Dr. Mehmet Oz

At its very practical level, we do not have enough practitioners.

There just aren't enough people to take care of rural America.

60 million Americans living in rural America don't have access to mental health services.

Our vets commit suicide at a crazily high rate, more than we lose in war, because they don't have access to mental health services.

Many of them do live in rural America.

And so if we're going to fix those kinds of problems, which are time consuming, you're not going to get Park Avenue psychiatrists

To go practice medicine.

At $800 an hour.

At $800 an hour in the north slope of Alaska in the winter.

It's just not going to happen.

And so this $50 billion investment that we as a country just made, the money was part of the Working Families Tax Cut legislation that the president pushed through.

And Congress got behind it.

$50 billion, the largest investment ever made in rural healthcare through our agency was given up by the end of the calendar year.

All the governors have the money and we charge them to make a difference in their communities.

You know your communities, they almost all came back with some AI element.

They all know to really be able to get healthcare in rural America, you've got to right-size the system.

Right-sizing the system means hospitals are going to work out differently, doctors will work differently with each other, but AI is the core element of

The microclinics, I think, have a huge opportunity to provide top-tier care.

But this goes beyond that.

We have AI-supported robots that are going to be doing ultrasounds in parts of Alabama where there are no OBs.