Ep 235: Disrupting Hate with Ken Schachter and guest Bert Brodsky on hmTv

Ep 235 — Disrupting Hate with Bert Brodsky

Serial entrepreneur and philanthropist Bert Brodsky joins host Ken Schachter for a straight-talk masterclass on building things that actually help people. From scrappy bottle-return hustles to pioneering electronic claims, EVV timekeeping, and a top PBM, Bert maps a career spent fixing gnarly problems at the intersection of health care, policy, and tech. He recalls investing in early MRI, founding Mobile Health, scaling Sandata, and why reading the fine print (yes, the manual) is a superpower. On the philanthropic front, Bert opens up about starting the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America, hands-on support for FIDF IMPACT! scholars, and steering a continuum-of-care senior campus—plus a candid look at antisemitism and how to keep humanity in the conversation. It’s pragmatic optimism with receipts—and a blueprint for young builders who want to ship real impact, not just slide decks.

You’ll learn:

• How “read the manual” becomes a business edge
• Why telemedicine + AI will drive the next care revolution
• The origin story of EVV and its taxpayer impact
• What families really need in the Alzheimer’s journey
• A no-nonsense approach to disrupting hate—person to person

Call to action: Subscribe, share, and pass this episode to a problem-solver who’s ready to build.

Transcript

Ep 235. I kept the substance intact, tightened the language, and smoothed the flow.

Ken Schachter: Hello and thank you for joining me. I’m your host, Ken Schachter, and this is Disrupting Hate on hmTv. Today I’m joined by a special guest, Bert Brodsky—serial entrepreneur, philanthropist, and a builder who’s left fingerprints across healthcare, technology, and community life. From Bronx High School of Science to CCNY, from founding BEB Capital to chairing the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America, to launching Sandata, a health-tech company—Bert’s list is long and the impact is real. Bert, welcome.

Bert Brodsky: Thank you, Ken. Happy to be here.

Ken: Let’s start at the beginning. What set you on your entrepreneurial path—and what core values guided you?

Bert: My first “business” was at age twelve, collecting bottles on the beach. I’d wash them out and turn them in for two cents. At thirteen I “scaled”—I hired a twelve-year-old and paid him a penny while I kept a penny. I didn’t know the word entrepreneur, but I knew I liked building things.

My first real company began in 1970. A cousin in New Jersey was doing medical billing for doctors. He showed me the ropes, and I launched the business out in Port Washington. My wife, Muriel, had the key insight: “It’s a telephone and mail business—why schlep into the city?” She was right. I opened over a bagel shop and got to work.

I pushed beyond basic billing. Most revenue in healthcare comes from third-party payers—Medicare, Medicaid, private insurers—and if you actually read the manuals and the reimbursement rules, there are legitimate ways to improve physicians’ revenue. So I did that. And then I asked: could a computer keep the account information so we didn’t have to retype the entire bill every time a payment came in? This is ’71, ’72—early days. I found a grad student running a basement computer at New York Tech and we made it happen.

We were also the first to transmit hospital-based physician claims electronically for reimbursement. Back then everything was paper. We convinced Blue Cross Blue Shield—then the Medicare intermediary—to accept a data disk and return a disk. No more endless re-keying. That changed the speed and accuracy of the whole workflow.

The company—Medical Arts Office Services—grew fast. I sold it in 1977 to Itel Corporation, which was entering healthcare. That sale gave me the capital to take bigger swings.

Ken: Such as?

Bert: In ’78 I met a scientist at Downstate Medical Center with a machine that could look inside the skull without surgery. Back then it was called nuclear magnetic resonance. The “nuclear” part scared people, so it became magnetic resonance imaging—MRI. I invested. The company went public; I later sold my stock and moved on.

By ’81 I was deep in home-care processing—forty thousand cases at a time. The big problem: you didn’t know when aides arrived or left. In the late ’90s we patented Electronic Visit Verification—EVV. The aide called our data center from the patient’s phone; caller ID and timestamp gave us where and when. That phone call became the timecard. In year one of EVV in New York City, taxpayers saved about $80 million—because we paid only for actual visits. That product is now mandated for Medicaid home- and community-based services. We built that at Sandata, which I later sold to private equity.

