Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
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. Alright. Welcome back to us.
Marcus:How are doing, man?
Vic:I'm doing well. It's been feel like it's been a minute since we've been together in the studio doing this. Yeah.
Marcus:Yeah. Sorry about last week. I just the the travel gods were not with me.
Vic:You're traveling all over the place now. Yeah.
Marcus:Yeah. It's been mean, I mean, yesterday, I flew I was in three cities yesterday. You know
Vic:what I mean? What? Exactly.
Marcus:From from takeoff to landing Yeah. You know, it was a day of three cities. So, yeah, it's been a lot it's been a lot of travel lately, but but good. You know, this week, I did keynote in North Carolina at the North Carolina Primary Care Association. It's mostly community centers Yeah.
Marcus:And CEOs of community centers. So, you know, a great group, obviously, taking care of the most vulnerable. And did the same talk. I did it here on slightly updated, but honestly not much because, like, the the updates would have been mostly about AI and it would have been just too
Vic:The over the but Yeah. More than people need.
Marcus:More people More than people need. You know, I'm kinda convinced that that that, you know, that framework of replaying the last five years for people, like, from COVID, It's it's amazing how much it's gone over their head. And, you know, every time I do it, it makes me think about this show, how valuable it is for us to be talking about things from the perspective that we that we do. Mhmm. Like, not just what most other health care shows feel I I you know, it's it's funny.
Marcus:I feel like, you know, the whole moniker of health care is different really no longer serves this industry. Yeah. Because now now it's a cage. You know what I mean? And everyone's so trained to be in the cage, they don't even know they're in the cage.
Marcus:And they can't talk about health care without, like, the whole nonsense filter of health care being different. Meanwhile, the world doesn't give a crap about health care being different anymore.
Vic:Everyone else is just, like, going full steam into direct, you know, help working on health care
Marcus:stuff. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, it's it's crazy how much in my non health care podcast I'm now hearing about health
Vic:care. Yeah. That's right.
Marcus:You know what I mean? Like, you're you're not a protective I've
Vic:trillion dollars a year. Yeah. And and no one, patients, doctors, nurses, employers, politicians, no one thinks it's run very well. No. No, no.
Vic:I think that's right. The, like that protected, safe, you know, protect me from regulation and competition that was so choreographed over fifty years has turned from sort of a protective walled garden to now a cage you need to get out of.
Marcus:Yeah, exactly. There's arrows pointed at the cage. Right. You know? Yeah.
Marcus:But you know what? I guess my point is like, it's the it's the double edged sword of regulatory capture. Right? You you protect yourself through this, you know, Byzantine labyrinth of bureaucracy that to where other people can't understand your industry. But now you can't see.
Marcus:But now you're so deep in the labyrinth, you can't see that, like, people are setting ablaze to the whole labyrinth. Yeah.
Vic:Yeah. It's kind of like, maybe it's taking too far, but when the person at the zoo leaves the lion's cage open and the lion doesn't leave because it's so, like, it's scary out there. That's sort of how health executives maybe are now. They should just walk out into the sunshine, but then they have to start competing directly, and sometimes it's safer just to stay kind of hiding in your cage and not subject to competition.
Marcus:Yeah. And I guess, like, you know, the thing is when you are when you are four, 5,000,000,000,000, whatever it is, when you're that big, the decline will be slow enough that, like, in these people's careers, the people who are execs, it's actually not gonna impair them. Yeah. And so they are now false signals. Yeah.
Marcus:Like, you actually can't trust them. You get what I'm Yeah. Yeah. Because their personal interests are conflicted Right. With the reality of what's actually happening.
Vic:Yeah. I mean, yes, the industry is changing and fracturing, but I'm on this big iceberg. Right. It's melting, but I'm gonna retire my five years.
Marcus:Retirement plan. I got my blah blah blah. Like, you know, I'm not incented truthfully to to say Right. The reality. Right?
Marcus:And then and then on the other side, right, so this is kind what I experienced on Wednesday at the keynote, I think you have the people who truly do care about taking care of the most vulnerable. Right? Yeah. But as we've been discussing on this show for at least a year now, the k shaped economy plus the Trump administration Yeah. Plus the the red wave that that, you know, flowed through the election cycle, like, you're not getting the money anymore.
Vic:Right.
Marcus:And you and and and, like, they don't know like, have no entrepreneurial skills.
Vic:Yeah. Right? Like, all Yeah, they don't know how to create it for themselves. No. Right.
Marcus:No. No. So They're just left to
Vic:like yelling about how this is going to be really difficult. Yeah. We're both entrepreneurs. Like, it will be okay in our sort of lower part of the k shape delivery of health care in twenty years, but people are gonna suffer a lot, like, during that process.
Marcus:For sure. AI is the way out, which which is which is crazy to say, but, like, it's it's kind of like the it's the basic math that you're not gonna be able to pay for the people and you're not gonna be able to hire the people.
Vic:Mhmm. Yeah. So you
Marcus:can you can scream and be mad all you want, but like, I think those are two fundamental realities of the business model that are broken. Right. You're not gonna get the money and you're not gonna have the people to do the work. They're not gonna they're not gonna be there. So so you're gonna have to come up with new models to to deliver the Right?
Marcus:And when I say the people, I mean the people in the current operating model. I don't mean you're not gonna have any people.
Vic:Yeah.
Marcus:Right? But, you're gonna have to redistribute those people. And you're gonna have to really make the operating model much more efficient. And that's where artificial intelligence is gonna be incredibly important.
Vic:Yeah. No question. I mean, as you know, we need sometime we need to talk about my book because I really think that the capabilities, AI, but also crypto and biotech, just are going to allow us to do probably 100, 200, a thousand times more services, more capabilities than we could. Now, the timeframe is hard, but it definitely in the next five, ten, fifteen years, a lot more capabilities. But how do we orient ourselves?
Vic:How do we allocate those extra resources in a fair way needs to be figured out. Yep. Yep.
Marcus:Agree. Alright, man. I'm excited to run through a very short list of stories today. We've got a lot to do to end the year here at Jumpstart, but we definitely want come back. Yeah.
Marcus:Apologies to everybody from last weekend. Let's let's go ahead and dig in. So jobless claims fell to new recent low per labor department. About 191,000 Americans filed for new unemployment benefits in the week through November 29. Tell me about these numbers.
