“If I had to say, what is the problem with our healthcare system? It is that the patient is not the customer… whoever controls the flow of money at the point of purchase, that's the customer. That's the stakeholder that everyone builds around. And patients, individuals, we pay for our healthcare. We just are not the customer in the majority of the interactions.”
Invest Like the Best (Patrick O'Shaughnessy) · Money & Markets · November 2026
Context
Asked what he has learned about the healthcare system that people don't appreciate, Ro co-founder Zach Reitano names the one flaw he sees behind most others, and the problem Ro is trying to solve.
Transcript
…The majority of the way we die is with a slow clock, right? Chronic disease. And that has massively been rising, as you mentioned, the last 20, 30, 40 years. So those two things are really the makeup of how illness happens in the US and how people die. And then that's how the money gets spent. As
you think about the whole thing, what is the most surprising thing that you've come to learn about the system that you think people may not appreciate fully?
…you go into the healthcare system, there's a fundamental mismatch of incentives. And if I had to say, what is the problem with our healthcare system? It is that the patient is not the customer. That's the problem that we're trying to solve at Roe. And I think you see it working, but that is the fundamental problem. And the reason being is, I mean, you see this in every business that you talk to, whoever controls the flow of money at the point of purchase, that's the customer. That's the stakeholder that everyone builds around. And patients, individuals, we pay for our healthcare. We just are not the customer in the majority of the interactions. So our out-of-pocket expenses, the minority of our expenses. And we pay through our taxes and we play through suppressed wages with our employer. And so you then look and say, okay, well, where is healthcare working? Where does it feel really good? And it feels really good where it's cash pay, where the patient is the customer. Do you
have a favorite example of that?
You look at LASIK eye surgery, cost comes down, quality improves, convenience increases. You look at breath augmentation, you look at cosmetic surgeries, costs come down, quality improves, convenience improves. You look at GLP1s, or I take GLP1s, and they are like this beautiful foil for the rest…
love to use Roe as just a great example since you know all the data like the back of your hand. Give us a sense of the lineup of products right now and what the pie chart looks like today. What percent are they spending on each of the majority?
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