Health:Further

Show Notes

In this episode, Vic and Marcus cover a packed week of developments across AI, healthcare, finance, and policy. They break down Eric Cass’s keynote at HFMA on AI risks and optimism, discuss GenAI’s real-world implications on labor and politics, and explore the financial market's response to Middle East ceasefires and Federal Reserve positioning. They examine major investments like Abridge’s $300M raise and new startups automating clinical and insurance workflows, while unpacking RFK Jr.’s wearable health proposal and CMS’s drug pricing transparency push. They also introduce a new Web3 segment, highlighting stablecoin regulation, Fiserv’s partnership with Circle, and tokenized SpaceX shares through Republic. Finally, they review healthcare job cuts, upcoming legislation turmoil, and Walgreens’ operational shifts.

Links

8:50 - Stocks Hover Near Records, Oil Prices Recover Some Ground WSJ

10:09 - Powell Reaffirms Wait-and-See Posture on Rate Cuts WSJ

12:57 - U.S. Regulators Move to Ease Financial Crisis-Era Bank Capital Rules WSJ

13:45 - Abridge, Whose AI App Takes Notes for Doctors, Valued at $5.3 Billion at Funding WSJ

15:06 - Voice AI company SuperDial picks up $15M series A to automate insurance calls Fierce Healthcare

15:58 - Introducing Mandolin: AI Teammates for Healthcare Greylock website

16:49 - Juniper Genomics Raises $4.6M for Whole-Genome Embryo Screening Platform Fem Tech

17:42 - ForSight Robotics raises $125M to trial cataract eye surgery platform Fierce Healthcare

18:27 - Precision Medicine Firm Caris Breaks Bio IPO Drought, Raising $494M for Cancer Analysis Tools MedCity News

19:24 - Medicaid changes don't meet Senate rules in 'big, beautiful bill' says parliamentarian NPR

22:42 - HHS Secretary Kennedy, CMS Administrator Oz Secure Industry Pledge to Fix Broken Prior Authorization System HHS website

25:40 - RFK Jr.'s Public Health Plan? Get Every American to Buy a Wearable Device PC Mag

30:21 -33:28 Oz hints at impending CMS rule to force drug price transparency Healthcare Dive

33:28 - Executive insight from Aetna, Anterior, Ascendium and more

37:16 - HFMA’s Ann Jordan announces new tools to quantify the performance of healthcare

41:55 - Vanderbilt University Medical Center announces up to 650 layoffs Axios

42:37 - American Hospital Association launches 'seven-figure' ad campaign against Medicaid cuts Fierce Healthcare

45:23 - Walgreens Sales Rise on Healthcare and Costs Cuts Ahead of Going Private WSJ HFMA Annual Recap: HFMA

46:13b - New Data Shows Just How Powerful the Next Weight-Loss Drugs May Be NYT

47:09 - Hims & Hers Stock Drops More Than 30% After Novo Nordisk Breakup WSJ

48:08 - Novo Nordisk inks partnership with WeightWatchers to broaden We

HF Site

YOUTUBE
INSTAGRAM
TWITTER
FACEBOOK
LINKEDIN
TIKTOK

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.

Alright.

How's it going?

It's going well.

It's uh, it's been a busy week, but a good week hopefully getting my last new investment in fund two under term sheet.

It's been negotiation, but uh, you know, sometimes the best companies, it takes a while to negotiate.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Uh, it's interesting, uh, as we're recording this, um, we, we looked at the, um, top of the Wall Street Journal website and, you know, it's like all greens.

Yeah.

You know, except for the vix, which is great.

Um, and feels kind of crazy that in between last week's show and this week's show, um, there was escalation of a war.

Yeah.

Ceasefire.

I. Burken Cease Fire President Trump went on television, dropped an F bomb.

Yeah.

Market did all sorts of stuff like that.

But we're, we're now on the other side and now it's back in a week.

So like, we're not, like, it's literally not news anymore to talk about.

Right.

But like that, that's what happened in between the two shows.

Right, right.

Yeah.

The pace of is crazy now.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

It's, it's just such an interesting thing about a week.

Yeah.

When we started this, I was worried like, are we gonna have enough to talk about?

And then now it's like, gosh, we can't even cover everything.

Yeah.

We can't cover everything.

Uh, I had a good week, uh, started on Sunday at, um, h FMAs annual conference in Denver.

Uh, great turnout, just shy.

4,000 in attendance.

Um.

It was great.

It was great, you know, installed a new chair and, and, uh, had some great keynote speakers.

A guy named Eric Cass, who, uh, used to work at OpenAI and now he's an entrepreneur in residence and, uh, professor at UVA.