Marcus:First, let's start, Vic, with the fact that where did these numbers come from? Do we trust these numbers? Before we get into the numbers themselves, I I wanna just talk about the validity of the numbers. Are they delayed? Like, what's what's going on with numbers coming out of BLS at the moment?
Vic:I can't say I trust them. I mean, all we have seen in the last since COVID is that the Bureau of Labor Statistics is not very accurate. They they revise the numbers Yeah. Often. Yeah.
Vic:And significant revisions. Yes, significant. And so, no, I don't think we trust them. The reason we talk about it is there's nothing, there's not much else. Right.
Vic:I mean, ADP is out there, but as we're, I stopped using it because it's not very, it's even less accurate, So I we don't really have, you know, it's kind of like the drunk looking for his keys under the lamp light. Like, why are we talking about these numbers? Well, it's where the light is. It's all we have. Yeah.
Vic:And so I think it is worth reviewing, but we need to take it with a huge grain of salt. Huge.
Marcus:Right? Mean,
Vic:okay. That that I
Marcus:guess that was the main thing. Because we didn't used to do that. Like, we used to when we talked about these numbers, it was like it was very, very influential into the that we thought about the way that things were playing out in the country. And I just don't know that that's Yeah. And think
Vic:my belief, so this is not substantiated with research that I've seen that's credible. My belief is that the BLS is systematically wrong in really bad ways, right? So it is overestimating employment when the economy is slowing down. Then And I think it underestimates employment when it speeds up. It's just like a lagging indicator.
Marcus:Yeah.
Vic:And so it's wrong in the worst direction. Right. That's my belief.
Marcus:Yeah. Yeah.
Vic:That's how
Marcus:it's structured. Yeah. It's somehow counterbalancing the headlines that are coming out directly from industry, which are not in aggregate. They're like, they're anecdotal. Right?
Marcus:Know I mean? Amazon fired this many people. You know, Omnicom, the the big big talent agency. Right? They they merged, and then they've just let go of 4,000 people.
Marcus:Right? But those are all anecdotes. They're not they're not in aggregate. They don't tell us about the people who are being hired and how the the math all nets out. But Yeah.
Vic:They
Marcus:but they're they're important. Right? I mean, those anecdotes are becoming to me very, very important signal.
Vic:They're important, and they're more important when you don't trust the core statistics. Right. Right. I think BLS is trying to smooth seasonality changes.
Marcus:Okay.
Vic:And the way they do that ends up sort of like normalizing the data and reducing volatility In a way that I think systematically puts them in the wrong direction. But we don't, we need to, I mean, it's crazy that we can't find a better way than calling on the phone a bunch of people when we all know no one answers. Very few people answer the phone.
Marcus:Right. Right. Right. It's like Nielsen ratings.
Vic:That's right. That's
Marcus:right. All right. So now that we've done that, that critique.
Vic:It's a lower jobless claim. So less fewer people lost their job and entered unemployment for the first time than was expected, which is positive, means like it's less bad than we had feared. Yes. To continue But have to offset that with what I just said, which is it's probably not totally accurate. Right.
Vic:And then the continuing claims, which is I think the more important number, continues to grow. We don't have estimates for that because they're not published, but that's like if you've been unemployed for more than six months and you can't find a job. Right. That continues to be worrisome.
Marcus:K. Powell and the allies provide opening for December rate cut, a divided committee, missing data, and a whiff of stagflation leave Powell to choose between two paths, each with drawbacks. I mean, before we dig into what's happening here, I mean, we're we're at year end. It feels like a time to sort of reflect back on on on the year. I don't wanna totally highlight the last three months because this is the Fed chair who's coming to the end of his term, you know, navigated COVID, was responsible for historic rate cut, you know, increase.
Marcus:I I would say getting much closer to Goldilocks than many people thought was possible. All sorts of people were were, you know, screaming. His his ten year
Vic:term has been really a difficult set of years.
Marcus:Yes. Yes. No question. In terms of like how much the political pendulum has swung over the course of those ten years, and he navigated that. Mean, the supply drop
Vic:out of COVID. Yeah. Was really damaging to inflation. And he tried to address it's very hard for the Fed chair to address a supply shock inflation because it's a lack of supply of goods.
Marcus:Yes.
Vic:But but he did the best he could, I think, in that environment.
Marcus:Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, you know, I know you've been very critical about him with from a data and a looking back and not being as aggressive and all these types of things. But, you know, I do sort of wonder on balance over the course of the last ten years whether or not we can say he was a net positive.
Vic:Yeah. I mean, I think he was maybe a C in a grading scale. Like, he did an okay job.
Marcus:Okay. So let's let's talk about one other thing. He inherited ZERP. Right? He didn't originate ZERP.
Vic:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. ZERP started in the great financial crisis. Right.
Vic:And the next ten years, he wasn't there.
Marcus:Yeah. So he inherited ZERP and he kinda ended ZERP Yeah. Too, which is gonna be another big part of his legacy. Right? Yes.
Marcus:So what do what do we think about that? I mean, ZERP was really fun for us, you know, private equity venture capital folks, And so it has not been the most fun last five years, but probably ZERP, the party needed to come to an end at some point, right? I mean Yeah.
Vic:Yeah. I mean
Marcus:interest policy. Zero interest rates.
Vic:That's exactly what I Zero was going to interest rate policy is helpful in hiding weaknesses in the economy. Lack of innovation, lack of creation of new products, new jobs, new things. And you can sort of prop up the economy, but you can't, you can't engineer your way to growth forever, I think. You need people and companies to make things and And do so, yeah, it had to end at some point. And the time to end it was, I think, when he ended it.
Vic:In, you know, post COVID, there was a supply chain issue that drove prices incredibly high, really painful for a lot of lower income folks. And that was the time to end it. I quibble over sort of how he phrases things and his claiming to be lack of having enough data when he has more access to data than anyone else. But overall, I think, yes, he's a he did a pretty good job. Maybe it's a maybe it's a B.
Vic:I mean, I think there was an opportunity to do a lot better, but but that might be unrealistic given all of the political needs of that seat.
Marcus:Yeah. Yeah. I I think I think we have to give him credit for the difficulty of the era that he faced and and probably some of the important hard and unpopular things that he had to that he had to do Yeah. During his time. So, you know, I think I think that's important.
