Health Insurance CEO Mark B. Ganz on the Future of Care

My name is Mark Ganz. I’m here as a son, a brother, and a father, and for the last time, as a CEO.

Throughout my career, I have acted from a place of deep and abiding hope that the healthcare system can and will change.

So, what can we do?

Let me pose some questions that I think you might consider asking yourself.

Can we have a system that consistently and systemically focuses not only on disease, but also on the family, and on healing rather than simply curing?

Can we have a system where healthcare providers can be their true selves in service to others?

Can we have a system where mental and physical health are respected and honored as equals in the pursuit of healing a person?

Can we have a system that is truly more socially just? One that brings the actual cost of care, medications, and interventions out of the stratosphere, and naturally drives costs that are understandable, accountable, and affordable to individuals, so that no person, regardless of race or economic status, is left behind or treated inequitably?

To me, the answer to all of those questions is a resounding yes.

I hope it is for you too.

We’re all here because we’re interested in ensuring that lives end well, and that people can live lives they feel are well lived until the very last day.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is our most recent example of a person who lived fiercely every day of her life and lived fully until she took her last breath.

I’m ending my career at Cambia, and I hope I’m ending it well.

But I am not, by any means, ending my hope, desire, or focus on transforming healthcare to make it truly family-focused, economically, socially, and medically.

We all deserve a system that we’re not simply tolerating.

Let’s resolve, as we accelerate out of this curve called 2020, to take some of the difficult things we’ve seen and talked about and turn them into something light.

We have the opportunity to invent systems that allow us to truly see patients and their loved ones, and to see healing in a new way.

Each of us has a role to play in driving that.

If you’re a provider who is not trained in palliative care, please get some training and bring it into your work every single day, with every single patient.

Get to know your patients as people. Get to know their families.

You are a healer first and foremost.

So be one.

If you’re a patient, please insist that your healthcare professional fully sees you.

Redefine the phrase, “The doctor will see you now.”

Make sure they actually see you in your fullness.

If you are injured or diagnosed with a disease, whether chronic or acute, insist that your medical treatment include your body, your mind, and your spirit from the moment you receive a serious diagnosis.

This is the care that will center on what is most important to you.

If you’re a family caregiver, do what you need to do to ensure that you and your loved one receive healing, always, even when a cure is not achievable.

If you’re an executive or a funder, look for and invest in solutions that focus on healing individuals and their families, rather than only achieving a cure.

And do so with a focus not only on return on investment, but also on that all-important return on humanity.

And if you’re a leader, check your own hope meter.

The people you lead need to be infused with hope.

You are the one who can give them that hope and sustain it during sometimes very difficult moments.

All of us here care.

But we need to do more than care. We need to stop preaching only to our own choirs.

We need to act.

And act now.

This is one of the reasons I so respect and admire the founder of this feast, Shoshana.

She’s a doer.

She works every day to normalize the end of life and create grace around it.

We need to become effective doers, right here and right now, with an attitude and urgency of: not one more day. Not one more person or family reduced to being merely a vessel of disease.

Let’s be focused. Let’s keep it real.

And let’s work together to get this done, once and for all, with fierceness of heart, hope, and courage.