102 - RFK Jr. Takes the Helm: What’s Next for U.S. Healthcare?

Show Notes

2:18 - Inflation Stays Firm, but Not Enough to Derail December Fed Cut WSJ

7:28 - Summa Health and General Catalyst’s HATCo sign Definitive Agreement to advance vision for future of healthcare delivery Summa Health

10:55 - Fort Health Secures $5.5M to Expand Access to Integrated Pediatric Mental Health Care MedCity News

12:02 - Stepful raises $31.5M to address healthcare staffing shortage with AI-powered training

13:56 - Primary care player Forward shutters after raising $400M, rolling out CarePods

16:55 - Inside Forward's failed attempt to revolutionize the doctor's office

17:34 - Private Equity Gears Up for Deals to Take Off

20:11 - As Trump Readies a Reset of Antitrust Policy, Look to These Sectors for Deals

25:56 - Trump to select Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead HHS

29:01 - Australia plans social media ban for under-16s

30:54 - Congress eyes 'site-neutral' pay bills for lame-duck session

33:53 - Republicans Choose John Thune as New Senate Leader for Second Trump Era

35:30 - Republicans Clinch House Majority but Face Narrow Margin

38:39 - Why UnitedHealth, Amedisys are standing behind their deal

39:20 - Major payers saw mixed results in Q3. Here's a look at how each fared

41:33 - Oracle, Meharry Medical College collaborate on innovation hub, wellness center in Nashville

42:37 - Kaiser Permanente looks to slash costs as 'industry headwinds' bring $608M operating loss in Q3

43:46 - Amazon One Medical rolls out telehealth treatment services in competition with Ro, Hims & Hers

45:38 - Cardinal Health inks two deals worth $3.9B to expand diabetes, gastroenterology businesses

47:18 - Novo Nordisk’s Blockbuster Wegovy Drug Sales Beat Expectations

49:20 - China Has Detained a Senior AstraZeneca Executive

51:35 - OpenNotes partners with Abridge to study how AI-generated notes can benefit patients

53:30 - MGB, Emory to test AI models from Amazon, OpenAI

55:21 - Behavioral health provider Rogers to deploy AI chatbot from Limbic to speed up patient intake

57:02 - Presbyterian Healthcare Services taps RhythmX AI to roll out gen AI copilots for primary care

58:08 - OpenAI, Google and Anthropic Are Struggling to Build More Advanced AI

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What is Health:Further?

Every week, healthcare VCs and Jumpstart Health Investors co-founders Vic Gatto and Marcus Whitney review and unpack the happenings in US Healthcare, finance, technology and policy. With a firm belief that our healthcare system is doomed without entrepreneurship, they work through the mud to find the jewels, highlight headwinds and tailwinds, and bring on the smartest guests to fill in the gaps.

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Thank you.

All right, Vic.

How's it going?

It's going well.

I don't know.

I feel like we're through the election.

We're seeing all the aftermath now.

But, uh, I don't know.

I feel pretty good about that.

Yeah, definitely have that.

Back half of Q4 feeling starting to settle in, you know, yeah I'm gonna

push through and get some stuff done before December really makes it hard But yeah, it's starting to it's trying to get in the holiday season almost.

Yeah, I feel like I'm I'm pretty much just starting to prepare for January at this point.

Like, I mean, I'm getting things done and we're gonna kick some things off.

You know, we're talking about getting our newsletter off the ground in December or some little things like that.

But for the most part, like,

I'm trying to get two deals done before then.

Uh, but I already know what they are and have the terms, and I think I'm just going to get it across the finish line.

So hopefully, well,

good luck with that.

We have a lot to talk about.

Um, oh, maybe before we start, uh, did you enjoy the, the GNVCA panel?

I thought it was great.

I think it's good for Nashville that we're convening, um, all the venture capitalists or, or the venture capital community.

Yeah.

Sharing.

Uh, policy things.

It was well done.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I, I think it's good.

I, it feels like a sign of maturity that our venture capital community is now not just, you know, meeting at the Bellamy Country Club.

No offense, but like, you know, it's kind of out in the open and it's diverse and it's multiple industries and it's new people new to town.

And, you know, I saw Chris from Edison Partners there and, you know, it's

just, It's just kind of like, yeah, not everything.

And I didn't know everyone there, which is, which is healthy.

And I met some new people, which is great.

Yeah,

exactly.

So it's nice to see the development of everything.