Marcus:And I guess the reason why I wanted to say that is because he's kinda going out with a whimper. Right? Which is to say his committee is divided. Mhmm. Everyone's not talking about this.
Marcus:They're mostly talking about the next Right. You know, Fed chief who's already signaling that he's gonna be, you know, cutting rates and he's crypto friendly and all those kinds of things. I'm seeing I'm seeing, you know, murmurs on on X that Besant is not just going to be, you know, treasury secretary, but also special financial adviser to the president, which is just sort of a total stack deck alignment, you know, of of America's financial apparatus, you know, under the executive office. And so, now, most people are just like, whatever. Powell's gonna be out of here in three months.
Marcus:Right. Know, it kinda doesn't matter anymore. Right? What what do we think about a December rate cut right now? What's what's Polymarket saying?
Marcus:Do you know?
Vic:Yeah. Quarter rate quarter point cut. Quarter point cut. Ish percent. 80 ish percent.
Vic:Okay.
Marcus:But it's
Vic:I think it's I think it's likely.
Marcus:That's a lot. That's a lot.
Vic:They I think they already have ended QT, but they'll announce They they did. They did. Yeah.
Marcus:But they'll They announced they officially ended it.
Vic:Yes. So they're doing a quarter rate cut, I think, and then they do they already ended QT. I certainly think, I think it's fairly certain that the next chair is going to do a few cuts before the midterms. And so we're looking at a dovish trend.
Marcus:Yeah.
Vic:But also inflation is pretty moderate. Right. And the PC came out today, which we're not covering because it just dropped as we're recording. But it, when I looked at it just for thirty seconds, it looked, you know, pretty low, under three. Right.
Vic:I think it, in general, it's not healthy to intertwine so closely the office of the president with the Fed chair. Well, it's been It's already over. I mean, that's been done.
Marcus:Yes. I mean, we're we're we're breaking
Vic:Right.
Marcus:A huge convention That's right. You know, with what's about to go down next year. No question. Yeah. No
Vic:So that, that might be difficult in a ten year view, but, but right now it's going to be lower rates.
Marcus:The markets will probably love it.
Vic:Markets will love it.
Marcus:Private equity will love it.
Vic:Yeah. They'll probably be okay jobs holding on, and then we'll see what happens in the midterms.
Marcus:Yeah. Yeah. I don't I don't know about the jobs holding on because I think I think AI doesn't care about any of that, right? I mean, think I think I think one of the big things we're gonna have to sort of rewrite is we we've had a very, very strong correlation between labor and productivity. And But that's always been human labor.
Vic:Yeah.
Marcus:Right. And we're now shifting to artificial labor, digital labor, which is actually gonna be more productive.
Vic:Yeah. It's gonna be much more productivity gains.
Marcus:It's gonna drive productivity gains while jobs are lost.
Vic:Jobs are lost and and earnings, you know, hourly rates and and well, corporate earnings Corporate earnings. Earnings to a person, like weekly paycheck Yes. Is gonna be decreased.
Marcus:Yes. Yes. But corporate earnings are going to increase. Yes. So so that that's, you know, it's like that's kind of a fundamental reboot of economic norms.
Vic:Yeah. That's right.
Marcus:I don't I don't wanna call it first principles because I don't believe it's first principles because these these were always immutable levers. I mean, these were these were never immutable levers. They were always things that technology had the potential to change over time. They haven't changed for a long time. Right?
Marcus:They haven't changed for a long time.
Vic:I didn't bring it in. And so just from memory, I can't fully do it. But there is a chart sort of showing the the share of profits and economic gain between capital owners and labor providers. And it's been sort of sixtyforty in that band going up and down based on, you know, capital providers in the late 1800s, early 1900s, started getting like a little bit over 60%, then unions came in and sort of corrected
Marcus:Corrected that. Yeah. Okay.
Vic:And it's been in that range, and I think we're gonna challenge that or relook at that.
Marcus:A 100%. A 100%. No, it's it's I mean, we are moving into a big time capital allocation economy, I think.
Vic:Yeah. And in the past, labor through different means has responded. And I don't know how they respond, but probably people before labor unions didn't expect labor unions either. It's going to be
Marcus:But I mean, before the threat was strikes.
Vic:Yeah. Right.
Marcus:Now, strikes are not a threat anymore. You're gonna have to come up with a new threat. I mean, it's it's gonna have to be truly democratic action. Yeah. You know what I mean?
Marcus:It's it's it's gonna have to be policy. Like, you're gonna have to try to get politicians in place that are going to regulate against AI, you know.
Vic:They're going to regulate against AI. They're going to tax revenue or wealth depending on whether you're talking about corporate or individual. And that's going to be a fight. Yeah. And I mean, I'm not sure where I come down on the fight.
Vic:I mean, you need to have your population be able to pay for things. Yeah. And as we've, well, I don't if we're talking about it the show, but we've talked about it privately. There's not going to be a lot of profit. There's no incentive to make profits really in the AI world because they're taxed.
Vic:So people are going to shift cash flow and profits offshore, or they're just gonna grab market share and get power and
Marcus:then worry about I think for now, we're in the market share grab of the of the market shift. Right? Just like Amazon for a very, very long time was not profit oriented. It was it was in market capture.
Vic:Right.
Marcus:Mode. Right? This this is effectively like, you can just look at the Amazon pattern
Vic:Yes.
Marcus:And just apply AI to the Amazon pattern and say, like, that's that's basically what's gonna happen. They're just gonna reinvest in market capture and destroy and and and destruction. Yeah. Right? You know, and value destruction existing
Vic:business entities.
Marcus:Business entities. Yes. Value destruction of existing business entities.
Vic:So, politicians will respond to that by finding new ways to tax. But that's going be an arms race kind of thing that
Marcus:That's going to be a fight within the Republican Party because that's not a fundamental Republican principle at all.
Vic:No. I don't think the Republicans are going to lead that.
Marcus:Well, the Democrats are too weak right now. So Well,
Vic:I mean, yeah. I'm not talking about more like over the next two or three years.
Marcus:Yeah. I mean, Dems are not I so I don't consider Mamdani to be proof that the Dems are are viable yet. There's there's still a lot they have to sort of prove to to me to
Vic:I be think that's the path. Well, I don't know. I mean, I'm I'm certainly not setting the path for the Democratic party, but
Marcus:Yeah, I don't know.
