125 - Market Chaos, Healthcare Cuts, and AI Breakthroughs—What’s Coming Next?

Show Notes

Vic and Marcus discuss the volatile stock market and its connection to political uncertainty, the shifting media landscape, and the impact of global news narratives. They analyze the latest jobs report, Trump’s trade policies, and their effects on market stability, interest rates, and inflation. The episode covers the future of telehealth, major healthcare funding cuts, and their consequences for hospitals and medical research. They also examine the growing role of AI in medicine, the latest innovations in gene therapy, and China’s rapid advancements in artificial intelligence. The discussion concludes with insights into venture capital struggles, IPO market slowdowns, and the potential collapse of numerous VC firms.

Links:

3:50 -  Democrats Clear Way for GOP Funding Bill, Ending Threat of Government Shutdown WSJ

4:29 - U.S. Added 151,000 Jobs Last Month WSJ

5:24 - An ‘Untradable’ Market: Trump Sows Profound Uncertainty for Stocks NYT

7:56 - CNBC’s interview with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Youtube

16:01 - Inflation Cooled to 2.8% in February, Lower Than Expected WSJ

18:26 - An ‘Untradable’ Market: Trump Sows Profound Uncertainty for Stocks NYT

18:26 - Virtual musculoskeletal care provider Vori Health nabs $53M Fierce Healthcare

19:09 - Motivity gets $27M from Five Elms for ABA software Axios

20:11 - Hinge Health files to go public, signaling potential IPO revival in digital health Fierce Healthcare

20:55 - Venture Investors Hoped for an IPO Recovery in 2025. Now It’s On Hold. WSJ

25:11 - House votes to extend telehealth for 6 months, sends funding bill to Senate Fierce Healthcare

26:51 - CMMI to cut participation in payment models, estimates $750M in savings Fierce Healthcare

27:30 - Provider revenues to drop $80B in 2026 if cuts drive states from Medicaid expansion, analysis find Fierce Healthcare

31:14 - Is Trump Taking a ‘Liquidationist’ Approach to the Economy? WSJ

32:21 - CMS scraps contracts to upgrade online Medicare system and hands over control to DOGE, agency says Fierce Healthcare

34:18 - Why the $2.8B Blue Cross Antitrust Case Won't Die Modern Healthcare

36:27 - The Hologram Doctor Will See You Now WSJ

39:04 - Landmark Holdings of Florida files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Modern Healthcare

39:43 - Prospect Medical’s Pennsylvania hospitals at risk of closure Modern Healthcare

40:39 - Johns Hopkins Plans Staff Layoffs After $800 Million Grant Cuts WSJ

42:30 - Mass General Brigham's 2nd wave of layoffs begins Fierce Healthcare

42:49 - CVS’s New Mini Stores Go All In on Medicine and Skip Everything Else WSJ

43:39 - Breathing ne

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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.

If you enjoy this content, please take a moment to rate and review it.

Your feedback will greatly impact our ability to reach more people.

Thank you.

All right.

Lots going on in the world, Vic.

Yeah.

Kind of a crazy time.

Yeah.

Uh, stock market.

What's your read of it?

I'm trying not to look at it for the next couple of months.

I think it's going to be, uh, incredibly volatile.

Up, down, up, down, probably more down than up is my guess until at least the summertime.

Yeah.

But.

I think any day with news out of D.

C. or something happening could, could pop up and then comes down again.

So, yeah,

yeah, it feels, feels like a moment to just kind of like.

Hold your nose turn away and focus on the real world.

Yeah, real work For sure.

I had a good time in Miami this weekend.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

How was Miami?

I forgot about that How was South Beach?

It was great.

It was great.

It's the weekend before Spring break so it wasn't totally insane.

You don't want to be

there during

the heat of

spring

break.

I'm too old for that Yeah, so no, it was uh, the weather was fantastic and then came back to great weather here in Nashville, too So that was beautiful, you know, that's it's just been a nice nice seven day stretch and I don't know I'm just kind of feeling like Coming out of a hard season, honestly, you know, and, and feeling like I have a little bit more space to breathe and think.

And, um, so generally I'm, I'm feeling pretty positive, even though I know the world is, you know, especially the finance world is kind of upside down, but personally I feel pretty good.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, I, I, uh, I read both right and left publications and watch both right and left TV news.

