You there… I see you!

You seem like you might have an inkling that corrupt sick-care systems built on incentives aligned against your interests are trying to raid your bank account, break your body, and crush your soul.

I can smell that whiff of despair mixed with resignation and a dash of resentment a mile away!

Exhale, you’ve come to the right place.

Who is this lady talking to you?

It’s taken a few decades to escape the matrix.

I started life as a Harvard-trained epidemiologist, planning on wearing space suits and quarantining towns.

Or something.

The warlords and UN camps in southern Sudan convinced me that maybe - just maybe - international health diplomacy was not my core strength. (Mom and Dad - or literally anyone who had met me - probably could have saved me the trouble there).

I ended up in inner-city DC instead, helping gay men and injection drug users avoid HIV/AIDS.

Stay in DC long enough, and the feds will come for you.

Innocently minding my own business at my sweet little church on Capitol Hill, some Republican staffer told me that a Senate committee was looking for public health experts. Apparently they were struggling because little Republican children don’t grow up to be public health experts. This was 20 years before COVID when the whole world figured that out.

Cue the dramatic career change soundtrack.

From the moment I started, I was a little embarrassed.

I mean, government is not really a force for good, right? Shouldn’t I get out there in the productive side of the economy instead?

I worked for the entire big tent of the Senate Republican caucus - from Tom Coburn to Susan Collins and three others in between, on and off for 15 years.

I tried to escape a few times.

One of those times, I literally ran off to join the nunnery. Here’s proof!

But, like the Godfather:

From the Senate to the Oval (by way of the nunnery)

So eventually, 2015 rolls around and You-Know-Who comes down the escalator and starts winning primaries.

My friend leaves our Senate office to go run policy on the Trump campaign and the next time I see him, he’s chain-smoking, disheveled and sleep-deprived and, like any good friend would, I said, “geez, can I help you? Do you need someone to do health care? Abortion?”

Not like actually provide health care - that would have been more useful probably - but to do the health policy portfolio, or pro-life portfolio for the campaign.

Like a drowning man, my friend grabbed me and pulled me right under with him. Five minutes later, I was in the Oval plotting repeal-and-replace (of Obamacare).

Not our finest moment, but more on that in another post.

And here I was on the way to the New Hampshire rollout of President Trump’s combating opioid abuse initiative.

Ironically, I was on that day, in fact, actually on opioids, just to remain upright, but that’s also a story for another post.

What we accomplished (and what it cost me)

We did a lot of things I was proud of during my time in the White House.

• We saved the Little Sisters of the Poor from DOJ persecution.

• We forced your doctor to give you all your medical records, on demand, in the format of your choosing (did you know they have to do that? They do!).

• We ended secret health care prices (much more on that in another post) by forcing hospitals and insurers to lift their skirts on their shadowy contracted rates.

• We reversed the drug overdose mortality rate for the first time ever.

I witnessed Rudy Guiliani singing New York, New York with Kellyanne Conway for the White House Columbus Day celebration (along with red hats printed with “Make Sundays Italian Again”).

I laughed, I cried, I fought (a lot), I won, I lost. For a policy wonk, it was the Superbowl capstone to a Washington career.

But also…

My body fell apart. My teenaged kids fell apart. My sister fought a losing battle with cancer. I became an unrecognizable crazy person. So there’s that.

Escaping the matrix (kind of)

When I finally left government in 2019, after being lobbied by industry for 20 years (a lot more to say on that later), I couldn’t bear the thought of doing what most health staffers do when they leave government - shilling for Pfizer or United Healthcare.

So I called up an amazing organization called Health Rosetta, which helps benefits advisors quit the big brokerages and make employer health plans great again.

They mentored me as I started a business to help mostly faith-based employers fire insurance carriers, PBMs and conflicted brokers and save money by giving more and better health care to their workers.

Along the way, I woke up to the sick-care problem and became a naturopathic doctor and homebirth coach.

And a grandmother.

I kicked my lifelong infertility diet - you know, the ovary-withering, inflammation-feeding, crazy-eyes-making vending machine regimen.

And most important, I transitioned from being a stress-addicted, victim-mentality, fast-talking complainer and hardened warrior to… someone else.

The someone is a work in progress, but it looks a lot like an encourager, inspirer, solution-builder, and celebrator of incremental wins.

Why I’m here (and what I promise you)

Which brings us back to YOU and what we’re up to here.

Some promises from me to you:

The truth - based on 20 years of seeing health care, sick care, public health, public sickness - in body, soul and wallet, individually and collectively - up close and personal, at the absolute highest levels of policy-making and in the lowest moments at the death-bedside.

What you can realistically do about that truth in your own life, in your family, in your home, your workplace, your community, your state and nation.

I will make you laugh. (Science shows it heals chronic illness, by the way!)

I might make you cry sometimes. I mean, we’re all on the struggle bus together.

Hope. Encouragement. Human connection. And meaningful and realistic steps to take toward the life, health and flourishing you crave.

So yeah. That’s me.

Former space-suit dreamer turned Senate staffer, White House health policy advisor, naturopathic doctor turned benefits renegade and grandmother- BIG breath… who’s seen some stuff and lived to tell about it.

I’ve spent two decades inside the machine - the really high-level parts where policy gets made and the really ground-level parts where bodies and bank accounts fall apart.

I’ve watched the system from every angle, and I can’t unsee what I’ve seen.

Now I’m here to help you see it too. And more importantly, to help you do something about it.

If you’re ready to hack the systems that control your health, let’s do this.

And then head over to Start Here to see exactly what we’re building together and how to get the most out of this community.