Vic:There needs to be some way to support the ability of people in the bottom half of the net worth of our society, which is a lot of people.
Marcus:Mean, Don't listen.
Vic:A 100,000,000 people or something Uh-huh. Need help.
Marcus:Yeah. So I know. This is what was talking to the people in in North Carolina about on Wednesday. Right. I I mean, I don't have the answer to it because it's Well,
Vic:you do. Your book is the answer to it, really. But that's not a societal answer. That's an individual answer.
Marcus:Yeah. And, like, you know, this is what happens when you have more than a century of embedding the value of, you know, higher education and career, quote unquote employment, is, you know, entrepreneurship seems like, you know, witchcraft. Mhmm. You know? And so, like like, instead of the fundamental American model
Vic:Right.
Marcus:Of how you operate, right? You know, you know, we've we've institutionalized higher education and employment as as the normal. Right. Right? As opposed to, you know, actually participating full in full contact economics as an entrepreneur.
Marcus:Yeah. And so, What I have experienced, you know, in the in the five years that my book has been out there is people get it, people read it, but it's it's it doesn't it doesn't change Well, it's hard work. People's orientation. It's The book doesn't change people's orientation,
Vic:I guess is what
Marcus:I'm saying. So so I'm I'm simply positing that that it's not the answer. Right? You know what I mean?
Vic:People are gonna reach for an easier answer than that.
Marcus:A 100%.
Vic:I think entrepreneurship is the right path, but it's not a path that politicians can do.
Marcus:I don't see an alternative to it.
Vic:That's right. Yes.
Marcus:I don't see an alternative to it. I'm not nearly as worried as the majority of people I know in this in this moment, and that's because of my competency as an entrepreneur. Right. Right? Right.
Marcus:You know what I mean? Like, so it's it's not that I'm better than most people, like at all. So, there's no fundamental No, but for judgment
Vic:twenty years, you've been practicing the step by step practice or discipline of what an entrepreneur has to do. Yes. And it takes so, maybe not twenty years, it takes a long time to learn that and get good at it. Yes. And if you don't have that, I think you would be scared.
Marcus:Yeah. It's it's it's it's amazing how, you know, it's it's I don't even know we're gonna get through all these stories, but I gotta tell you in the show because we're gonna end where we're gonna end. But, like, it is amazing how fundamental this, like, civilizational rewrite that we're currently under Right. Is. It's it's it's like, I gotta get one of these one of these events.
Marcus:I'm gonna do I'm so I'm gonna be doing this keynote like six times next year. Mhmm. I gotta get get it recorded so I can get it published, you know, because
Vic:I saw a pirated copy of one, but we can't publish it broadly.
Marcus:Well, we can't publish it. And also, the audio was really bad at that one. So I need to get it, like, properly recorded. Yeah. It's it's amazing how simply recalling modern history.
Marcus:Yeah. Like, with no opinion. Right?
Vic:Yeah. These are facts. You lay out I'd call them historical facts.
Marcus:They are. They are. I'm literally like, okay. Then this happened. Right.
Marcus:Then this happened.
Vic:Right.
Marcus:Then this happened. And, like, you should see these people's eyes. Yeah. It's like, what world are you living in? Oh, you're living in the world where you still watch cable news.
Marcus:Yeah. You know? You're living in the world where you don't listen to podcasts. You're living in a world where, because of your political beliefs, you won't go on x.
Vic:Right.
Marcus:Right? And so all these just because you don't pay attention to it does not mean it's not reality.
Vic:Right. Not happening.
Marcus:Yeah. And and and so it's there there's just I don't know.
Vic:Yeah. Well, let's jump to the policy because I think
Marcus:Alright.
Vic:That will dovetail with what we're talking about.
Marcus:Alright. Sounds good. So HHS repeals staffing mandate for long term care.
Vic:At the very bottom of this, Oz has a good quote, which I won't be able to do exactly, but let's read it. Let's find it. The very bottom here.
Marcus:Okay. I'll read it if you Yeah. Okay. So, CMS administrator, Doctor. Mehmet Oz says, At CMS, our mission is not only to improve outcomes, but to ensure those outcomes are achievable for all communities.
Marcus:We cannot meet that goal by ignoring the daily realities facing rural and underserved populations. This repeal is a step towards smarter, more practical solutions that truly work for the American people. May I agree with that?
Vic:Yeah. So, what they did is they rolled back the staffing, nurse staffing requirements at nursing homes and other, you know, kind of long term care facilities. And the reason I wanted to start with the quote is
Marcus:Because the mandates are not reasonable.
Vic:The mandates are not being met. Yeah, yeah, They're not reasonable. They're not being met.
Marcus:Yeah.
Vic:The nursing homes don't have the money to pay their rates that would attract people. Right. They're not functionally possible. Yes. That's what Oz is saying, is that You you need
Marcus:put constraints on the P and L that cannot, that mean these businesses can't operate.
Vic:Right. Exactly. And that is an interesting shift for our health care policy. Like that, I haven't seen a leader say anything like that before the Kennedy administration. Yeah.
Vic:And it's it's just sort of symbolic of the shift. It's part
Marcus:of the shift. Right. It's part of the shift. Right?
Vic:Yeah. You know? This is not a sort of a protective thing that this is the ideal, and we're just going to fund this until it all works. What they're saying is you got to reinvent things, but we're going to reduce these regulations and then encourage you to do it in different ways.
Marcus:Right. So, you know, there's there's multiple ways in which this reflects the shift, but I wanna quickly talk about the the importance of of entrepreneurial thinking. Right? And and I think entrepreneurial experience, right, in terms of how you process something like this. Entrepreneurs understand that PNLs are like gravity.
Vic:Yeah. Right. You know what
Marcus:I mean? Right. You know, we we understand, like, you cannot, you know, operate in the red for very long.
Vic:Right.
Marcus:That's not you you cannot do that. Right? And employees sometimes understand that, but often do not. Yeah. Often, like, think of businesses from from a, you know, as like moral agents that that need to act out certain certain moral requirements regardless of of p and l realities.
Marcus:Mhmm. You know what I mean? And so, this kind of this kind of statement, this kind of thinking, regardless of what side of the aisle you fall, is it like this is where it's like, it's not about your political orientation. I think it's about your exposure to and the depth of your understanding of economic realities. You know?
