The health care industry needs an activism movement. It needs outspoken, courageous individuals who will act with their words and their wallets to bring about behavioral change. Given how unhealthy our population is – 70% of us are overweight, for one – it’s going to take some tough love to get us to where we need to be. This podcast explores ways we can act individually, as well as a call to celebrities and influencers, so we can course-correct our behaviors, setting us on a positive path to good health.
Key Citations

* Performance of health insurance companies in the bull market: CNBC
* Millennials: the most obese generation in history: Healthline

Transcript
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Welcome to The Powers Report Podcast. I am your host, Janis Powers. The show brings you candid, unique and data-driven perspectives on the health care industry. I believe that any solution that is going to positively impact the American health care system has to satisfy two major criteria: financial viability and behavioral incentive alignment. In other words, access to high quality care can only be achieved if we can afford it, and if we behave in ways that optimize our health. Please subscribe to our show on iTunes or on your preferred podcasting platform and connect with us on social media. Again, this is Janis Powers, and welcome to The Powers Report Podcast.
In this show, I am going to talk about some different ways that we can change the conversation about living a healthy life in America. Our health care system is so bungled that it’s going to take a variety of solutions that attack different problems to get us where we need to be. We need smart policy solutions that keep patients safe, improve price transparency, eliminate devastating financial exposure to patients and cut out the negative incentives that drive up unnecessary cost utilization. We need technology solutions that encourage us to be healthier, make the system more efficient and bring us new products and ideas to improve the industry.
But we also need an attitude adjustment. A big one. One of health care’s major and under- discussed problem is that we have cultural challenges that must be overcome in order to fix the system. These cultural problems manifest in our behaviors, many of which are negative and contribute to the industry’s high cost/poor outcomes situation.
We are an unhealthy lot. We’re overweight. We take too many pills. We don’t exercise enough. We don’t sleep enough. Our diets aren’t what they should be. We’re stressed because of work, financial problems and many of us think the sky is falling.
There are solutions out there right now that try to address our behavioral problems. We need to continue to pursue them because, as I said, there will not be one solution that does it all. So it’s great that we have employer-based wellness programs. Yes to public health programs that promote education about health in the community. Yes to grocery stores that offer more fresh, healthy food options. Major props to the individuals who encourage their friends and family and co-workers to make smart choices.
Yet we need more. What we need is a health activism movement. This movement needs multiple dimensions where people use their mouths and their money, their words and their wallets to candidly and aggressively correct our behavioral problems.
When we use our money to influence behavior and culture, it’s a form of socially-responsible investing. This is a movement that’s taking hold in investment companies across the globe. Socially-responsible investors direct their money to cau...