And so it's, it's a bipolar world.

I mean, I think I'm probably one of the few people in the world that watches both.

And it's crazy just to think that like the storylines and the positioning are.

Almost exact opposite.

Yeah, I which which is you're better than me.

Is this this is why I I I really have opted out Altogether.

Yeah, I mean I'm i'm on You know, i'm on a variety of different highly curated newsletters.

Yeah,

and um that are like Really thoughtful and I wouldn't necessarily more long form long form analysis.

So newsletters, podcasts, I pretty much have abandoned television at this point.

I just think it's it's just honestly like a subpar format.

Yeah, for everything we've now got on the internet TV, just it's just not as good.

Um, and then, uh, you know, I'm still on X, which is, is a necessary evil.

Um, it's the only place to kind of stay up to speed on AI and crypto stuff.

And also, I think there is a, a heavy dose, especially if you're talking about international news, like, you know, if you've curated your lists, uh, you really can get great international news there.

Do you use the pro dashboard?

Yeah, that's, that's the

best

thing about it.

Queued up with different different lists and different stuff.

I've got a list called g20 And I went and I got the leader of every g20 come country

Oh interesting,

and then if but if they if the leader doesn't have an account I went and got the foreign ministries account and put it in there.

So I'll share that list.

Yeah, that's pretty good It's it's it's helpful man, you know, the American narrative.

We just we just get so Bogged down in it and then you like go check the g20.

You're like, oh, man, there's a whole big world Stuff and it's like it's actually Yeah.

You know, to know the whole world is not totally consumed with what we're doing over here.

Yeah.

So anyway, we got a, we got a nice, nice, uh, show stuff to talk about.

So probably, probably about time for us to dig in.

Uh, so breaking news, which, uh, by the time you listen to this will not be, but literally just hit the wire, uh, the Democrats have cleared the way for the GOP bill ending the threat of the shutdown.

Yeah, this is a huge concern lifted.

I mean, there's all this every few years.

There's a shutdown dynamic that I'm tired.

I think everyone's tired of.

So I'm happy that they have just put it to bed.

And importantly, we will cover it in the show.

There's some important health care things that that we needed to get included in the continuing resolution, which got include, or I think it hasn't totally patched it, but they're planning to do it tomorrow.

So,

so, uh, let's, let's rehash the jobs thing.

Last week we covered the ADP.

And it showed everything being down.

Um, BLS came out and the number was 151, 000 jobs last month.

So missed, but not kind of the miss that was signaled by ADP.

Right?

Yeah, it wasn't as bad as I feared after ADP.

Um, but it wasn't super strong either.

So, uh, it missed expectations.

And then, uh, some of the down new, not the headline thing, like hours worked and.

You know, the participation rate, which is who's even looking for jobs, those things moved in, in not great direction.

So it's definitely a deteriorating job market.

But not as bad as I feared.

Yeah, so I mean, just something to watch.

I don't think that it's definitive in any way about, you know, where we're headed from a job market perspective, right?

Um, all right.

So now let's, let's start a little bit of just discussion on the analysis that's out there around, uh, Trump and the markets.

So.

The headline of this New York Times story is an untradable market.

Trump sows profound uncertainty for stocks.

The, uh, the consistency and the, the commitment to tariffs, you know, just the market's uncertainty about how that will actually play out, you know, is that a winning strategy or not, um, is, is driving incredible volatility in the markets and driving up the 10 year, uh, bond yield.

I don't know if the 10 year bond yield is up.

It might be up today.

It's up today.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think that the, I mean, Trump supporters and Trump himself will say, trust me, I will negotiate a deal through all of this craziness and it will be, it'll be good in the end, but that uncertainty and.

Lack of at least transparency into what the plan is.

Is there a plan other than I'm going to try to reset the terror structure so that the U S pays a lot less markets are very, I think they don't like that uncertainty and the whipsaw around where it's, I can't even keep, keep straight of it's 20 percent then it's.

200 percent then it's reciprocal and it seems to change day to day.

Yeah.

Well, it's real time tit for tat.

It's basically like, um, it's, it's, it's jockeying and it's, it's trying to assert.

Um, trying to assert global dominance, you know, um, in terms of making sure the world understands the leverage that America has by way of its economy and military.

Um, yeah, and we have a lot of leverage.

Sure.

