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Vic & Marcus dive into the latest economic and business news, starting with the ADP jobs report showing the smallest job gains since July. They analyze the impact of tariffs on U.S. markets, discuss the drop in credit scores among student loan borrowers, and examine a $100 billion investment in U.S. chip manufacturing. The conversation shifts to healthcare with funding updates in pediatric care, ophthalmology, and chronic pain treatment, followed by insights on the growing AI cloud market...
Vic & Marcus dive into the latest economic and business news, starting with the ADP jobs report showing the smallest job gains since July. They analyze the impact of tariffs on U.S. markets, discuss the drop in credit scores among student loan borrowers, and examine a $100 billion investment in U.S. chip manufacturing. The conversation shifts to healthcare with funding updates in pediatric care, ophthalmology, and chronic pain treatment, followed by insights on the growing AI cloud market. They also discuss RFK Jr.'s policy changes on vaccine committees, Blue Cross Blue Shield’s antitrust lawsuit, and opioid settlements for hospitals. The episode rounds out with a deep dive into AI’s rapid expansion in healthcare, humanoid robots performing household tasks, AI-generated human-like voices, and major policy changes impacting SNAP benefits.
1:18 - US Firms Add 77,000 Jobs, Smallest Gain Since July
2:01 - Stocks Sink, Trump Says Tariffs on Some Mexican
5:23 - Steep Drop in Credit Scores Hits Student-Loan Borrowers
6:50 - Trump, Chip Maker TSMC Announce $100 Billion
9:07 - Banks Loan $2 Billion to Build a 100-Acre AI Data
9:48 - Value-based pediatrics practice Bluebird Kids Health clinches $31.5M
11:36 - Lumata Health raises $23M Series B
12:24 - Nervonik Raises $13 Million in Series A Financing to Advance...
12:57 - GEM HEALTH Raises $7M in Series A Funding FinSMES
13:23 - AI cloud provider CoreWeave files for IPO
14:17 - General Catalyst is considering an IPO
15:20 - RFK Jr.’s Health Department Heightens
16:47 - ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.: Measles outbreak
18:52 - In new lawsuits, dozens of health systems opt out of $2.8B Blues...
20:51 - Court approves $700M prescription opioid
23:04 - Wellvana buys CVS Medicare savings unit
24:20 - Headspace inks partnership with US Navy
25:38 - Walgreens Nears Roughly $10 Billion Deal
26:06 - Mayo Clinic unveils $1.9B expansion to Phoenix
27:28 - Novo Nordisk cuts Wegovy prices, following
29:39 - Bayer Warns of Lower Earnings as Turnaround
30:09 - The New Thinking on Concussions in Sports
32:58 - Mystery Disease Linked to Bats Kills Scores in Congo
34:12 - RFK Jr. and His Allies Target Trump’s Beloved Soda
37:12 - AvaSure debuts bedside AI virtual care
38:01 - Google Cloud expands AI-powered
38:43 - Microsoft launches voice-activated AI assistant
39:18 - Baxter debuts voice-activated wearable
39:478
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, man.
I'm going to get some sun this weekend.
Yeah, you
deserve it.
Oh, I can't wait.
Can't wait.
Miami, here I come.
I haven't been there in a minute.
Uh, so I'm actually, I'm actually pretty excited about it.
The weather looks fantastic.
No like crazy storms or anything like that.
It's not too hot, not too cold.
Uh, can't wait to eat some good Cuban food.
Nice.
It's gonna be good.
It's gonna be good.
How about you, man?
What's your plans for the weekend?
I don't really have plans.
My wife is taking our son to Cabo for his senior spring break craziness.
So I avoided that.
Um.
And then my son from Tulane is back on spring break.
He stayed for Mardi Gras and all the craziness.
Um, good for him, but he got back last night.
Uh, so he's the rest of the spring break.
He's just kind of laying low.
So it would just be Charlie and I, which is fun.
Oh, awesome.
Awesome.
That is what Tulane is for though.
Yeah.
Yes.
They're going to college and staying for Mardi Gras.