He's got a consulting firm and drained a book and all that kind of stuff.

But, you know, his, we need people that have been out in the valley to work with industry, so that's good.

Yeah, exactly.

So, um, I, I thought, I thought he, he did a very, very good job, um, from a keynote perspective, and his position was just all around, you know, trying to frame up in terms that I wouldn't quite call a fourth grader could understand, but probably a seventh grader mm-hmm.

Could understand, you know, like what, what AI is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And not technically, but practically, yeah, right.

Practically what it means for society.

Thought he did a really good job with that.

His, his position was very optimistic, but he did highlight, um.

What he thought the, the big risks were.

The thing he's most afraid of is low resource bad actors.

Uh, so high resource would be nation states.

Yeah.

Right.

Um, low resource would be person in the garage.

Person in garage, like using an AI tool to figure out something that they wouldn't be able to do otherwise.

Person in the garage.

Exactly.

Right.

And, and that, that kind of punctuated his whole point, which is, um, what AI is doing is this bringing the marginal cost of intelligence down to near zero effectively.

So it's, you know, um, it's going the route of all technologies where the, the marginal cost gets basically slammed down to the ground, um, to make it accessible to everybody.

But, you know, in the past that's been sort of, you know, whether it's in the world of atoms or the world of bits, it's been process power.

Right.

It has not yet been intelligence.

It's not the same thing.

Right.

You have, you have to put human intelligence into process power in order to create value.

Um, this is fundamentally intelligence, right?

And so, um, what that means is, uh, you know, and, and he was, he was, he was pretty clear, like, you know, it's already basically smarter than all of us today.

Yeah.

And, you know, it's only gonna get more.

So he did a good job of laying out that he thought, you know, the Agentic era would really hit in 2027, which I, I think is 2027.

Yeah.

Well, in terms of like being like real, not being something everyone was talking about or getting on conferences Yeah.

Or doing press releases about Right.

You know what I mean?

Like Yeah.

Because we're not really there yet.

Yeah.

As, as you, as you talk about every week.

Yeah.

When you talk about you can't get the thing to work in Slack.

Right.

You, you know what I mean?

So right now we're just talking about it and reading headlines about it.

It's not real in our day-to-day lives.

Yeah.

I, I, I think it's a fair bet to say a year and a half from now we'll be in an era where it's not.

Conference fodder, and it's not headlines and it's not for shorts on, you know, Instagram.

Yeah.

But it's, it's practically, I'll take the under on that.

I think it's, I think it's in mid 2026, but, but it could be wrong.

Look, it's hard to know.

I mean, it's all changing quickly.

Yeah.

It's, it's, it's hard to know.

I, I, I guess, I guess from my perspective, uh, I haven't seen it yet, so.

Mm-hmm.

To me, we're effectively a square Yeah.

Zero with a bunch of demos that people do on stage, you know, but nothing prac practical that, that I would really replace anything with.

Right?

Mm-hmm.

So, anyway, um.

I thought he w he, I thought he did a, he did a good job.

Um, he also was very educated on the healthcare space.

Um, sort of came from a family of doctors.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and so, you know, very knowledgeable about that.

You know, covered the clinical labor shortage into the future.

Kind of like we talk about with TK about all the time.

So, um, had that, that perspective really nailed and was, you know, he, he was not dismissive of the job loss identity crisis problem.

Yeah.

Which is, yeah.

He wasn't dismissive of it, but I think he, he basically, he's basically betting on human adaptability, you know, to kind of mm-hmm.

Get us to the other side of that, which, um, I think to some degree makes sense.

But I also think when you look at the result of the New York City Democratic mayoral primary mm-hmm.

Um, and, uh.

You know, Momani beating Cuomo.

Um, and I think, I think largely driven by young people.

I, you know, I, I can't, I can't say how it actually broke down demographically from a voting block, but I looked at his, his, his, uh, election, you know, party.

Yeah.

And it was all young people in there.

Yeah.

Right.

You know, and I think young people are, you know, rightfully looking at what AI practically means for them today.

And it either represents organizations that are gonna hold with their existing workforce, AI, FI, that existing workforce to get twice as much productivity so there's still not new jobs flowing in.

Right?

Mm-hmm.

Or they're gonna cut.

Um, but no matter what that entry level knowledge worker Yeah.

If you're 22, does not.

That's not gonna help you either way.

That's right.

The entry level knowledge worker job is really pretty.

Yeah.

Pretty screwed.

And, and I, and I think, you know, largely the Democratic party is full of educated people.

You know, it's a lot of educated people on that party.

