color face vast inequality in our health...
By Brent Korson As we saw on January 6th, even though the 2020 election has ended, the U.S. remains strapped in for its four-years-long-and-counting rollercoaster ride. One of the defining features of this unending breaking news blitzkrieg has been the inherent inability to pause and substantively reflect on...
At approximately 1 pm Eastern Time today, the 6th of January 2021, protesters in Washington D.C. who had gathered at the behest of President Donald Trump to bemoan the results of our recent Presidential election, breeched the security barriers outside of the US Capitol and made their way...
This is part two of a two-part series exploring racism as a public health crisis in Appalachia and its compounding due to COVID-19. Read part one here. As COVID-19 bore down on his community, Thomas Beavers recognized that primary among...
Shortly after midnight on Sept. 29, Felisha Walter assumed an identity very much at odds with the fullness of her life: statistic. Walter was a devoted mother, a chef and caterer; gracious, giving and forgiving; spiritual and kind. And when she passed away, just...
By Brent Korson For four years, there’s been no serious question about how Donald Trump would react if he lost the 2020 election. Over the 1400 days since his presidency began, every anti-democracy act, anti-factual tweet and anti-reality statement has accumulated into an ironclad case for how his...
By Brent Korson If ever there were a time for journalists, news outlets and the media at large to not parse words, this is it. Election Day has finally arrived and the gravity and urgency of the situation seems to have fully landed across the media landscape, as...
On many occasions, I have been accused to trying to turn every important leadership and management decision that is thrust in my direction into a “math problem”. I do believe that data, and the numbers behind the data, on the assumption that it is accurate and relative...
By Brent Korson When we read about “spreading misinformation”, the connotation typically defaults to bad actors. But most of us who’ve ever had a social media account has likely, unknowingly, shared misinformation. While disinformation is the ill-intent kind, (false information deliberately and often covertly in order to influence...
Judge Amy Coney Barrett says she'd base rulings about health insurance on how "the founders" might have intended. This might make sense if health insurance companies actually existed then. As a former insurance executive, here's why her approach is laughable when it comes to health care.
By Kimberly J. Soenen French photojournalist Jean-Marc Giboux covered the modern-day polio (poliomyelitis) eradication campaign for nearly a decade, and still has vivid memories of the ruthless way the disease attacks children’s spines. “I recall the mangled bodies of young children walking on all fours,...
By Brent Korson The last few weeks have, unsurprisingly, only grown more jarring and chaotic in the run-up to Election Day. While there was no way to know how the specifics would play out, (President contracts deadly virus, President covers up what he knew and when he knew...
On the 24th of September 2020, President Donald Trump passed an Executive Order (EO) entitled, “An America-First Health Care Plan.” This EO is nearly 4,200 words long, however less than 500 words discuss the objectives of lower drug costs and access to care, without a clear path...
Here’s an interesting irony: Everyone around Trump who gets COVID-19 may be in big trouble if they get their wish and gut the Affordable Care Act. Why? In the future, COVID will likely be classified by private insurers as a pre-existing condition. I'd know...