Senator Bill Frist
Appearances
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
Yeah. Well, I think, and remember, I did the 20 years in medicine, the 12 years in politics and policy, but for the last 12 years, I used the private sector. And the example, the food that I gave, the example that I gave to you really comes out of the importance of the private sector and investments that are made, that are cutting edge, that ultimately define policy.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
I also work from the policy end. So even though I'm no longer majority leader of the Senate, you mentioned it, I'm on the board of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, where we talk about the health of the community, the non-medical determinants of health,
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
being much more important than the health care, that the food and our behavior and where we live and how we live is much more important than Bill Frist, the heart transplant surgeon, you know, saving lives, doing dramatic things. That's where the drama isn't very important. Don't want to diminish it. But the sort of 60% of the impact is in the dimensions that we were talking about.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
And that means we have to go to policy. People say, why did you leave medicine and go to the United States Senate? What drove you to do it? Did you lose your mind? And I guess I did lose my mind. But one of the reasons is to be able to participate in the system that we're talking about. And that is ultimately public policy matters. Today, a lot of people dismiss government, dismiss institutions.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
But at the end of the day, the public policy matters. And you've written about it. You know, we've talked about nutrition and agricultural policy. The Bipartisan Policy Center always, which is a center in Washington, D.C., bipartisan. Tom Daschle and I run the health component. We stay on the issues of supplemental nutrition on agricultural policy. We're on that because it does affect health care.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
and the health, the burdens of disease, and the sort of quality of lives we're going to live. So it really starts from the private sector all the way up to the public sector, and you don't have to be a politician to participate in the public sector.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
It is. It is. And again, you've written so much about it, but you know, the food stamp program of the 1960s, a program that you've written about is, was mainly, you know, can people afford the food and let's just get them food. Let's just get them calories and some protein, but let's get them calories.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
And then in the seventies, when, when sort of, I was coming through in the medical school, in medical school, we first began to say, well, that's not going to be enough, but we really need to start looking to sort of better nutrition, but it took another, 15 years to a healthier food and not just any food.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
But it took another 15 years, really, and the SNAP actually became SNAP, Supplemental Nutrition Program, after I left the Senate. But the fact that nutrition was put in the title, that was good. But then it took another five or six years before people say, what does nutrition really mean? And I think the SNAP, the Bipartisan Policy Center report that you mentioned, basically said three things.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
Instead of taking the big policy issue and just arguing for it, it said, let's take three things. Number one, that food is medicine and healthy food has to be an objective of SNAP. That wasn't the objective back in the 60s. So do that, number one. Number two, sugary beverages.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
We know, science, you've known for a long time, but for the last eight years, we know there's probably the number one killer out there today in terms of when you look at metabolic disorder. That's just so prominent, and I'm exaggerating a little bit and oversimplifying. But we made that number two.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
And then number three, in that just one report, and that one report goes to the 450 sort of policymakers out there, the United States Congress. We made the healthy reading in terms of fruits and vegetables and to lower making them both affordable, but also in the SNAP program itself. So we focused on all that. We took it.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
Now, that's not because of that report, but obviously the Obama administration came in, made huge progress. We have, based on the science, And that's been evaluated. The health, the metabolic conditions are probably 40% healthier, some reports say, than we did with the old SNAP program. And now you have President Trump coming in trying to roll that back.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
And that rollback, now the only thing that's going to stop that, again, as you said, all the lobbying is out there against it, is going to be the science. If we're 40% healthier... We're 40% more productive at work. There's 40% less absenteeism. The GDP, the economy is growing. The jobs are being created.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
And it's that sort of reasoning that ultimately we need to push through, continue to push through. Again, you've written this whole story, but things like the Bipartisan Policy Center and other foundations need to echo that directly into the policy centers.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
Well, that's hard to read because it's a fragmented system. We have our executive branch, which can sort of be out there voice and can do a lot through regulations. Then we we have our legislative branch where all the money is and people forget that. And the house of representatives is where all the sort of money starts and therefore ultimately has to be translated.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
But then even after the law is passed, it goes back to the execution. And those are different people. The only thing I can say is it comes back in this reason. I'm talking to you now and you're talking to me and we've got, you know, hundreds of thousands of listeners. It comes back to the American people.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
And how educated, how knowledgeable they are that they can translate that up through their mayors, through their school boards, through their city boards, through the state. And ultimately it gets through the system itself. And that's why democracy is a tough, tough system of government to implement. and execute because it takes so long to get through it.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
But again, the HIV age is a great example for our listeners to listen to because it was killing 3 million people a year, not 60,000 a year, 3 million people a year globally. Huge stigma around it, impossible to do. And by coming together, Democrats and Republicans
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