Marcus:And unfortunately, too often, the Republicans are associated with that. Right? Whereas the Democrats are less associated. This is one of things I was explaining in my keynote. I was like, you know, I put up three charts in my talk, as you know, like, you know, one chart is the whole Pelosi inverse Kramer chart.
Marcus:It gets a laugh every time I do it. And then, you know, the second one is the national debt. And and I I kinda make the point. I'm like, I never hear people on the left talking about the national debt.
Vic:Right.
Marcus:As if as if there is not serious moral issues with this for for, like, what you're doing for future generations.
Vic:I mean, view is that there's a reinvention of the political infrastructure in The US that has to happen. The Republicans have already gone through it with the Trump MAGA populism thing.
Marcus:I would say it's not done.
Vic:Not done because Trump is Trump is his own thing.
Marcus:They are not done.
Vic:Once he exits, they have to continue that process.
Marcus:The whole thing is happening. Right? On the on the left, you've got Mamdani.
Vic:Yes. Right?
Marcus:You know what I mean? On the right, you got Trump. Yeah.
Vic:It's it's it's going on. I think the Dems are two or three years behind the Republicans. I agree
Marcus:with that. I agree with that.
Vic:Because Trump is a force of nature and sort of
Marcus:like And the Democrats have not had the force of
Vic:nature They haven't had that yet. And I don't know if Wandami is it or not, but they need someone like that. Yeah. He's the closest thing so far.
Marcus:He's the closest thing so far. Right. You know, AOC was the closest thing before that. Bernie was the closest thing before Right? So I mean
Vic:Yeah. And so I don't think it's a right or left thing. I think it's like a upswelling of populism from both sides.
Marcus:From both sides. Correct.
Vic:And that will tear down or challenge the status quo, at least.
Marcus:Yes. Yes. It's not constructive.
Vic:It's not No, it's not constructive, but it's sort of a process we go through every four generations.
Marcus:Yeah. Yeah. We're in it. Fourth turning. Okay.
Marcus:Anything else you want say about this? No. All right. FDA official pledges new vaccine standards. In an email, RFK junior ally cites childhood deaths after receiving COVID shot but provides no evidence.
Marcus:This is the Wall Street Journal. I think it's important to Mhmm. Credit that headline. Yeah. I I saw I saw a bunch of stuff this week on on X about, you know, RFK and and the vaccines.
Marcus:I mean, you know, we The
Vic:committee is meeting yesterday and today.
Marcus:Yeah. But but, I mean, early in his in his tenure, one of the very first things he did was he was he blew up.
Vic:Yeah, blew up the committee. This is his committee that he has stacked with all people he
Marcus:That's brought one of the first things he did was he blew up this committee.
Vic:Yeah. So I think this discussion of the COVID vaccine and how it may be, there seems to be evidence that ten, twenty children died due to it. Now that a lot of children got the vaccine. So, I don't want to comment on whether that's right or not. There's lots of fights both ways.
Vic:I see it as a red herring. I mean, they really wanted to sort of do the hep B change, moving it out of the labor and delivery into the pediatric office. And I think this was sort of a red herring to sort of get all of the fight going on this. And then they're going to come with, I think today, they'll change that policy. But either way, it's sort of another piece of the health care sort of, I don't know, regulatory body shifting.
Vic:Mhmm. Mhmm.
Marcus:Yeah. I mean, to me, honestly, like, this is more of a public health thing, and we don't we don't talk that much about public health because it's a little hard to talk about in the in the context of investing. And it it will be a political football that just gets kicked back and forth. I mean, you know, that's about what I can say about that. The House votes to extend acute hospital care at home.
Marcus:Senate needs to vote to extend program past 01/30/2026 deadline. So, this is a pretty important one.
Vic:Yeah. And I don't know anyone that I can think of top of my head that is against this. Right. It just is it was done until January 30. We need to extend it.
Vic:It's great. The House has done it. Yep. The Senate, I think they will extend it. But but, you know, January 30 is not that far away.
Vic:And they're they're fairly slow up there.
Marcus:So Yeah. I mean, to me to me, it's I think the the importance of this story is just to sort of understand that this hospital at home is apparently like not codified. Like, it's not Yeah. You know, it's not a long term going concern Yeah. At These are still sort of experimental things that need to kind of be reauthorized, reauthorized, reauthorized.
Vic:Yeah. And because of the dysfunction in DC. Not that anyone doesn't think telehealth or hospital home is something we should do. Yes. It just we can't get anything passed up there.
Marcus:Yeah. And and, you know, you think about how that dysfunction plays such a huge role in the ability for entrepreneurship, investment, and innovation innovation to actually help healthcare. Right? You know what I mean? Like, it it it does kinda put a spotlight on just, okay, you know, forget us because we're small, you know, compared to like big PE firms.
Marcus:Right? But, I mean, when you're looking at the need for this to be reauthorized, can you really deploy big capital and the brightest minds and the best executors on business models around this? Even though this is better for families, better for individuals, probably, you know, more affordable, gets the hospitals less dependent on their big, you know, real estate Right. You know, purchases and things like that. It's it's clearly something we need to move in the direction of.
Marcus:And not for everything, but a lot of things. A lot of things.
Vic:I think that's right. The government needs to set the rules of the road or, you know, what is allowed and what's not allowed. That's the very basic thing they have to do. And then publicly traded companies, large nonprofits, private equity, venture, everyone then knows how to deploy capital and operate. Right.
Vic:That's the only thing they have to do. And that's the thing they can't do.
Marcus:Yes. And therefore, we can't
Vic:So we can't really deploy capital in the same way that we would be able to.
Marcus:Yeah, exactly. Exactly. All right. Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drugs. Humana, exploring a partnership to tackle employer drug costs.
Marcus:So the reason to bring this this story up is not as much the partnership as what is Humana doing talking about employer drug costs.
Vic:Right. Yeah. Mark Cuban has the same story he's had for several years. I'm in favor of it, but there's nothing new on that side.
Marcus:100%.
Vic:Humana partnering with him to help employers save money on drug spend got my attention because they don't work with employers at any scale.
Marcus:Not that we know of.
Vic:Not that I know. Not that we know of. That's right. So they are mostly a Medicare Advantage Platform. Platform.
Vic:Yeah. And what they say in here is that CenterWell, which is their provider services Yeah. I thought mostly to seniors
Marcus:That's what I thought.