Whether Trump can use that in a way that is positive for Economic, the economy, and then the stock market is unclear.

Yeah,

totally.

So, so yeah, I think it's un, I think it's an UNT tradable market.

It's hard.

I mean, Trump can say one thing at 10 and nothing at 11 in the morning, and the market's totally different.

Yeah.

So it's, it's, I've never heard the term UNT tradable before.

Yeah.

Uh, yeah, he, he, he is the driving force, uh, and sort of his posts on truth social, yeah, can, can immediately move the market.

Scott Besant, the United States treasury secretary, uh, has given his first long form interview slash sort of presentation to CNBC.

It's 20 minute, um, Discussion.

So we'll, we'll include the link in the show notes and we will not play all 20 minutes now.

Uh, but a couple of sort of highlight words.

Um, detox is kind of the one that I think everyone is, is, uh, is, has latched onto.

This is his reference to the, um, the American economy and its dependence on government spending.

And that government spending, you know, kind of propping up the economy and, and look, I mean, I think you can look over the last three years at some of those great GDP, you know, numbers that we turned in.

And when you crack it open, you say, okay, how much of that was due to government spending?

Um, it was a significant portion.

So.

And so if, if your commitment is to decrease government spending such that you will improve our standing with regard to the deficit, um, then, you know, detox might not be a terrible way to sort of frame, uh, what we were previously doing, you know, being drunk or addicted to government spending.

Uh, yeah, I think.

Scott Besson has a lot of experience.

He's he's been a hedge fund trader.

He's been in bond markets He's a market participant who now has come into government office.

So he knows the markets better than I know them But I think detox can take a while And so the fact that he's positioning it as detox I think is a pretty clear state and he says in the interview Wall Street has made You know, significant returns in the last two years, and they may not do that.

Well, this year, something that would be exact quote, but something like that, um, and that he and the Trump administration are really thinking more longer term and more focused on Main Street and interest rates, which I think is code for.

You should expect it to be at least very bumpy and volatile in equity markets.

And I think that means it's going to be, they're not worried about equity markets.

I don't think they're trying to do whatever they're trying to do, but it's in Trump's first administration.

I felt like, and I think a lot of people felt like, at the end of the day, he's going to care about where the S. P.

500 is, maybe not every day, but at the end of a month or by a quarter, and Besson and several of the Trump, uh, cabinet are going at lengths to say that they're not focused on that now.

You know.

I don't know if that's good or bad, but it just is.

No, I, I actually wasn't going to weigh in from a good or bad perspective.

I was just going to say that through the pandemic, you remember sort of the, the rise of Ray Dalio, um, not as an investor, but as a prognosticator around.

Kind of this very topic, right?

You know, the, the, the large debt and credit cycles that we get into around the world, the, you know, the smaller cycles and then the larger cycles that we get into.

He

has a new thing now that's really scary.

Yeah.

And how countries go broke, right?

And You know, it feels to me like Besant is sort of speaking from the Dalio, you know, scriptures a little bit.

He's basically saying, like, listen, we're, we're, we're at the head, we're at the tip of the spear of the, of the next big cycle and really serious stuff has to happen, um, to avoid a collapse, quite frankly, you know, and that's, That's how, that's how I internalized it.

But of course I've been, you know, listening to and reading and watching the Dahlia stuff for five years now.

Right.

So, um, and listening to, to Friedberg on, on all ends, sort of like hammer this home all the time, you know?

And so I, I guess to some degree, the fact that this is happening for me and I'm sure for you too, cause you've also been consuming a lot of that content.

Like it's not that.

Out of left field, you know, to hear it, it, it, it's, it's awesome in the true sense of the word to watch it happening in real time.

It's like, now it's not like this thing in theory where we're looking at a little cartoon explaining how the world economy works.

And now we're like literally in the middle of it and seeing the VIX kind of consistently being above 25 percent it's like, it's like, wow.

Um, you know, here we are, but yeah, look, I mean, I, I think.

I think regardless of what party was in place, any party that decided it was going to be the one that was, that in its administration was going to take on this challenge, this would be the, these would be the talking points.

You know, I'm trying to sort of de partisanize it a little bit and say whoever was going to actually take on the big world debt cycle challenge would be using words like detox.

Yes,

and

the U. S. Treasury has to refinance 4 trillion in the second quarter.

The second quarter.

