Relocalizing Health with Dave Chase · 2026-07-27 · 16 min
When people hear the phrase relocalizing health, a lot of them assume it is a slogan, a policy proposal, or someone's political talking point. This episode explains what it actually means. Dave Chase defines it plainly: treating your community's healthcare dollars as a community resource instead of an extractive expense that leaves town the moment it is spent. Most communities, healthcare is the biggest industry. Most companies, it is the second biggest cost item. And most of the money flows straight out to distant corporations and shareholders. Dr. Michael Fine calls it medicine as colonialism. Dave calls it extraction dressed up as care. In Ashtabula County, Ohio, roughly $450 million leaves the county every year. That is not a healthcare problem. That is an economic development catastrophe. Relocalizing means keeping that money home. But this episode goes deeper than a definition. Dave explains why every major reform effort has failed, regardless of ideology, and why they will keep failing until two structural flaws are addressed.
Neighborhoods as Patients84 / 100Case Study: How a Screen Manufacturing in Alabama Cracked Healthcare Before Anyone Was Watching60 / 100How Employer Cooperatives Are Fixing America's Healthcare Cost CrisisWhat Advisors, Employers, and Community Leaders Will Actually Find in This BookThe Employers Who Cracked the Code, And Why Their Stories Are in the Book