Panoply Media

Washington has been gripped of late by the world’s most depressing, least imaginative, debate over health care. The question, as it stands, is whether Obamacare will survive (while being mildly, but persistently, sabotaged by the Trump administration), or whether it will be rolled back and replaced with a system that covers 24 million fewer people in order to fund tax cuts for the richest Americans. Huzzah! But a better conversation awaits. Bill Gurley is a partner at Benchmark Capital, and an early investor in Uber, Grubhub, Opentable, and more. In 2016, TechCrunch named him venture capitalist of the year. And for the last few years, he’s been studying the American health care system, trying to find an opening where technology can make a difference, and build a business. Now he thinks he’s found it. This is a conversation about what kinds of health care systems are, and aren’t, possible in this country. As you’ll hear in this discussion, I’m much more skeptical than Gurley is about both the need and the desirability for reforms that push costs onto consumers, but I agree with him that Obamacare has moved the system farther and faster in that direction than people realize. We talk about that, as well as why it’s been so hard for technology to cut costs in health care, the Singaporean health care system and the lessons American can learn from it, the way regulation protects incumbents, the government’s strangely structured investments in electronic medical records, and whether Silicon Valley’s move-fast-and-break-things culture can work for something as personal as medical care. We also discuss Gurley’s view that democracy and capitalism will, if given enough time, eat each other, and why he’s looking to China for the next great health innovations. This conversation won’t fix the American health care system, but it was, for me, a refreshing reminder that better, more productive discussions are possible. Books: “Catastrophic Care: Why Everything We Think We Know about Health Care Is Wrong," by David Goldhill "Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure," by Jerry Kaplan “Myth or Magic - The Singapore Healthcare System," by Jeremy Lim "Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike," by Phil Knight

Elizabeth Warren is the founder of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the senior senator from Massachusetts, and the author of the new book, “This Fight Is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America's Middle Class.” You might have heard of her. Warren is also one of the Democrats most capable of defining the Democratic Party’s soul and message in a post-Trump era. In her book, she says she had at least one big disagreement with President Obama — a disagreement that speaks to the direction she wants to lead the party. Obama told Americans, “the system isn’t as rigged as you think.” "No, President Obama,” Warren replies, "the system is as rigged as we think. In fact, it’s worse than most Americans realize.” In this interview, we go deep into Warren’s view on how, where, and why the system is rigged — as well as what can be done about it. We also talk about whether fighting Trump requires matching his tone and tactics, how complex policies and processes create space for special interests to take over, and why Trump’s abandonment of economic populism hasn’t affected his support among his voters. Warren is an able, thoughtful advocate for one of the Democratic Party’s possible futures: becoming a party that represents the economic populism Trump claimed to champion, but quickly abandoned. But as she’s the first to admit, that won’t be easy. Books: “Evicted," by Matthew Desmond "Two Dollars a Day," by Kathryn Edin “The Little Engine that Could," by Watty Piper

Weeds in the Wild: Meet Joan, the Robotic Pelvis by Panoply Media

It was the biggest workplace immigration raid the U.S. had seen to date. 389 workers, almost all of them Hispanic, were detained at a kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa on May 12, 2008. On this episode of Weeds in the Wild, we look at the effects that this raid had across the state of Iowa, and then take a step back to understand how our immigration policies made this kind of raid possible.

In another episode of their new podcast, Sarah and Vox's Liz Scheltens explore why Obamacare enrollees in Kentucky voted for Trump.

Tease for Culture Gabfest's Slate Plus where Stephen reveals his brush with Rose Byrne.