Vic:Is going to now go across all different demographics, including employers.
Marcus:Yeah.
Vic:And that was surprising to me. And it could just be that Mark and someone from Humana were on a panel together and chatted before and did this, or maybe they did the panel because they want to announce this. It's hard to know, but we should think we should watch it because Humana is big, and it'd be great for them to broaden, but it would be a marked change in their strategy.
Marcus:Yeah. I mean, I think it's really interesting. Humana has done, as I think we've we've covered, has done a pretty good job of navigating the headwinds targeted at Medicare Advantage. Yeah. They haven't really been under fire for bad behavior in that Right.
Vic:Right? And they've sort of They don't have a PBM.
Marcus:They don't have a PBM. So that's that's Which is why
Vic:they can do this. Right. Yeah.
Marcus:And having said that, Medicare Advantage is generally under fire. Right? Like like, which is their fundamental business model on the payer side. And as we know, all payers are struggling with their MLR, Humana included. Yeah.
Marcus:And so, you know, that probably elevates the importance of CenterWell, period, within their business model. And probably even more so, elevates the importance of taking those assets and starting to direct them away from being a 100% concentrated as seniors.
Vic:Yeah. Well, and and the the thing that I'm looking for, but I don't know if I mean, one anecdote doesn't make a trend. But if they could be the payer that begins to move into the PayVider business model in a in a meaningful way, previous to this, United and Elevance were sort of there. United is really impaired, and I hope they come back. I mean, we have a lot of friends at United.
Vic:There's a lot of good people there, but
Marcus:they
Vic:have They a lot of trouble,
Marcus:have stuff to work through.
Vic:Yeah. But if Humana is well run, if they move in to start really focusing on their provider side, in addition to their payer, it could be interesting.
Marcus:Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. It's interesting. So something to track.
Marcus:Hems and Hers expands into diagnostics, moves into Canada as it evolves this DTC telehealth platform. Talk about a brand that's just continued to expand and become a first class health care company.
Vic:Yeah. Yeah. They're they're really working at being now a global healthcare brand. Yeah. Whatever you need, I think their vision is you come to Hims or Hers and get what you need.
Vic:They bought a lab company, I think in Boston, somewhere in the Northeast, to sort of get into diagnostics. It makes sense. Mean, they're executing pretty well.
Marcus:Yeah. And I think, you know, they are DTC, but you know, the more that they expand, there's going to be an opportunity where they will be able to sort of, I think, pivot into selling to employers. Yes. Right? Which which is a completely different equation in terms of the scale of what this company can become.
Vic:Yeah. I mean, I think there's that's the natural place where they'll go. But they haven't done it yet.
Marcus:No. No. Alright. So Health and Us, you found an opinion story here from the New York Times. The story is titled, We had no idea what was coming, colon, Caring for My Aging Father.
Marcus:I, you know, we we debated whether or we keep it in because it is a short show. But I I wanted to bring it in, a, so that we link it in the show notes. But but b, just because I had no idea what was coming Right. When it was time for me to care for aging father. And, you know, I'm 49, about to turn 50, but my parents had me later in life.
Marcus:I'm their baby. But my oldest brother who passed away earlier this year, you know, was 70 when he passed away. Right? And so, know, my parents are are they're up there.
Vic:You're younger than I am, but you're dealing with this earlier because of that pandemic. Right. That was
Marcus:the point of me saying all that. And so I think the reason why I wanted to bring it in is I think a lot of Gen Xers have not quite gotten here yet. Yes. But it's coming. Soon.
Marcus:Yeah. It's coming. I don't think most Gen Xers have any idea about how disruptive and how expensive and how hard this process is.
Vic:Yeah. That's right. That's right. Which is why I want it, we keep talking about it. Yeah.
Vic:Because it's not a fun thing to think about. I know I push it off and then I see a story like this and it's coming for all of us. And one of the aspects that is in this story, but it's also just a fact, is that Alzheimer's and dementia, a lot of people can hide that and cope with it and kind of offset the mental deterioration because they have enough capacity to do it. And then they have another health thing comes and all of a sudden everything cascades down, right? You get another, like in this case, I think it was a cancer diagnosis.
Vic:And so the father, all of a sudden he was trying to deal with cancer and also it all sort of happens much more quickly than you would expect if you weren't paying attention and reading these opinion pieces and listening to us and thinking about it. And so you can go from everything seems fine to needing a lot of care for your parents pretty quickly.
Marcus:Yeah. It's I mean, it it is a it's a really big cliff. Like like when it happens
Vic:Yeah.
Marcus:First of all, you're you're hurled in time wise, work disruption wise.
Vic:And it's emotionally scary and sorry. I was gonna get there.
Marcus:Was gonna get there. You know, and and I think your immediate thing is it's an emergency, right, whenever the whenever the thing happens. So, you go into like emergency mode. You don't hit emotion right away.
Vic:Yeah. It's just sort of firefighting. Yes.
Marcus:You're firefighting immediately. And then the emotional piece comes in. And it has all these implications, you know, many of which are just part of life. Human humans have been here for millennia. So, I mean, you know, it's like we're not going through anything like every other human, every other generation hasn't gone through.
Marcus:But I do think the way that we live now is new and is different. Right? We're we're not as communal. We don't we don't live much further apart. I was really lucky.
Marcus:My parents, being old school, kind of moved to me seventeen years ago. So when this all went down, they were here Yeah. In on on my turf where I was able to help. Yeah. But, you know, you you just start adding on to like, hey, how strong is your healthcare knowledge?
Marcus:How strong is your healthcare network? How strong are your finances? How much control of your time do you have? Right? I'm an entrepreneur.
Marcus:I can, you know, if they called me right now, we're ending the show, Vic, and I'm
Vic:going. Right.
Marcus:You know what I mean? But like everybody can't do that. Yeah. And so That's right. I guess, Yeah.
Marcus:I mean, the point of putting this in here is just to sort of say that I think this is going to be a pretty traumatic wave. You know, we always talk about the silver tsunami and like what's gonna happen over the next ten years with like care for the, you know, for the boomers and everything like that. We don't We never talk about Gen X, period. But we really don't talk about like the trauma that I think our generation is about to Yeah. Go through.
