Episodes

Originally broadcast October 2, 2025

The federal government is shut down and the ripple effects are being felt. Legislation tied to the budget impasse also means Medicare telehealth flexibilities and the Acute Hospital Care at Home program expired early Wednesday morning.

“Most providers and hospital systems are taking calculated risks to continue care during this time, but long-term continuity depends on action by our telehealth champions in Washington to restore these flexibilities and ensure retroactive reimbursement,” says Kyle Zebley, senior vice president, public policy at the American Telemedicine Association.

Right before the shutdown he talked to hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter about the situation. “The stakes are enormous. We’re talking about millions of Americans…having access to the telehealth services. It’s a tremendous setback for our community.”

Originally broadcast Tuesday, September 23, 2025

Happy anniversary to “Conversations on Health Care”! We posted our first program 16 years ago on Sept. 23, 2009. Now, we’re bringing back our first two guests to reflect on where we’ve been and where we’re going in health care.

Nancy Pelosi was serving as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and trying to get the Affordable Care Act passed when she joined us on that inaugural show. Today, she continues to serve as Speaker Emerita and remains a stalwart supporter of community health centers. “They’re there…they’ve been there and we always want them to be there…this is so important. I’ve been working with our community health centers,” she says.

Our other returning guest is Dr. Mitchell Katz, now serving as CEO and President of New York City Health + Hospitals. He was in a similar role in San Francisco when he was on that initial program. Hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter ask him to reflect on what’s changed the most. “The big successes [from ACA] are getting people involved in primary care and chronic disease management…those primary care relationships are incredibly healing.”

Click to hear our conversation with these guests, including Dr. Katz’s insights on how AI can help recover what’s been lost in healthcare.

Dr. Wayne Jonas, who formerly led the National Institutes of Health Office of Alternative Medicine, now directs the Healing Works Foundation, which has a mission to “make whole person, integrative care regular and routine.”

“The data is very clear: most health does not come from going to your doctor and getting a diagnosis or treatment,” Jonas tells hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter. “The body is continually healing.”

Jonas shares the story of a man he calls “Joe,” a grandfather living with chronic back pain despite years of surgeries, injections and medications. The turning point came when Jonas asked Joe what mattered most.

“He said his back pain kept him from driving to see his grandkids and getting down on the floor to play with them,” Jonas explains.

Together with a physical therapist, Jonas reframed the goal: Joe wasn’t there for pain treatment; he was there to interact with his grandchildren. A regimen of stretching, hot tub treatments, and better sleep and stress management helped him do just that within weeks.

“He was engaged in his own self-care…his own self-healing capacity had been tapped,” Jonas says. “He saw the results and said, ‘What else have you got, Doc?’”

Jonas’s vision for whole-person care began during his Army service in Germany, where he saw physicians using acupuncture, herbal treatments and other integrative approaches.

Click to hear the full conversation.

Next week former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez will testify in a Senate hearing. The reporters who cover health care in Washington think there could be big revelations about why Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. fired her.

Sandhya Raman, health care reporter for Congressional Quarterly and Roll Call, and Michael McAuliff, who covers policy for Modern Healthcare, join our Reporters’ Roundtable. McAuliff says no matter what is discovered during the testimony, Kennedy’s future still rests with President Trump.

In addition, McAuliff notes the federal health care workforce challenges right now. “If you look across…all the agencies in the HHS, you would find similar sorts of things where normal processes that help folks in the country just can’t happen because they just don’t have the people,” he observes. 

Hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter also talk to the guests about the COVID vaccine controversy, the new Make America Healthy Again children’s health report and the looming threat of a government shutdown.

Supporters say Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is fulfilling his vision to be “pro-safety,” not anti-vaccine. His recent actions have included restricting COVID eligibility, dissolving expert panels, installing skeptical voices and defunding mRNA development. 

Michael Osterholm, Ph.D., director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, is pushing back and says, “I’ve never in my 50 years in public health experienced anything like this in terms of the threat to good public health.” 

Osterholm and Mark Olshaker are the co-authors of a new book, “The Big One: How We Must Prepare for Future Deadly Pandemics.”

The effort to suspend development and availability of certain vaccines is “not based on science. It’s not even based on a political philosophy. These are dangerous decisions that have been made and we will pay a big price for them as we are now in preparedness freefall,” Osterholm says.

“Conversations on Health Care” hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter ask him point-blank to respond to National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya’s contention that they’re winding down mRNA vaccine development because the technology had “failed a crucial test: earning public trust.”

Osterholm responds that “distrust has been sown by the very people who are supposed to be promoting vaccines.” Olshaker says, “We’ve taken for granted how much vaccines have changed our lives.”

Osterholm adds, “There’s still a substantial trust in public health. When you have a megaphone the size of one that the Secretary now has, it does start to basically drown out science … but I think we have to continue to remember that the science is on our side.”

Originally broadcast Wednesday, August 27

Dr. Victor Montori, a Mayo Clinic endocrinologist, internationally recognized researcher, and author of “Why We Revolt,” joins hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter to talk about what it really means to fix a health care system that he believes has lost its way.

Montori leads The Patient Revolution, a global movement aiming to make health care more elegant with “no waste or haste, focused on the biology and biography of each person, responsive to each patient’s problems, and minimally disruptive, of patients’ lives and loves.”

For example, the initiative offers tools and materials they’ve developed over the last 18 years to support patients and clinicians. The Plan Your Conversation cards help patients think through what they’d like to share and “practice” a conversation they’d like to have with the clinician. The cards can be used for any condition or issue and in any care setting.

“Revolution is not about branding. It’s about turning away from the processing of people, and toward care,” Montori explains. He yearns for a return to “careful and kind care for all,” and for health systems to re-center themselves on the relationships that make healing possible.

Click to hear the full conversation.