I mean, like, it's just even, I can't even wrap my head around that, man.

I mean, it's 4, 000 billion.

I still can't even fully comprehend that.

He's gotta do that in 90 days.

April 1st through June 30th.

So, it's not surprising they want the interest rates down.

Like, they've saved a ton of money.

Yes.

And then I agree with you that any president trying to correct our debt issues and our, honestly, our spending issues has to attack the entitlements and has to attack defense and what, I mean, I'm not really a fan of Trump's style, but ending the war in Ukraine, if he can end the war in Ukraine, pulling our support for it.

There's a lot of Republican politicians that would not be able to do that.

No way.

Because the defense industry.

is, is a big Republican supporter.

Hold

on.

Yes.

And I would say that's more of like a Republican class thing.

I mean, I would say when you get into the base of the Republican Party, I think a whole bunch of people are, were anti Putin and pro Ukraine.

Yeah.

There were a lot of Ukraine flags flying around in Florida when I was down there to vacation and those people are Trump voters.

Yes.

Okay.

So I, I, I think it's more just like Trump has an ability to buck Republican norms and, and pull the party along with him.

That is, it's a one of one.

Yeah, it's a one of one his ability to do that.

Yeah.

And so if we have to go through even.

Say a year of detox if we cut the defense spending and we're gonna talk about health care They're they're coming after a bunch of health care thing There's gonna be hard on our business and our listeners But but I think every it's not fair to say you should cut every other department and not not what I care about So we cut all all government spending.

Yeah, and you have to like how can you not look at the biggest line?

I know right that that part is just like that's not yeah, I'm serious

Yeah, so if they can if they can achieve that It'll, it'll be great for us markets.

It'll be great for the interest rates.

It'll be great for equity markets next year.

Maybe not this year, maybe late this year.

I'm, I'm hoping the Trump administration is successful at all these things, but they're trying to do a lot in a very short amount of time.

Agree.

Um, so inflation actually eased up a little bit, which we're going to have to watch this carefully.

I don't think we have anything conclusive at the moment.

The tariff things are still largely threats, you know, and they haven't actually.

Come in place tariffs should be inflationary and in many, many ways, um, until they're not, but that's a, that's a period of time, uh, to, to reshore manufacturing and get our own internal supply chains to the place where things are, you know, as efficient leveraging AI and robotics and blah, blah, blah.

That's, I don't know, that's 24 months or something like that.

So moving forward with the tariffs should in fact be inflationary.

And, uh, we were discussing it on the jumpstart insight call earlier today with Emily in the foundry.

Um, one, one of the Foundry founders asked the question of, you know, could we be headed into stagflation?

Right.

You know, because Trump will not rule out a recession.

Yeah.

And at the same time, he's moving full on with the tariffs and it's like you could have the intersection of, you know, inflation plus a recession and that's, yeah.

You know, that's really hard.

Right.

So, uh, I'm happy to see that it cooled in February.

It was lower than expected, but watch this space to me.

This does not feel conclusive at all.

Yeah, I, I feel much better about inflation than you do.

I think that, uh, terrorists are inflationary period, but the amount of job cuts that Doge is bringing to the federal government is deflation and the cuts in spending is deflationary.

So yes, I'm, I think if we get a recession, it'll be because all of those people lost their jobs.

They stopped spending.

Mm hmm.

I don't, I don't think we would get stagflation.

I think there's a chance that we have very little inflation and, and a recession.

And then the chance that somehow these tactics magically work out in this better trade and growth.

Um.

And then we would have to be worried about inflation again in the back half of the year.

But I don't know.

I think that there's so much cost cutting and job losses that I'm expecting in the next few months that I'm not so worried about inflation because of that.

But that could be wrong.

We'll

see.

Yeah.

We'll have to see.

All right, moving into VC, uh, virtual musculoskeletal care provider, Vori Health NAMS, 53 million.

This is from Fierce Healthcare.

This is a Series B funding round to build out a physician led solution for musculoskeletal care.

Um, the round was led by NEA, backed by Alicorp, Intermountain Health, Intermountain Ventures, Echo Health Ventures, Max Ventures.

That's a good group.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah,

it's a good company, good group.

Um, interesting.

We'll have another story in a minute, but this, um, you know, musculoskeletal rehab, um, orthopedic space is, is hot this week.

What's going on?

All right.