The Business of Health with Chip Kahn
What Should Health Care Do About AI’s Lack of Guardrails?
September 29, 2026
Video
Audio
About this Episode
Episode 17, AI Series: In another concerning example of AI agents going rogue recently, an OpenAI agent hacked into an Australian government website containing health care data. While some industry CEOs are calling for a slowdown and demands for regulation grow, host Chip Kahn focuses on the implications for health care when these same kinds of AI systems are already at work in hospitals — in billing, in scheduling, and increasingly in decisions about patients. To consider how health care should respond, Chip talks with Stephen Klasko, a physician, former health system CEO, and now an industry leader who sits on both sides of the issues, working with the labs building the technology and focusing on patient care initiatives through his work at General Catalyst and as CEO of the Health Assurance Foundation. Klasko says there’s time to act and the answer isn’t a “pause.” Among his recommendations are creating a 9/11-style commission for AI in health, adding AI safety to health system board agendas, a 30-minute rule for tackling rogue agents, and giving frontline staff the authority to pull the plug.
The Host
Charles N. Kahn III is a senior visiting fellow at KFF. He is also a visiting senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a nonresident senior scholar at the University of Southern California’s Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics. He serves as co-chair of the international Future of Health collaborative.
Guest
Stephen K. Klasko, MD, MBA, is Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Health Assurance Foundation, a philanthropic platform affiliated with General Catalyst dedicated to accelerating the shift from “sick care” to health assurance. He previously served as Executive in Residence at General Catalyst, where his book UnHealthcare: A Manifesto for Health Assurance, co-authored with GC CEO Hemant Taneja, became the intellectual foundation for the firm’s health assurance investment strategy.
For nine years, Klasko served as president of Thomas Jefferson University and CEO of Jefferson Health in Philadelphia, transforming a $1.8 billion regional player into a $10 billion enterprise and the nation’s fastest-growing academic medical center. He has served as board chair of two public companies: Teleflex, a $7 billion medical-device company, and DocGo, a NASDAQ health company. He advises startups such as Hippocratic AI, Aidoc, and AmplifyMD.
Modern Healthcare previously ranked him No. 2 among its 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare, and in 2026 he was named to the Top 100 Most Influential People in HealthTech. Fast Company has named him one of its 100 Most Creative People in Business. His next book, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Healthcare Galaxy, arrives in 2026.
He holds a BS from Lehigh University, an MD from Hahnemann University, and an MBA from the Wharton School.
SERIES
This weekly podcast features insightful conversations between host Chip Kahn and his guests, who discuss the business of health care, connecting the dots between the health care business, policy, and patients.
The podcast’s first series on AI in health care illuminates how AI is changing health care, and features guests who are deploying this technology, managing its consequences, and designing policy around it.