Mm-hmm.

Especially white people, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

A lot of like college grads.

Yeah.

Right.

And so they're probably looking at this prospect and they're saying, you know, between, between hyper capitalism of big tech and ai, socialism's starting to look pretty, pretty good right about now.

I mean, I think populism on the left turns into socialism often.

It doesn't have to, but that, that's the end state of it.

Yeah.

Um, so I mean, there's gonna be a populous movement from the left.

It has to be to counter the Republican populist movement.

It has to be.

Yeah.

I mean, the centrist movement has no, it's not gonna work.

No.

Against it.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

So, so anyway, um, I, I just thought that there was a lot of things this week that rhymed, you know?

Yeah.

And it feel, it feels like it's all starting to, uh, come out of our podcast and more into real life, you know?

But, but, but it, but it just depends on the lens through which you see it.

Like, I, I'm not sure how many people look at the mom, Donny Wynn, and think AI is playing a role in that, you know?

But I, I think it's, I think it's, yeah, I think it's, I I, I'm not saying it's the chief factor in it, but I, I think when you look at the impact it's gonna have on the workforce and who it is likely to impact the worst.

Yeah.

The trends, the trends were in place already.

Yeah.

The high inflation, low upward mobility has been going on for 15 years.

Yeah.

Since the great financial crisis.

But it's an accelerant.

AI is sort of accelerating these trends.

I. In a way that just makes it much easier for people to see.

Yeah.

Agree.

Alright.

Uh, we got a long show Yeah.

To cover.

Yeah.

Let's, uh, let's dig in.

Uh, alright, so to the point of, uh, all the stuff in the Middle East, uh, once that got resolved and we got back to, you know, ceasefire peace in the Middle East.

Yeah.

Stock market kind of ripped.

Yeah.

All, everyone is excited on Wall Street.

Um, and I think that there's a lot of optimism.

I, it is maybe not gonna flow down to the, what we call the bottom slant of the K, but, but if you have more than half of your net worth in financial assets, your home stocks, bonds, other assets.

I. You're doing pretty well this week or in general?

Yeah.

So, uh, near records for the stock market.

Uh, oil prices did not sort of get to the dreaded place.

Everyone was, was really, really worried about, um, you know, given Ian's position.

So yeah.

You know, good, good news for the markets and, and, uh, you know, probably more importantly, uh, you know, good that there's a ceasefire.

Yeah.

And we definitely, and, and the, you know, the people of, of Israel and Iran Yeah.

Get a, get a break from the terror and the Trump administration is pushing for, uh.

Similar ceasefire in Gaza.

Yeah.

It's not done yet, but we, we need ceasefires all over the place anymore.

Yeah.

We've too, so much war going on in the world right now.

Yeah.

It's, you know, people thrown on World War III and for good reason.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

For good reason.

Uh, Powell reaffirms the wait and see posture on rate cuts.

He, he, uh, you know, called out the Trump tariffs, uh mm-hmm.

In, in, in his, his latest positioning on this.

And, uh, went in front of Congress and sort of defended his position, uh, was a little bit under attack.

I, I, I felt like from, from, uh, you know, the sitting Congress people.

Um, but you know, he's, he's the Fed chair, you know what I mean?

It's like he's, he's gotta show up.

He's gotta explain himself, but he doesn't have to change his mind, you know?

Yeah.

I mean, I think that, uh, I mean, the last story we talked about how the financial markets are doing pretty well, but I.

The Fed.

If the Fed doesn't know where the job growth is headed and I think not headed, then who does?

I mean, they, they have, they're supposed to figure that out.

And so for him saying he is gonna take a wait and see approach and gonna wait until there's a bunch of layoffs and then do something, or wait until there's signs of inflation or not inflation, I think we need the Fed to try to get some better forward looking data.

But, but he doesn't have it right now.

No, no, he doesn't have it right now.

I mean, it, it, it's, it, it's starting to feel like he is communicating that Trump is so unpredictable that he can't effectively model forward looking.

Um, that's, that's, this is my interpretation.

I haven't read anyone else say that.

Yeah.

That's just, that's my read on the dynamic and the story.

Yeah.

He and here, Trump are not friends.

No, no, they're not.

But independent of whether he likes the president or not, he still has a job to do and, well, he, he, he would argue he's doing his job Right.

I mean, you know.

Okay.

I I, I'm just, I'm just, yeah.

I, I think his job is to predict where prices and jobs are going, and not just sit here and wait until something falls apart, but maybe we have a different interpretation of Yeah.

I, I mean, look, I, I guess the only thing I would say is, is I told our investors in our second fund that I'm gonna wait until HHS gets clear on what they're doing before I make our first investment.

