Tim Garson – Healthcare & the Future of Medicine

Dr. Arthur "Tim" Garson has spent a lifetime inside American medicine – as a pediatric cardiologist, medical-school dean, university provost, health-policy researcher and educator. So when he talks about what's wrong with American healthcare, he's not approaching the subject from the sidelines. In this second Old People Rock conversation, Dr. Garson goes deep into the economics and incentives behind modern medicine: Medicare's fee-for-service system, the pressure toward shorter doctor visits, medical education, healthcare waste, physician compensation and the difficult question of how to make American healthcare work better. He also talks about something more personal: how, even as a physician and health-policy expert, he approached choosing a surgeon for his own shoulder replacement. The conversation is sometimes provocative, sometimes funny, and deliberately complicated – because Tim's central point is that healthcare may be difficult, but understanding the problems is not impossible. If you give someone with decades of experience enough time to explain what they've learned, you may discover that the most interesting part isn't the answer. It's the questions they know to ask.