Vic:That's right. And it's I mean, haven't been through it yet, so you'll, you need to comment. But there's that firefighting crisis where like there's adrenaline and you're like, it's all hands on deck just to deal with what we're facing right now. And then you have this emotional thing of, gosh, if my parents die, my own mortality, and there's a lot of fear and sadness and emotional things. And then it's a, there's a long term, like your parents are going be alive for, you know, several several years in this state where you need to help them.
Marcus:It's an
Vic:ongoing, almost like an endurance thing that becomes really hard.
Marcus:Yes. And then there's two other things I'll bring
Vic:up. Yeah.
Marcus:One is you will you will be interfacing with the healthcare industry.
Vic:Mhmm.
Marcus:Okay? Yeah. And and, you know, and it's like, for me, this is one of those things where it's like, this is why we stopped listening to people in the industry and their complaints and blah blah blah because it's like, despite best efforts and despite the best intentions and despite the this industry having some of the absolute best people, the system sucks.
Vic:Yeah. You know what
Marcus:I mean? And so, like, I'm not mad at people.
Vic:You're not helping my dad or my mom. Correct.
Marcus:Yeah. I like, I'm mad at the people. Yeah. But my god, this system, like, this system deserves no, like, reverence. Right.
Marcus:You know what I mean? Like, it it yeah. It's fine, I suppose. But, like, it absolutely needs a overhaul. Yeah.
Marcus:There's no question about it. And then the other thing is, and this is something you can kinda get out in front of, so maybe this is little bit of a PSA. I think the easiest way to sort of frame it up is in three words, power of attorney. Your ability to act on behalf of your parents and unravel and get information and get, you know, get access to their finances, get access to it's like, woah. You know what
Vic:I mean? Yeah. And my wife's trying to do that with her mother right now. And for the senior, the senior doesn't always want to give it.
Marcus:It's a relinquishing.
Vic:Yeah. Right? Yeah. You're giving up power over your own future, which is at least scary.
Marcus:Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, there there is a lot to this. Yeah. There is a lot to this.
Marcus:Alright. Let's let's run through these AI stories. Yeah. We have we have well, one one one crypto story. So, Texas put $10,000,000 into Bitcoin as Bitcoin fights to hold $78,000 support, you know.
Marcus:Bitcoin is continuing to sort of suffer from the liquidity stuff and the global, you know, Japan interest rate stuff is going on. So there's a lot of, like, global liquidity stuff that's impacting the Bitcoin price. I'm pretty long Bitcoin. Does not this is not investment advice. Yeah.
Marcus:I'm just simply, you know, disclosing my my my view on it. Is Texas the first state to do this?
Vic:First state. They're the first state to actually purchase Bitcoin
Marcus:Put on the balance sheet.
Vic:Put on the balance sheet. Yeah. So symbolically, I think it's it's worth noting.
Marcus:Yeah. They bought it through an ETF.
Vic:Yeah. So
Marcus:they bought it through a more sort of traditional model. But, you know, it's backed by Bitcoin. Right. Right? Right.
Marcus:So and they plan 5,000,000 of self custody. So, know, that's part of the 10,000,000. Right. So that's that's
Vic:And other states are are also working on it. There's just a lot
Marcus:of Yeah. I'm sure Wyoming and Tennessee and and other, you know, sort of crypto friendly states are working on it. Alright. We got three AI stories. The first one, OpenAI declares Code Red as Google threatens the AI lead.
Marcus:Company wide memo is the most decisive indication yet of pressure OpenAI phrases from competitors. You know, this is not a I told you so moment. It's for me, it's more of a, like, I just don't know why anyone ever questioned whether or not Google was going to be able to pull this off. I I think from day one, we we we basically said Google invented the transformer. Right.
Vic:They have DeepMind.
Marcus:They have DeepMind. They have the TPU chip. Like, this was always going to happen.
Vic:Always. Yeah. Yeah. And the surprising thing to me is not that Google leapfrogged them or that they are scrambling, but that the Sam is so public about saying this Code Red and cutting all those other projects and just kind of refocusing on ChatGPT because it is counterproductive, I think, to what he's trying to do.
Marcus:Welcome to the big leagues.
Vic:Yeah. Yeah. So he I think
Marcus:I mean, he jumped right in there with the absolute sharks. Right? You know? He he had he had a he had a decision to make. He could've aligned with Microsoft only.
Vic:Yeah.
Marcus:Right? And probably had a lot of safety, but he wanted to compete with Microsoft.
Vic:Yeah. Right. Which
Marcus:That that was the bet. That that was the bet as a CEO that he made. And I know I, you know, he he bet on the brand of ChatGPT and himself, bet on himself to be able to, you know, take everybody else out.
Vic:Yeah. And I think it's the beginning of the end, but we'll see. I mean, there's gonna be a lot more innings.
Marcus:I don't use ChatGPT, and I don't use it because I don't trust him.
Vic:You know I have an account, so I can test it and play with it, but I but I don't use it. It's not good enough for me to use.
Marcus:I have an account. I pay for an account, but that's just because I'm one of those guys who just pays for too many accounts.
Vic:Yeah.
Marcus:My first go to is Claude. And this is before Opus 4.5, which we're gonna talk about. Yeah. My first go to is Claude because I like Dario. Yeah.
Marcus:You know what I mean? And then my second is Google because I'm a Google guy. I do we use Google Workplace and Run Google Cloud. Yeah. Yeah.
Vic:Yeah. Gmail. Right. Drive everything. Right.
Marcus:Yeah. Right. Exactly. Yeah. And then from there, I just use sort of a Bevy.
Marcus:I I actually use Grok for real time search. Mhmm. That's my real time search is Grok because x is the the highest signal network Mhmm. In America right now. Not even not even close.
Marcus:And then Perplexity for, like, kind of research things. When I want, like, a graph generator or something like that, I use Perplexity. So ChatGPT is, like, fifth for me. Yeah. Which is and I don't have a good use case for it.
Marcus:Right?
Vic:Yeah. Like There's not there's no use case where it's the best tool.
Marcus:Not for me.
Vic:The only use case is if you're not aware of other tools and it's the only one you know. Right. It's better than not having AI at all. Right. Certainly.
Marcus:Right. And everyone keeps saying, like, they're great at product, and I'm like, I I don't I don't understand. It's a chatbot. I don't understand. Like, when you say it's great they're so great at product, I don't I don't understand what that means.
Marcus:So so speaking of Anthropic and Claude, Anthropic introduces cheaper, more powerful, more efficient Opus 4.5 model. This model is unreal, Vic.