Another company, Mobile Health, started with a van. Agencies needed to screen workers quickly—height, weight, blood pressure, TB, STDs, background checks. Instead of making people wait for appointments, we brought the clinic to them. Today Mobile Health has offices statewide and is one of the largest screeners around. I still own it.

And then there was National Medical Health Card, a prescription benefit manager—what everyone now calls a PBM. You go to the pharmacy, present your card, pay your copay; that back-end claim has to fly through systems in milliseconds. We built one of the largest privately held PBMs, took it public, then sold it.

Ken: You’ve basically lived at the intersection of policy, payment, and technology—decades before it was cool. Where do you see healthcare’s next efficiency gains?

Bert: Telemedicine will keep expanding. The population is aging, and we need scale—care anywhere, not just in exam rooms. With video and audio you can do a lot already. Layer in AI and you extend clinical eyesight. AI can surface patterns in MRIs or X-rays the human eye might miss. I’ve sat with physicians who believe that living to 100 won’t be exceptional in the future. Whether or not we get that far, AI will help us diagnose earlier and treat smarter. We’re standing on the edge of another industrial revolution in healthcare.

Ken: Let’s talk philanthropy. What causes pull you in?

Bert: Three big ones. First, Friends of the IDF—specifically the IMPACT! scholarship program that supports soldiers for four years. I like that it’s personal. I’m on my eighth soldier; we talk, we stay in touch. One wrote me, “As I write this, I cry because I know someone in America worries about us.” It wasn’t about a holiday gift—it was about being seen. Recently one of my soldiers asked if I could fund a barbecue for his unit in Gaza. We did. Then he asked, sheepishly, if we could do one for the spouses. We did that too. Support is economic, yes, but it’s also human.

Second, the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America, which I founded about 25 years ago. My mother had Alzheimer’s starting around 1970. Back then people didn’t talk about it; I made every mistake you can make. I wanted families to have real tools—education, respite, design ideas that make living safer and calmer. We built a demonstration apartment: a digital clock for easier reading, the bathtub floor painted blue for depth perception, drawers labeled with pictures so dressing is less confusing. We just opened a building in Amityville for family education and therapies—art, music, pet therapy.

As for research, progress is slower than we want. Some drugs show promise but have serious side effects. I go to Washington several times a year to push for funding—senators across the aisle have been supportive—but we’re not there yet. I’m hopeful that a breakthrough will come, maybe from an unexpected angle, the way a diabetes drug became a weight-loss drug. But today, families need help now. Our network touches about two million people nationwide.

Third, senior care. I serve as board chair for a continuum-of-care campus that includes a large nursing home, assisted living, and independent apartments. Years ago I argued we needed assisted living alongside the nursing home so we weren’t 100% dependent on government reimbursement. Diversifying the model strengthened care and finances. We later expanded the nursing home significantly. It’s been a long, worthwhile effort.

Ken: You also speak candidly about antisemitism and the public conversation around Israel. How do you process what you’re seeing?

Bert: It hurts. There are only about 17 million Jews in a world of billions, and yet the contributions—to science, medicine, art—are outsized. And still the hate persists. I don’t claim to have the grand answer. I try to do tangible things: support soldiers and their families, support dialogue, support truth. We can disagree on policy, but we can’t dehumanize people. That’s the line.

Ken: That’s very much the heart of Disrupting Hate: practical ways to keep our shared humanity front and center—even when it’s hard, especially when it’s hard.

Before we close—any advice for young builders listening today who want to solve real problems?

Bert: Read the manual—literally and metaphorically. Most people don’t. The opportunities hide in the fine print. Listen to smart partners—like my wife who told me to stay out of Manhattan traffic and build from Port Washington. Solve a real pain point, then keep iterating. And don’t forget the human beings behind every “user” or “claim.” If your work makes life measurably better, the business will follow.

Ken: Perfectly said. Bert, thank you for your time, your candor, and your decades of doing the work.

Bert: Thank you, Ken.

Ken: And thanks to all of you for listening to Disrupting Hate on hmTv. If you found value in this conversation, subscribe, share it with someone who needs a spark of practical optimism, and stay connected for more. Until next time—take care, and be well.