Yes, that's awesome, man.
That's awesome.
Um, we have a packed show and I got a deadline to get out of the, out of here.
So, uh, with that, let's do it.
Yeah.
Let's dig in.
All right.
We're starting with the ADP front run of the BLS data report.
Um, jobs, uh, were added 77, 000, which is the smallest gain since July.
Yeah.
Go down a little bit.
There's, um, is a graph there.
So we don't know what the BLS jobs report will be tomorrow yet.
Cause we're recording on Thursday.
Right.
Um, but I think most people are expecting it to be well, I mean, maybe not the lowest in that long, but, but pretty low and, and, uh, the government employers are, uh, have been a big source of new job growth and that.
That clearly is not the case.
In fact, it might be probably going down.
Right, right.
Taking that to the next step, uh, Wall Street Journal, U. S. delays tariffs on some Mexican and Canadian goods.
Stocks decline.
The stock index is definitely down.
The tariff news is, uh, you know, not welcome, um, for, for, uh, equity investors.
Yeah, and just the uncertainty, where like, it changes, I don't know, it changes every couple hours, I feel like, so that stock market doesn't like that.
I don't like that.
Well, I think, I think when you combine the, uh, the clear layoffs and the cuts in government spending, which is for sure part of GDP, um, and when you combine that with tariffs, I mean, that's, that's just a makeup for, uh, a slow GDP sort of forecast, uh, for the future, right?
Yeah, I mean, in the near term, meaning the next three, six months, I think it's clearly negative for our economy.
It might be that it spurs investment in the U. S. and, and growth of new jobs, but, but whether that times up quickly enough to, to impact this year, I don't know.
It might mean that may be true in, in five years, not five months.
And so certainly we're going to get job losses in tariff.
Slowdowns quickly.
And then I think the Trump administration is hoping there'll be investment in growth.
I'm hoping for that.
I mean, everyone, I want there to be job growth, but I'm not sure it's going to come as fast as the losses are coming.
Yeah.
But, but after a, after a process.
Yeah, it's gonna, it's gonna be a process of cutting and, and tariffs, and then it'll probably turn, but how fast it turns is a question.
I
mean, we're gonna talk a little bit ahead about, you know, some net new investments that are coming into the United States and, and that's going to, you know, people are talking about this could herald in a golden age of American manufacturing that we haven't seen in, you know.
Who knows how long it's been since, you know, Detroit and, and, uh, other cities were, were really strong in manufacturing.
Um, but, but in, in the, in the near term, in the near term, um, and I guess, you know, there, there is something to be said for the fact that the S& P for at least the last two years has delivered.
There's ridiculous returns.
You know what I mean?
Like, like you basically could just stick your money in there and not do anything.
You need 20 percent a year.
So, you know, it might, it
might be time.
I mean, it's time for a little retrenchment and, and pause.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It might be, it might be time.
I mean, I, I mean, we're VCs.
It's a lot easier to cut than it is to grow new, new jobs.
Yeah.
Just, it's a slow process to like figure out who you're going to.
You know, what do you need to hire?
And then you start hiring, it's, I think it's slower.
It's faster to cut.
Well, our market did not have the good fortune of the stock market over the last two years, right?
Because IPO windows have been closed.
And so all of those good tidings of the 20%, you know, year over year returns on the S& P actually was bad for us because, you know, our job is to beat the S& P as VCs.
And if there's no IPOs, it's kind of hard to do that.
Yeah, I just mean when we go to the next one where there's, well, when we talk about an investment of some big amount of money, right, that's going to be a slow process to actually hire people.
Yeah.
Uh, so next wall street journal stories, deep drop in credit scores, hit student loan borrowers, around 43 percent of those who owe payments haven't resumed making them.
It was several years where you didn't have to make payments.
And Now you must make payments again, but a lot of student loan borrowers, maybe they've moved there where they live, or they don't, they don't check their mail that often, or they just haven't read things.
And so some percentage of those 43%.
