With healthcare costs and access at the top of nearly every political poll, and medical costs continuing to climb, our medical system is showing signs of tension. Premiums, deductibles, and out-of-pocket expenses are straining the finances of most Americans.
More than one-quarter of Americans are “very” worried about affording health care costs, says a recent KFF poll. Nearly half said they couldn’t cover an unexpected medical bill of $500. Is this breakdown fixable, or do we need to invent a new solution?
That’s the conversation we’ll have at DOC 2026. Four of our DOC Faculty members will debate: Can we fix our healthcare system, or should we start over?
During The Great Debate on our first night in Sonoma, moderated by DOC co-founder Jordan Shlain, M.D., both sides will start from a central point that something needs to shift in U.S. public healthcare. Our DOC community agrees, according to our most recent poll. But how to amend health care is where arguments will spark.
We’ll hear Evity’s Executive Chairman and Chief Medical Officer, Larry Brilliant, M.D., and WHOOP’s Chief Medical Officer, Ami Bhatt, M.D. take on ARPA-H’s Chief Medical Officer and Acting Deputy Director, Rafid Fadul, M.D., and the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine’s Founding Dean, CEO and CAO, Sharmila Makhija, M.D. Along with the entire DOC community, the four will propose, dissent and rebut each other on whether we can patch what’s currently in place, or whether we need to construct a parallel system. Can we fix what’s broken from the inside or reinvent and absorb from the best of what we have today?
Our panelists will argue beyond the changes needed to our primary care system. They’ll consider the entire picture including our hospital systems, insurance structures, and models of care. As technological shifts, including AI, deliver more personalized and immediate data into our hands, we’ll also ask our debaters to consider where care may eventually belong: in the hospital, in the community, or in patients’ own hands.
However the debate pans out, we expect a spirited evening and new perspectives for our DOC community.