When Adrian Gore founded his South African health insurance company, Discovery Vitality, in 1992, he didn’t buy into the idea that people’s preexisting conditions would be their forever story. Though there was little data at the time on the impact of lifestyle choices on health, he had a hunch that incentivizing people to take better care of themselves could pay off, both for his customers and his company.
As we’ve all come to learn, Gore was (mostly) right, and his company has continued along that trajectory ever since, with a focus on prevention and wellness instead of curative care. (Discovery has also expanded into banking, life insurance, prepaid health plans, and much more.)
One of the company’s core programs from the get-go was Vitality Points, which were awarded to customers based on their healthy-living choices, such as exercising. Over time, Gore and his team learned that incentives weren’t a driver for everybody. Plenty of customers were overly optimistic and just preferred making unhealthy short-term choices instead of thwarting what was decades down the road.
Gore joins Fortune cohosts Ellen McGirt and Alan Murray on Leadership Next, a podcast about the changing rules of business leadership, to talk about the health choices people make, why the American health care system doesn’t focus on prevention first, and inequities in access to healthful food and care. Listen to the full episode below.
More health care and Big Pharma coverage from Fortune:
- Biden’s vaccine mandate may be tied up in court—but employers shouldn’t wait to enforce it, say legal experts
- State Farm publicly supports NFL’s Aaron Rodgers after his vaccine comments—while quietly removing most of his ads
- How Big Bird became the unlikely target of GOP senators
- Denmark ditched its COVID rules 2 months ago. Now cases are up—and restrictions are coming back
- Air purifiers and CO2 monitors are the new pencil and paper in classrooms
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