Uh, but yes, we are in week two, uh, post Trump victory and the, um, the appointments are coming in fast and furious and all sorts of things are moving around.

So.

Let's go ahead and start the process.

Let's dig in.

All right.

Uh, inflation came in at 2.

6%, not really that surprising, uh, in terms of a slight bump and also not likely to derail the plans for another, uh, cut in December.

Small cut.

Yeah, I think that's right.

This was.

pretty widely expected.

It's a slight uptick, maybe 30, 40 basis points from last month, but I think everyone was expecting something similar.

The real question is, is it going to keep going up?

I mean, there's a pretty decent turn up, which is not a big deal at 2.

6, but if it keeps going to 2.

8 or 3, I don't know if the five cuts that are predicted for next year are still on the table or not.

The next one in December seems like everyone's saying is still in place.

But there's some point when inflation ticks up too high that the Fed will want to stop cutting.

Yeah, and kind of the sideshow here.

I mean, there's so much stuff flying around, uh, that we'll see whether or not there's enough focus on, uh, to, to, to change anything.

But there has been a storyline around, uh, Powell being asked, uh, in a public interview that if, if Trump asked him to step down, would he step down?

And he very quickly responded.

No.

Yeah.

And then he said, and then he also said not permitted by law.

Like he was very clear.

Yeah.

Not permitted by

law.

I agree with that.

I'm not a.

Big pal fan.

I think he's been okay, but I'm a big fan of the fed chair should not be subject to any presidents being, you know, whim of deciding to replace him.

I think that's just not healthy in general.

So I'd like to see him hold that line.

And then in two years, his term will be up.

And that's the point that Trump could do whatever.

Just quick question.

I don't want to sit on this too long, but you said you're not a big pal fan and you think he's been okay.

How would you rate his handling of, of, uh, the, the post pandemic, you know, run up of inflation?

I mean, it seems to me, everyone was saying we were going to get into a recession.

We haven't, everyone kept calling we're, we're in one room, but we'd never actually got to an, like a full blown recession.

Yeah.

Um, seems like we're about to be risk on here, you know, uh, under the, the, the change of administration interest rates are coming down.

We, we, we suffered for, you know, two years, I agree, like it's about to turn around to risk on.

So, I mean, I, I guess I'm just wondering where, what could he have done better?

Cause I think a lot of people would look at this and say, probably one of the best runs in a very, very difficult period of any fed chair in modern history, some would probably argue that.

So I'm just interested in, yeah, I mean, I,

I, I agree with everything you said except that interest rates are coming down.

I don't think, I mean, he has brought the short term rates down that he controls, but the longer term rates have not come down.

Yeah.

And I think that's because he is not, uh, fully transparent and is not really data driven, even though he says he's data driven.

So, that's where I have, I mean, I don't know that I'm qualified to critique his skills, but that's where it is difficult for me.

He's, he's Proclaiming to be data driven and have a 2 percent inflation target.

And we're, we haven't been below 2 percent in a long time and yet he's easing.

And so I don't know.

I just think it's, um, he has a hard job.

I'll say that.

So it's a difficult thing.

He has navigated a pretty good soft landing and I think that it is concerning 10 year rates are up, and so that's making it harder to buy a house, buy a car, finance your business.

Yeah.

Um, and that's really his trust, or his, um, his view, the market's view of his performance.

Um, I don't know, maybe I'm being overly harsh.

Yeah.

So, I guess, I'm not What I should say was more explicit is I think it's fine for the president to critique the Fed or for me to critique the Fed or anyone, but I think it is valuable for our country to have the Fed in a, I think it's a 12 year appointment or a 10 year appointment.

And, and no matter what he does, even if he frustrates you or she frustrates you, You can't just pull them out of it.

I think that's healthy

Yeah, he's got two more years and I like the idea that he will be seeing out I mean he's seen us through this much of it.

I I would prefer he finish Uh the term, you know, I would it's just a really

bad precedent That at any point any president in the future can just fire the fed Leader and put someone else in that.

That's not healthy.

Totally agree.

Uh, all right.

That was our only, uh, economy story.

We're switching right into VC land and starting with a deal in the VC space, but not a traditional deal at all.

This is general catalyst has been working for a while now through their health assurance transformation, LLC hat co on the acquisition of Summa health, which is small to midsize health system in Ohio, and there were Questions around whether or not it was going to happen.

There was scrutiny from the AG, but they've signed the definitive agreement.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think it's great to see it progressing forward.

Hopefully it'll get closed.

I think we've covered this before.