Vic:Yes. This is what I use.
Marcus:Model is unreal. So did so I need to send this to you, but I saw I was listening to Moonshots, the the Peter Diamandis podcast, which by the way, do you listen to that?
Vic:Yeah. But not every not everyone.
Marcus:I'm not listening to everyone.
Vic:Right.
Marcus:Yeah. Yeah. You should start listening. It's it's like it's it's worth it for, like, the most bullish
Vic:AI takes Yeah.
Marcus:Out there. Right? You know, and also, like, they have Eric Schmidt and they have, like, Iman Mosek and, you know, they have, like, really top notch guests, so you should start listening. They found this this post that I then found on X, which said that Opus four point five was trained on like this 14,000 token document that actually you this guy was able to extract out for like $70 or maybe $700 of API calls, I can't quite remember. But a 14,000 token document that, like, basically says that it's like leaning toward it's not explicitly true that that Opus is saying it's a moral client, but, like, it's it's heading towards the space of, like, having a soul.
Marcus:Right? And of course, we know this is it's math model that is predicting the next token, right? But like, what it's trained on informs what its prediction is going to like, how it's going to perform. And
Vic:So explain what this I mean, 14,000 tokens is like 100 pages? Or I mean, it's Well Like, you could you could It's not a million tokens.
Marcus:I mean A token is more than a word, but less than a sentence. Yeah. Right? Right. So let's
Vic:So it's 10,000 words? No. It's 14,000. 14,000 to 20,000 words, something like that.
Marcus:I I would probably call it 25,000 words. Yeah. 25 to 30,000 words, something like that.
Vic:And that's what it was trained on? Yeah.
Marcus:Yeah. And and and you can get it out of the model.
Vic:That's one of the things. So that's
Marcus:the only yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Vic:So so they, like, prioritize that.
Marcus:Yeah. But this is the thing in Anthropic. Right? I mean, the thing in Anthropic is they're trying to align the models with humanity. Right?
Marcus:They're trying
Vic:to to be a good actor Correct. Almost in the inverse of OpenAI.
Marcus:Yes. Yes. They're they're they're trying very, very hard to be like, it's important that we understand we are messing with some serious serious stuff here.
Vic:Right.
Marcus:Right. And we need to try to be as benevolent in our work Yeah. As possible. Yeah. Right?
Marcus:On top of that, the the code that this thing generates and it is the way it performs and the way it's able to like Yeah. That's what I'm using it for right now. The way that it's able to sort of switch out of different roles is unreal. Yeah. Unreal.
Marcus:Yeah. Yeah. So, anyway, you know, listen, if you're if you're out there looking for a model that's gonna blow your mind, Opus 4.5, Claude is Opus 4.5 is
Vic:great.
Marcus:Crazy good. Alright. Final story. Teens are saying tearful goodbyes to their AI companions. Chatbot maker Character AI is cutting off access citing mental health concerns.
Marcus:I think citing legal concerns.
Vic:Yeah.
Marcus:Because they're getting sued to oblivion. Teens are distraught. I cried over it for days.
Vic:Yeah. Yeah. So, they're addicted to communicating with this technology platform that pretends to be their friend. Yes. And the fact that they are distraught and crying is just more reason that they need to be taken off.
Vic:I'm sorry that they're upset, but if you're addicted to something that's bad for you,
Marcus:yes, you have withdrawal.
Vic:But that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it.
Marcus:Yeah. You have withdrawal. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, to me, I think this is the beginning of
Vic:I mean, it's sub 13 years old. So we're not talking about an 18 year old here. Like, 13 year olds are too young.
Marcus:Yeah. Yeah. No. Listen, I think this is fantastic. I think I think it's great the character AI is doing this.
Marcus:You know, but the but the fact that that there is withdrawal is is worth, like, it's noteworthy.
Vic:Yeah. That's right.
Marcus:That's noteworthy. Right? But, yeah, I I think we are about to see an era of litigation come into AI that's that's going to be really, really interesting. Right? Really interesting.
Marcus:In this case, I think this is a good outcome. Right? Because I, you know, we we we need to find some way to manage these companies' access to our children. Yeah. And and if we can't do it through federal regulation, then fine.
Marcus:Let's let's let's sue them into oblivion until they just, No question. Make sure this stuff is I'll for
Vic:just mention, and then we won't be able to cover it fully here. The Health Care Council had their party last night. So I was there and met, I can't think of her name right now, I met this woman who's a kind of like a malpractice insurance consultant for providers only.
Marcus:Okay.
Vic:And that's interesting. But we were talking about where does the product and medical liability go if you're using an AI system to either assist the doctor or eventually take the doctor out of
Marcus:the loop
Vic:altogether. And she's in the space advising big health systems. There's no precedent, no answer, no direction. She says there's no way to know. And so it's gonna be we Well, make it up as we
Marcus:it's it's moving so much faster Yes.
Vic:Than Than the regulations can keep up.
Marcus:Than those gears can turn.
Vic:Right?
Marcus:Right. You know? And and that's that's that's gonna be part of the the the civilizational, you know, change that we're going is to is we're literally gonna be in two different worlds. Right? We're gonna be in the old world that sort of runs at this this old pace.
Vic:Right.
Marcus:And we're gonna be in this new world where, you know, software releases are are step changing every day.
Vic:Yeah.
Marcus:Not even every week. Every day, there's step changes starting to happen. Right? And so, as the two worlds pull apart, it's like you're kinda gonna have to choose which world you you really are gonna live in. Like, you gotta be able to communicate across both.
Marcus:Yeah. But, like, which one do you live in? Right? And I think that's part of what you and I are are have come to a conclusion even about this show. Right?
Marcus:It's like it's like we can't we can't cover the old world Right. Anymore, like like that. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, it just doesn't I'm
Vic:gonna live in the new world. That's it. Yeah. People wanna come along. Great.
Vic:Right. But we can't translate everything to the
Marcus:to the
Vic:old world.
Marcus:No. Okay. Thanks so much, man. Think we're doing a show next week.
Vic:Yeah. I mean, I I think so.
Marcus:I think I'm here.
Vic:Well, we're doing a show whether it's in person or
Marcus:I'm I'm pretty sure I'm here. I'm pretty sure I'm here. Alright. Thanks for pulling together, man.