The CEO Who Cheated Death and Built a Healthcare Empire

We’ve just listened to an incredible episode of the "Invest Like The Best" podcast titled, "The CEO Who Cheated Death, Slept an Hour a Night, and Built a Healthcare Empire," chronicling the extraordinary life, unimaginable pain, and revolutionary business approach of CEO Mark, who has made it his mission to fix broken healthcare systems.

This isn’t your average business leader’s story; it starts with a spiritual bargain.

In 2002, Mark’s son, Eric, was battling a deadly form of T-cell gamma delta lymphoma. Told his son only had six months, Mark quit his job and threw himself into fighting for Eric's life, eventually finding a high-risk bone marrow transplant procedure that could work. During this agonizing process, Mark went to the chapel, took the religious items from his neck, and made a promise: "Me for him. Let me have his disease, let me have his pain. Let him live. I've lived a great life".

Eric came home on February 18, 2003. Exactly one year later, Mark hit a tree while skiing, broke his neck, and ended up in a five-day coma. The freezing water and ice from the river he slid into actually prevented his spinal cord from rupturing, saving him from a quadriplegic injury.

The Business Terminator:

The accident was just the beginning of a relentless 18-year struggle. Mark lived in level 7 to 10 pain, sleeping only one hour a night. This constant trauma literally caused the right side of his brain (the empathetic side) to shut down.

What emerged was a "business terminator". His left brain became a supercomputer, enabling him to ruthlessly analyze data, fix broken companies like Aetna (which was losing a million dollars a day when he arrived), and conduct forensic analysis on spreadsheets, noticing instantly when a cell changed. His mind was a machine, allowing him to lead epic runs of business success even while in constant, agonizing pain.

What ultimately got him out of the pain wasn't Western medicine, but a journey into new forms of healing, including cranial sacral therapy and yoga. Through his readings of ancient texts, he learned that yoga wasn't just physical practice, but understanding how to treat others and yourself (yamas and niyamas).

The Power of Empathy in the Spreadsheet:

When he returned to work, he applied these Eastern principles. He conducted a double-blind study on the impact of yoga and mindfulness for his employees, finding that the highest stressed employees spent $2,500 more a year on healthcare. When his employees journaled, his then-partner realized the shocking root of their stress: Mark, the CEO, wasn't paying them enough.

He saw that many frontline workers were struggling, with families on food stamps or kids on Medicaid because they couldn’t afford dependent coverage. In a bold move, he asked for forgiveness, not permission, from his board and eliminated all out-of-pocket healthcare costs for employees below 300% of the federal poverty level, provided they joined wellness programs.

Though the CFO worried this would "kill" the company, the opposite happened. Mark proved that focusing on the soft benefits (like presenteeism and better attitude) could yield savings equivalent to the hard savings. The stock price doubled, and 2,000 new millionaires were created when the company was sold.

The Pirate Ship Mission:

Now, Mark is leading Oscar, a "pirate ship filled with cannons among Spanish galleons filled with gold". His goal is to fix the entrenched, post-WWII US healthcare system that has become an "inflationary monster".

Mark argues that the current system is hopeless because employers buy insurance for large groups, providing limited benefits and inversely cost-effective large networks. His solution? Eliminate employer-sponsored insurance and use the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace to allow individuals to buy their own personalized plans with narrow, price-effective networks.

Oscar is digitally forward and uses AI (like a new chatbot and two dozen large language models on the back end) to keep operating costs low. Critically, Oscar doesn't shy away from sicker people. They run programs, such as for diabetics, knowing that investing in tools and understanding allows them to improve their health.

Mark's goal is ambitious, to grow Oscar from 2 million lives covered to 125 million, shifting the entire market toward personalization and efficiency. He believes that if Americans can choose their networks and benefits, they will be willing to pay for it, fostering a system that supports their true needs.

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Easy Takeaway:

True courage in business isn't waiting for perfect information; it’s about moving forward with a strong hypothesis and being constantly curious enough to learn and adjust along the way.

Favorite Quote:

"There’s nothing more dangerous to affect than to initiate a new order of things because those who are advantaged by the current order have the laws behind them and experience to continue to support the way it is and for those who would be advantaged by the new order of things really won’t embrace it until they experience it and between the two you run great danger but you like to live and that’s where I’ve lived".

Relevant Question from the Podcast:

How do you get ordinary people to do extraordinary things?

Source: Excerpts from the transcript of the video "The CEO Who Cheated Death, Slept an Hour a Night, and Built a Healthcare Empire" uploaded on the YouTube channel "Invest Like The Best".