Don't even really know they have to pay it anymore, but you get a significant knock on your credit report by missing missing one
Yeah, yeah, the the the story here Talks about this this young lady who was notified by her bank that her credit score dropped from 720 to which is pretty good to 620, um, so 100 point drop is pretty significant.
Uh, she discovered she was more than 90 days delinquent on payments for her 16, 000 in student loans and her mortgage broker estimated the lower score would cost would add 400 to the monthly payment for the new home she wanted to buy.
So it's, you know, I mean, this is a really costly.
Yeah, it changes your trajectory.
Totally.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, I mean, I think some percentage of people probably can't pay it or really would rather not pay it, but there's also just a tension thing where they've been used to not doing it.
It's out of topic.
It's not top of mind anymore.
Right.
Right.
Exactly.
Uh, Trump and TSMC announced a hundred billion dollar investment in the U.
S. So TSMC is the Taiwan semiconductor manufacturing company.
Um, so this is the big chip maker in, in Taiwan, and them investing a hundred billion dollars into a chip making, uh, facility here in the United States is a big deal.
Um, a, it's, it's more manufacturing power here.
Mm-hmm . On state side, uh, which will be, uh, duty free.
So no, no, no tariffs right, uh, on that, but also, um, starts the process of, of, uh, deescalating the strategic imperative around Taiwan as.
Sort of, you know, the, the chess match around that with China continues to progress.
Yeah.
I mean, us bringing onto.
onto our shores, strategically valuable manufacturing chips.
We, I think we talked about pharmaceuticals previously.
There's core things that I think we all became aware in COVID like, gosh, maybe it's not totally safe for our country to not have any capabilities.
That's right.
So bringing TSMZ, TSMC to the U S is, is great.
This kind of announcement.
This is what I meant when, so it was a hundred billion, a big investment.
It's going to take years to, that's right.
Find the site break ground all the construction.
It's a wonderful thing and it's gonna be a slow process.
Yeah, we're good
Yeah, and also it's it's chip manufacturing and I think we're gonna we have an extended AI roll up today because hims happened So we got a bunch of like new news coming out of hims, but there's also just the idea that these technical jobs There's going to be a lot of automation in, in, in these manufacturing facilities.
So it's, it's not entirely clear that these are going to be the factories that we all sort of envision, you know, when we think about factories.
Yeah.
It's not like the, you know, the model T assembly line with all these.
Got at that point guys, big
machines and guys right around it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I think, uh, data centers have very few people for the square feet they have.
Right, right.
And chip fabs are, are not quite that extreme, but, but it's it's on that same trajectory.
Yeah, exactly.
Uh.
Another, you talk about data centers, uh, banks have loaned 2 billion to build a hundred acre AI data center in Utah.
I think it's great.
This is a spec building.
I mean, it's, it's a real estate developer who was able to get the, the land and importantly, the power to the site.
Um.
In order to build this big data center and then it got financed by J. P. Morgan and Star Wars.
So, it's a, it's a good thing that we're now seeing this sort of, um, spec data centers.
We need a lot of capacity and so I think it's, it's great.
But again, not gonna be, I mean a big data center maybe has a hundred workers.
Yeah.
It's not, not a huge number of people.
All right, moving into, uh, VC deals, value based pediatrics practice, Blue Bird Kids Health clinches 31.
5 million to expand in Florida.
Uh, the premise here, first of all, this round was co led by F Prime and Forrest Expendures, so solid firms.
Um, and the premise here is basically that half of, uh, children in the United States are enrolled in Medicaid or CHIP.
Um, and there's just not enough, uh, You know, not enough clinics, not enough clinicians that are able to see them.
And so they crash into the E. R. far too often.
And I mean, I haven't, I just made an investment in, in pediatric, uh, PTOT.
So I've been looking into this space sort of in the few months up until that.
We made it maybe two months ago.
It is, there is a shortage of pediatricians, pediatrician practices, especially in this niche of Medicaid.
Um, so I think it's great.
It's a hard space, but great that they're entering it.
Yeah, hard, hard space, um, there's gonna be a lot of pressure to demonstrate value.