in a global and appreciation of the global environment, just like nutrition is a metabolic disorder, it's a global issue, coming together over a period of two years, we were totally able to reverse what up until that time, the previous 20 years since the early 1980s, had been set over in the corner and stigmatized And now there are 20 million people alive because of that legislation.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
So policy can work. So we've got to stick with it.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
Yeah, it is. And I'll tell you what, just from a bit from the political standpoint, and again, it's nice to put politics aside, but politics are important in our democracy and where we are today. But the language that we use is, is critical and the study of language and the storytelling, if we want to move and establish movements.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
And for the HIV AIDS end of things, one of the things that we did was focus on young people and people like Jesse Helms, sort of an arch conservative who had written an article in the New York Times about how evil and immoral HIV AIDS is, and therefore we should not support any sort of helping people strike.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
That changed over about two or three months as we focused on things like a drug called niverapine, which you know, and that for just... 50 cents, you can give that to somebody and that would reverse 10 million orphans out there to growing over time.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
And when Jesse Helms heard that, you know, there's a really sort of cost-effective way to protect babies and future babies and orphans and people, all of a sudden he said, he became our biggest advocate and he pulled in a huge constituency and the evangelicals came on board and the right people from the left.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
Family planning, another huge global issue that I've been involved with, is an issue that Republicans will turn to abortion issues and Democrats will turn to abortion issues and try to politicize it in all ways. But if you instead of you say family planning, you say that healthy timing and spacing of babies.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
But you just say that all of a sudden people come to the room and I think we can do a better job. Instead of, you know, saying eat healthy or eat your vegetables at all, really do frame it. And I'll just close with saying what does speak and the Affordable Care Act. became so unpopular because it focused just on access, which is important, but it didn't focus on cost. It didn't focus on money.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
To the individual person, their prices were going up and they weren't getting any more benefits. So I think the more we can translate things into cost to effectiveness to well-being, and we know that a healthier, we know For my heart transplant, my heart transplants, they would do well long-term if nutritionally and metabolically they were strong. So yeah, I did a heart transplant.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
I wanted to live 50 years and it came back to nutrition and a healthier lifestyle coming in. So I think if we do translate nutrition policy, not just good, bad, eat healthier, but translate it into a healthier person is a more productive person and greater wellbeing and it means more productivity at work. does mean a growing of economy, means fewer absentee days.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
The economy growing, individual well-being increased, which translates into national effects in their economy. And the Affordable Care Act, this time around, I think if we get the right language, And we do end up couching it into growth, personal growth, economic growth, productivity that the case can be made, will be made, will be listened to.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
Yeah. And I think the things that people listen to us, they say, well, again, you're talking about Washington, D.C. and policy and all that stuff. And it's so far away. But it really isn't. When I left the Senate, the first thing I did is come back to Nashville, Tennessee, where I grew up, Vanderbilt and family and all. And Nashville, ironically, it's sort of a Silicon Valley of health services.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
All the hospital chains, disease management chains, psychiatric hospital chains are based there. on a per capita basis, much bigger than New York or Boston or Washington in terms of the reach.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
But ironically, in the Davidson County, where all these home offices are, the population health measures, and it could be metabolic disorders, diabetes, obesity, how long somebody lives, infant mortality, are higher there than other sort of brother-sister cities around the country of comparable size. And so we started a local initiative called Nashville Health.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
not appointed by the mayor or the governor those are good but they tend to go away when they go away but a collaborative of 120 non-profits the academic institution partnering with government addressing these local issues and because it's not health care it's health and as you said 80 of that are things like food and housing and access to the internet that's where our focus is and we're making measurable change in the local community and i throw that out there because
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
Whoever's listening to us, look around. Do you have a collaborative like that addressing these issues at that ground level? And that's where this great movement can be. of educating mayors and educating governors and educating congresspeople, starting in one's own community.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
Yeah, it's a great question. First of all, I'd go back and- I would vote for you, actually.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
Thank you, but you're not going to have the chance to. Come on.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
You know, it is interesting that people say, how are you spending your time? And first of all, as you know, I do a podcast, and that podcast is really interesting. It's called A Second Opinion. But I'm talking to people just like you are, and it's really interesting.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
My particular podcast looks at this intersection of health and healing, the life that you and I live as physicians, intersected with policy, the sort of things we talk about today. And the third big bubble is innovation, the creativity innovation. So we bring people on, and not to be advertising it too much, but the interesting thing is that
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
When we gravitate back to that intersection of policy, number one, number two, health and healing, number three, innovation, just at that intersection there, it comes back to exactly what we're talking about. These non-medical determinants overall that will lower cost, improve outcomes, have greater well-being productivity for the nation coming back.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
And then you end up starting with shelter and you start with housing and you start with access to access and consumption of healthy foods and nutrition. And then you gravitate back out to do that.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Encore: Why Our Current Healthcare System Keeps Us Sick And How To Fix It
That's right.