INSPIRED IMPACT™ features purpose-driven leaders and social entrepreneurs who are making a meaningful impact in their communities, industries, and around the world.
Dave Chase is the Creator, CEO of Health Rosetta headquartered in Seattle. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn and learn more at healthrosetta.org.
TELL US, WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT DO YOU DO?
At Health Rosetta we power the health plans of your dreams: high quality, trustworthy, local, affordable care — that you thought had disappeared forever — from caregivers we know and trust. We free up compassionate, well-trained, community-based caregivers to rediscover love in medicine so they can do what they have always been called to do: serve their patients not just in disease, but toward their fullest health. A trusted and sacred caregiver-patient bond is built through transparency and openness that equips and empowers patients wherever they can best achieve their unique health goals — at home or any setting best optimizing their health and well-being. By avoiding the 50% wasted healthcare spending, we can ensure our caregivers have the independence and resources to address the psychosocial and medical issues their patients face. Human-centered health plans restore health, hope, and well-being in our communities.
At a practical level, I co-founded Health Rosetta which has two complementary entities — a non-profit and a public benefit corporation that share a mission. We created an open-source blueprint and ecosystem that shares and implements health plans that cost 20-40% less with superior health outcomes. For example, one employer spends less than half of a typical employer on health benefits despite having one of the best health plans in the country. That freed up money is directed towards subsidized food, fully paying for college education for employees and their children as well as investing in a nearby community. The community investment in kids (through funding daycare, pre-K, after school programs and college educations) has resulted in crime dropping by over 60% and high school grad rates more than doubling.
HOW DID YOU GET HERE?
I was a successful health technology executive who had a moment of awakening when a friend died due to a complete system failure of our healthcare system. A system that I’d been a part of. This Road to Damascus moment led me to dive deep into the dysfunction, perverse incentives and more in healthcare destroying the American Dream. Happily, I also found that every problem in our healthcare system has a proven solution that is slowly spreading. Our goal is to greatly accelerate that progress.
WHAT DO YOU STAND FOR? WHY DOES THE WORLD NEED YOU?
Our goal is to restore the American Dream by rebuilding hope, health, and well-being in our communities. This is important to us as the data is exceptionally clear that profiteering, price-gouging, and administrative bloat has driven 20 years of wage stagnation and decline. One definition of an economic depression is two or more years of wage stagnation/decline, which means that the working and middle class in America have been in an economic depression twice as long as the Great Depression. Fortunately, the statement on our website, “Healthcare is already fixed. Join us to replicate the fixes.” is both true and aspirational. We have created a grassroots movement over the last few years already reaching more than four million Americans and we’re just getting started.
WHAT IMPACT ARE YOU MAKING?
Our social impact metric is the “Health Rosetta Dividend.” That is, reinvest money previously squandered in healthcare industry profiteering and administrative bloat into what drives 80-90% of health outcome — better food, education, better pay, social services, etc. We’re just getting started but our community has already redirected several billion dollars from profiteering to well-being. As the example above outlined, the results are breathtaking when health professionals are freed up to do what they do best.
WHAT (OR WHO) INSPIRES YOU TO DO THIS WORK?
By the time I was 35, I had lost 10 close friends who were my age or younger. It’s a gut punch to be reminded how short our time here is, but one loss hit me harder than any other: a friend died of cancer, and the system failed her in every way. She was a talented tech executive and worked her way to the top levels of Silicon Valley. She should have had access to great health care but got a harmful treatment plan which led her to be financially, physically, and emotionally ruined leaving her 10-year-old daughter behind. It was devastating to witness. Her death struck me particularly deeply because I realized I was part of the system. I was raised to know that if you see a wrong and don’t do anything about it, you are complicit. I had started my career consulting with faith-based and children’s hospitals as a revenue cycle consultant—a fancy term for generating as big a bill as possible, getting it out as fast as possible, and getting it paid as quickly as possible. At one time, this was simply to ensure that a hospital didn’t forget to bill for something, but it became the root of a scheme that is arbitrary, abusive and has absolutely devastated the working and middle class in America. Like my friend before her death, hundreds of thousands of victims of our corrupt health care system file for bankruptcy every year—even though 70% of them have insurance. I saw the fear in my friend’s eyes thinking about her daughter ’s future, knowing that even after working hard and being extremely successful, she wasn’t going to be able to leave her with much, if anything.
WHAT’S YOUR VISION, YOUR BIG DREAM, FOR THE ORGANIZATION AND THE IMPACT YOU WANT TO MAKE?
Well-regarded organizations have made clear that we squander at least $1 trillion every year in the U.S. healthcare system to profiteering and administrative bloat. As communities – whether it’s an employer community, union community or town – end the squandering great things happen. There is more than enough money to fund great education, clean air and water, infrastructure, etc. that actually drive 80+% of health outcomes while enabling physical and economic well-being.
WHAT CHALLENGES ARE YOU FACING?
The tyranny of low expectations that healthcare can’t be fixed and that we have to accept Cadillac prices for a Pinto healthcare system. Every day, that message is getting reinforced to protect the wildly under-performing status quo. Our challenge is simply educating people about the proven solutions that disprove the myths of the status quo protectors.
HOW CAN OTHERS SUPPORT YOU OR YOUR CAUSE?
Everyone has a role to play whether they are a business decision-maker, employee, union member, PTA leader, doctor, nurse, public official and many more. The cavalry isn’t coming from DC to fix healthcare. It’s on us. Go to healthrosetta.org and download my books (for free), sign-up for our newsletter, email us with ideas on how you’d like to help. Sharing the book is a great way to educate your community whether that community is an employer, union or town. Once the mindset shift happens, everything changes.
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