The reason General Catalyst wanted to do this is to have enough control to be able to try out all the things that they think could make a payvider health system with the health system and the insurance side much more effective, efficient, deliver better care at lower cost.

And so I think it's great to see what they can do, whether they are really successful or run into hurdles, it doesn't really matter.

I think it will, we'll all learn from watching it.

I mean, they, they have a, they have a multi billion dollar health system.

They've got a very successful, experienced health system CEO.

And they've got a boatload of technology that they've been investing in.

So this is a sort of a net new experiment.

We've, we've never seen those three things combined, uh, to see what happens when you've got all of those things together.

So it's going to be pretty interesting.

I can't think of her name, but I heard at, uh, the Aspen health leaders thing, the general catalyst woman spoke and she was saying it really was the pace of bringing new innovations, bringing change to market that they wanted to accelerate.

Right.

Hmm.

Which I'm totally agree with that.

Yeah, totally, totally agree with that.

And here's what will be really interesting.

With that pace, are they thinking that General Catalyst is the sole provider of those innovations?

Or that they create An innovation layer that the whole organization can run on, but that things can plug into very quickly, because I think one of the big problems today is the core platforms do not absorb innovation, um, intentionally it's, it's, it's philosophically against what they are trying to do.

So, um, Obviously General Catalyst has a full suite of very integrated platforms, but there's going to be a constant need for more and more innovation over time.

And it'll be interesting to see whether or not they want to funnel that all through themselves, or if they're going to actually allow this platform that they're building to be something that can absorb third party innovation.

Yeah, I don't, I don't know if, if we know that, but either way, I think we'll learn a lot.

Even if they keep it only general catalyst tools, which hopefully they won't, I think we'll still learn what works and what doesn't work, even if there might be multiple tools that could do that function, you're right.

I think health systems are not designed for Significant and fast, like, iterative innovation, trying things, and I think General Health is going to change that.

Yep.

Alright, uh, 5 million to expand access to integrated pediatric mental health care.

Yeah, so this is, uh, investment, uh, the company's in New York, and I think it's sort of another in the, same vein of sort of integrating holistic care for patients.

I mean, mental health is comorbid with many, many other diseases.

And so integrating it into the pediatric clinic, I think it's really valuable.

So, um, I'm not, we're not involved in this deal, but I think it's interesting.

Yeah.

So it integrated behavioral health there.

They were founded in partnership with Child Mind Institute, a nonprofit in children's mental health, uh, based in New York City.

And I'm sure they're going to work with a very, very small population at first.

5.

5 million is not a lot when you're actually delivering services.

Um, but it'll be interesting to see how they're going to differentiate.

They've got a good group of, um, LPs around the table, uh, Redesign Health, Blue Venture Fund, and True Wealth Ventures.

I think Blue Venture Fund kind of stands out to me there because if you're in the New York market and you've got Blue Ventures on your side, uh, that's, that's going to be positive for sure.

Yeah.

Stepful raises 31.

5 million to address healthcare staffing shortage with AI power training.

This one seems like, uh, I get why they were able to attract a 31 million check.

The intersection of workforce development and AI seems like a winning pitch, at least.

The delivery is a completely different matter, but it doesn't surprise me with that pitch, they were able to get some big dollars in the door.

Yeah, and they're really addressing the supply of workers.

And the problem that they're trying to fix is a huge problem.

It takes way too long and it's too expensive.

Multiple years, they're, they're claiming 20, 000 for.

An individual to get trained to be a medical assistant or a pharmacy tech or you know, all the other health care workers that are not a physician but are critical in the delivery of care.

We need maybe more of those.

Yeah.

And there just aren't enough.

And so being able to make them for something like one 10th of that time and cost, and we have people that.

Need need jobs today and with AI coming I think there's gonna be a lot of people that are looking to change jobs We've talked about it previously We're gonna need people in health care for a long time Maybe fewer over the next 10 years, but still we need a lot of people.

So yeah, I think this is a great

I mean, workforce development for health systems in particular is, I mean, it's one of the few industries where we've seen over the last 10 years, large health systems have gotten in the education business, like full on buying or building nursing schools, you know, going into partnerships to set up new med schools specifically so they can have their own dedicated pipeline that learns things their way.

Um, and they can have the rotation sort of, you know, set up ready to go.

So yeah, I mean, anything you can do around.

Workforce development, you know, growing that inflow of staffing is, I think, going to find a big audience.

Yeah,

that's right.

