Utah's loss of Dr. Vivian Lee is Alphabet's - and the healthcare world's - gain

By Robert Pembroke

My daughter recently sent me an email that directed me to a website. When I opened the site, it belonged to CNBC, which had published a column by Christina Farr titled “Alphabet’s Verily Has Hired Top Execs to Bring its Science Research into Hospitals and Homes.” In the article, I finally found out what Vivian Lee is doing after resigning from the leadership of University of Utah Health.

Vivian Lee, you’ll recall, was the CEO of the UofU’s healthcare system, which includes multiple hospitals, clinics and a medical school, for six years. During her tenure, University of Utah Health earned multiple awards for quality of care and she was also able to keep costs from rising as fast as the rest of the nation.

My daughter and I were both honored to know Dr. Lee. My daughter was hired by Dr. Lee to solicit money for special projects. Her office was located within spitting distance of Dr. Lee’s office. I also had the opportunity to spend time with Dr. Lee while working on a project to lower the cost of healthcare for small businesses.

According to the article, Lee has accepted a position with Alphabet, the multinational conglomerate that owns Google, as president of the its health platform called Verily Life Sciences. There she will lead Verily’s effort to improve the world’s healthcare. As you may have heard, Alphabet is joining forces was Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase to hire their own doctors and build their own hospitals and clinics to provide healthcare to their employees. As near as I can tell, Dr. Lee will not be involved in this venture but will instead lead a global effort to sell Verily’s products and services.

Reducing the staggering cost of the American healthcare system is a must for our country. The high healthcare cost reduces the competitiveness of American businesses. The high healthcare cost inflicts financial woes on the pocketbook and the high healthcare cost causes unneeded deaths in the U.S.

Let’s say you are struggling to meet your family’s need for food and shelter and one of your children has what looks like a virus. You are going to have to make a choice between food on the table and taking your child to the doctor. You choose food on the table and your child then dies from pneumonia. People should not have to make this choice and by reducing the cost of healthcare, they might not have to.

The cost of our healthcare system falls upon the taxpayer. We are all taxpayers, but many of us are also stockholders in American businesses. Approximately 50 percent of healthcare recipients are covered by employer-sponsored healthcare plans. In our family business, the stockholders paid 80 percent of the employee’s premium and 50 percent of the employee’s family premium. It was a very worthwhile investment.

In order to change our nation’s healthcare system for the better, Americans of all stripes must man the barricades. They must march on our nation’s capital. They must communicate with the political elites and they must put pressure on all healthcare providers.

There is no better place to begin this crusade than in the offices of small businesses. The power of the pen is a mighty weapon in the hands of a well-meaning small-business owner. Sign the paycheck of an employee and include a flyer in the paycheck envelope that says it is up to him or her to reduce healthcare costs. Also provide the contact information for the employee’s congressional representatives.

I own a wee bit of stock in Alphabet and with the announcement that they hired Dr. Lee, I am sleeping much better at night. I can keep track of sleeping on my very fancy mobile device and according to the app, I have added three minutes of sleep each night since Dr. Lee joined Alphabet.

Robert Pembroke is the former chairman and CEO of Pembroke’s Inc. in Salt Lake City.