Um, and this is mostly tea leaves, but, um, you know, it's, it's unlikely.
Even with all the hand wringing around, uh, needing to save money, uh, cutting healthcare to kids is just not politically viable.
You know, the Republican governors are not going to be okay with that.
Right.
So, um, I, but looking for fraud, waste and abuse, looking for.
You know, um, using better technology, looking for, for better proof of outcomes, those kinds of things.
I do think we're going to see increased pressure there.
So these net new companies, um, have an opportunity to sort of carve out differentiation in terms of applying tech, producing better data, producing better outcomes and doing it at a lower cost.
Yeah, that's right.
Lamada Health raises 23 million in a series B.
This is a virtual ophthalmology care platform,
which again, um, they're attacking a particular niche.
Um, and we've done a lot of work in eye care and ophthalmology.
It's a great space.
It's sort of in that, it's in that niche of a lot of patient pay, um, but then there still is coverage in a lot of areas.
So I think it's a good, pretty efficient market, but good place to invest.
Yep, uh, the, the investors in this are, uh, LRV Health, McKesson Ventures, Sensora Ventures, and Cortado Ventures, uh, which is an existing investor, and they participated, I know the guys at Cortado, so congrats to them.
That's a, that's a nice, nice markup they got there.
Uh, Nervonic raises 13 million in a Series A financing to advance next generation peripheral nerve stimulation for chronic pain relief.
Yeah, pain relief is a, is a A really big issue that we need to find new solutions for.
So, um, trying to find next generation tools, I think is great.
I don't know the details of this, but more, more people working on it is, is a great thing.
And, uh, the round was led by a US VP.
Um, you know, we've worked with them, good folks there.
All right, let's see, what do we got next here?
Gem Health raises 7 million in a series A funding.
So this is a Minneapolis based company that does a virtual specialty care focusing on sleep care.
Yeah, sleep, exactly.
So, um, sleep is kind of, um, it can be diagnosed now from a couple of different specialties, but it's hard to get the Diagnosis is limited in the sleep labs.
And so I think they're, they're sort of adding to that.
All right.
Now moving into IPOs.
So AI cloud provider core weave files for their IPO.
Um, they sell cloud based processing from, uh, NVIDIA.
Um, headed for the public market.
Makes, makes a lot of sense.
New, new cloud provider headed to an IPO.
It makes sense.
Um, they generated 1.
92 billion in 2024 revenues up 737 percent year over year.
Um, and Microsoft accounted for 62 percent of CoreWeave's revenues.
So that's just ridiculous, right?
I mean, you think about Microsoft and, and, and Azure and them having their own cloud platform, their own direct relationship with NVIDIA, and they
still need
this capacity.
I mean, this just shows you how much room there is to build out data centers in cloud.
Yes.
When it comes to AI, right?
Specifically.
Yeah,
and I'm hoping that They get a great response.
I want to see more IPOs because I'm biased like that.
Uh, and then a scoop from Axios here, the general catalyst is considering an IPO.
We've talked, I feel like over the life of the show, that they are not a normal VC firm at all with the things that they are doing.
Um, you know, most recently and probably, you know, most, uh, importantly, buying a. Hospital.
Yeah, right, right.
That's just not something a VC does.
Uh, and so important.
This is kind of like a scoop.
You know, Axios has a lot of sort of inside information, um, based on sources, not like, you know,
yeah,
based on sources.
Uh, and, and so, uh, this would be the first U. S. venture capital firm to take the public.
Plunge.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, Sequoia was sort of gearing up and getting their act together to be ready to do it, but then they, they never did.
That's
right.
That's right.
Um, I think it's, it's healthy.
I'd like to see them go public, but I agree.
They're, they're sort of, I mean, I don't think it's a signal that a lot of VCs are going to, they're a different
animal.
No, they're a completely different animal.
Um, all right, getting into policy now, RFK juniors health department heightens the scrutiny of vaccines.
It's a wall street journal story.
Uh, and they are.
Basically, we're reviewing contracts and surprise, surprise, going to replace vaccine advisors in RFK's first few weeks at the helm.