All right, uh, probably the biggest story of the week as it pertains to vc is forward health.

This was um a Big money raiser, uh, they brought in 400 million dollars with their concept of care pods, which were autonomous Uh doctor's offices or standalone where you walk in and it's you and a bunch of telehealth and a bunch of mechanics going on inside of that pod Uh, they have shut down, um abruptly shut down actually, uh, and it's You know, it's, it's obviously high profile because the design was sleek.

It feels like one of those, like, Hey, we're going to bring healthcare into the future plays.

Um, quite frankly, I'm actually surprised they, they were only able to get to 400 million considering some of the, the deals that raised billions over the last five years.

But 400 million is, is where they stop.

Yeah.

I mean, it didn't work.

It didn't work.

So I think that the problem is that like, I, I, I didn't work.

How much did they raise?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Nothing to do with how much they raise.

It was a great vision.

It is a great vision to be able to put in the lobby of our building or anywhere, put at this pod, which is much more convenient to do.

And then through, through telemedicine, you have a medical, a doctor or another, um, specialist that you can interact with where it.

I think struggled is sort of just how all the robotics and everything in the pod.

It's a lot to get to get to work properly.

And the human body, well, it is quite similar.

My body is different than yours.

If you're elderly or you're a pediatric patient, there's just lots of different type people.

And so I think it was maybe ahead of its time.

We actually, I know some of the angel investors that are in this And I mean, as, as recent as like a month ago, people, they were super excited about the growth.

I mean, they raised a hundred million dollars less than a year ago, uh, but they shut down in the last 48 hours.

The founder used to be, uh, the, the CEO for Special Pro.

He headed up special projects for the CEO of, uh, Google Alphabet.

Yeah.

Um, founded Sidewalk Labs.

Um, so, you know, I think had an incredible name, an incredible network.

Uh, raised money in the Series D by from Founders Fund, coastal Ventures, SoftBank, mark Benioff, uh, the weekend.

I mean, so clearly kind of a, a-list.

kind of person who was able to get access to those kind of investors.

Um, but yeah, it's, look, healthcare is hard.

And it may not, I would love to be able to go into a pod and have it work.

But if you can't reliably draw blood and do the lab work, then you have to go to another place and get the blood drawn.

So yes, healthcare is hard.

Healthcare is hard.

Uh, Yeah, and one of the things I guess was in the Business Insider article, they were talking about how I guess the blood test didn't work and maybe someone got stuck in the pod a couple of times.

Yeah, I mean, the information interviewed, I think it was like 20, we'll link to the several former employees they found and it was anonymous.

I mean, they didn't disclose who, so they would share, but yeah, it says patients kept getting trapped in the pods, which implies maybe more than once.

But even one time, if you can't get out of the pod, that's not going to be good on social media.

Yeah, that's right.

That's right.

All right.

Private equity gears up for deals to take off.

I forwarded you this morning a report from Bank of America, their securities department, talking about how they view the landscape being very favorable for M& A deals.

This is Wall Street Journal Pro Private Equity posting basically the same thing.

Uh, everyone seems to anticipate under a Trump administration, lowered regulatory burden and pressure on M and a.

And so everyone's getting excited for deal time again.

Yeah.

I mean, Trump is a deal guy.

Literally.

I mean, literally he's a deal guy.

And one of the, one of the people on CNBC, I can't remember who it was, but said that, you know, the office of president is pretty powerful and what the president measures and maps and tracks often.

Often is impacted.

Yeah.

And Trump is going to look at wall street and financial markets and he, he wants deals to happen.

So, um, I think it's very likely that there'll be much more friendly private equity and M and a market, which I think will be healthy.

It's sort of a pendulum.

I think the, the last administration maybe took the restriction a little bit too far and we'll swing back.

Maybe they go a little bit too far the other direction, but.

It's just, I think one of the good things about our country is you have the two parties and they'll, they self correct and maybe they also go a little too far, but we're, we're about to move into the Pendulum swinging towards the deal making side.

Yeah.

Uh, Brian Valencia, who's the partner at, uh, Calvin Ferge, um, yesterday.

Yeah.

Right.

The, on the, on the, um, on the tax, on the, on the panel on the G Yeah.

The GM VCA panel, uh, covering all the, all the tax stuff.

Uh, he was talking about the corporate tax rate may be dropping from 21% to 20%.

Mm-Hmm.

. Um, basically capital gains, unlikely, maybe it ends up getting a little scrutiny, but probably unlikely that there's any real issues there.