Massachusetts Association of Health Plans (MAHP) leader Lora Pellegrini got interested in policy and politics at a young age. She had the opportunity to work with luminaries like Ted Kennedy and John Kerry early in her career, as she rose to prominence in healthcare policy.

Our discussion focuses on critical issues such as pharmaceutical pricing and hospital efficiency in Massachusetts. We explore the regulatory challenges in drug pricing and the necessity for hospital systems to innovate and enhance performance. Lora provides expert analysis on the impact of major players like Steward Healthcare and Optum in the Massachusetts healthcare sector.

She also shares the historical perspective on healthcare reform in Massachusetts, and issues a call for employers to re-engage in support of affordability as they did back in the days of RomneyCare.

Host David E. Williams is president of healthcare strategy consulting firm Health Business Group. Produced by Dafna Williams.

Ironically, patient care coordination itself is often uncoordinated. It's spread across multiple providers and administrators, causing frustration for care teams and patients.

Lumeon founder and CEO Robbie Hughes has developed an approach that makes the care journey more reliable rather than settling for the current craziness, where patients are expected to be satisfied as long as they get some time with a doctor.

One of the really interesting elements of this interview was the discussion of whether we should be willing to trade off some efficacy for reliability. For example, if we had a treatment path that was 80 percent as good but could be followed by 100 percent of the patients, would that be better than striving for the perfect solution that only 1 percent can attain?

From a population health perspective, the 80/100 calculus is probably correct, but most of us want to be in that 1 percent. I've certainly had that experience myself of navigating the system with help from well-placed insiders plus my own knowledge of how things work.

Robbie is an avid reader who recommends The Experience Machine, Chip Wars, and Ultra-Processed People.

Host David E. Williams is president of healthcare strategy consulting firm Health Business Group. Produced by Dafna Williams.

Matthias Hoffman first became conscious of his vision as a teenager. He and his friends in Switzerland dreamed of becoming pilots (none actually did) but Matthias's hopes were dashed early on due to inadequate vision.

While pursuing electrical engineering degrees, he realized his strength was in building things. So he left academia and worked in a variety of vision and optical startups, eventually leading significant teams.

Many people who could benefit skip their eye exams, and for more than a decade entrepreneurs have been trying smartphone based eye exams and online eyeglass sales, often with virtual try-ons. But those have been failures. The exam interface is too complex and burdensome, and people want to try on their glasses at retail.

Eyebot is an automated eye exam designed to produce a prescription at the point of sale, i.e., retail stores. It takes 90 seconds and doesn't require the person being examined to do anything special. Eyebot has developed its own technology and eventually plans to expand beyond the basic exam to more advanced screening for things like glaucoma.

But Matthias stresses that Eyebot has no intention of taking away the jobs of eye care professionals.

Host David E. Williams is president of healthcare strategy consulting firm Health Business Group. Produced by Dafna Williams.