Right.

Yeah.

So, uh, you know, I don't know.

I, I'm, I, I guess I'm just, I.

I'm trying to, I'm, I'm, I'm trying to still You're running a venture fund though.

I know.

I'm still where you, if you're patient, that's your job.

If, if there are layoffs this fall.

Yeah, I know.

The Fed policy takes 12 to 18 months to take effect.

I know.

It's not gonna help those people.

I know.

You're absolutely right.

Absolutely right.

Uh, moving on US regulators move to ease financial crisis era, bank capital rules.

So this is, uh, coming outta treasury.

Scott Bestin is, you know, trying to make the, you know, t bills more attractive.

Yeah.

We, we need to sell a lot of treasury.

Yeah.

Bills and bonds.

Yeah.

And the banks have said since the great financial crisis that.

They maybe shouldn't be required to keep reserves against us Treasury bonds the same way they would a stock portfolio or a residential loan portfolio.

Corporate loan portfolio.

Right.

And I think that makes sense to me.

And And it would have the effect then of encouraging banks to buy all more bonds.

Yep.

And so this will happen in the next week or so?

I think they've been talking about it for six months.

Yep.

Uh, alright.

Moving into.

VC world, uh, abridge.

We, we talk about them usually on the ai mm-hmm.

Rundown.

Um, but this is a financing for them.

Uh, they are now valued at $5.3 billion.

The company raised $300 million in a round, led by a 16 Z.

Um, their CEO Chiral, Dr. Dr.

Chira, um, came outta UPMC.

Um, yeah, so he, he, he ran innovation over there and, uh, when we were looking at his timeline, it, it overlapped.

He basically launched a bridge out of, uh, that time that he was there.

And so, you know, the businesses, I don't know what it, eight years old at this point, something like that.

Um, yeah, I would said six when he launch in 19 six.

Yeah.

Six or six, somewhere in there.

No, no, six.

He launched it in 2019.

Yeah.

So, so six years in, um, yeah, he ca he launched it before Gen ai.

Before Gen ai.

Yep.

And so then he was perfectly positioned to be the first ambient listening.

That's right.

Really effective.

That's right.

Tool.

That's right.

So, so good for him, you know?

Yeah.

Good for him.

And, and, uh, I hope UPM C's got a share of this because, you know, it's, it's illiquid, but I'm sure their balance sheet would appreciate it given some of the other challenges they've been facing over the last, uh, 12, 18 months.

Um, any other notes about this one?

I mean, which is clearly, you know, they're, they're a market leader.

Yeah.

They're a market leader now at this point.

5.3 billion is a great valuation, so congrats to them.

Uh, voice AI company Super Dial picks up $15 million Series A to automate insurance calls.

This is out of Fierce Healthcare.

Yeah.

So this is, um.

One of many agents that are sort of populating out into healthcare services and insurance in this case, really, this is not in the, on the, in the clinical side or in the, in the sort of insurance, you know, figuring out Medicare claims side, it's in the servicing, calling members and maybe changing an address or doing, um, support things.

And I think it's really effective at that.

I don't know this company, but we have two investments in that space.

AI's really good at, at sort of this logistics sort of stuff.

It doesn't get frustrated with customers when they ask, you know, where's the, any key Yep.

And that sort of stuff.

Alright, moving on.

Uh, mandolin AI is, uh, tell me about this one.

Yeah, so this is another agent company.

Okay.

Uh, but it is in the clinic, so it is um, did they raise around?

Yeah.

Well, Greylock.

Funded them.

Okay.

So this is Greylock's, like, like post about it's internal?

Yes.

Okay.

Yes.

And they didn't, they didn't disclose release it anywhere else.

Okay.

And they didn't disclose how much they raised how much?

No.

Okay.

Alright.

Um, but Greylock typically does a decent size round.

Yeah, yeah.

That's a big decent.

Um, so they, they are, um, helping clinicians kinda navigate the, um, pre-approval place or, you know, um, and reimbursement, kind of the, the prior auth is what I'm trying to say.

They're, they're navigating that piece.

So it's getting into the delivery of care with agents now.

Okay.

Uh, Juniper Genomics raises 4.6 million for whole genome embryo screening platform.

Yeah.

So this is, um, uh, an in vitro fertilization company that now is sort of branching into all while you're doing that, also screening your genome, which is I think can be really valuable to prevent.

You know, birth effects and, and really bad things.

It also is the on-ramp to maybe things that are, there's a lot of questions about, uh, the morality.

Like, should you screen for intelligence?

Should you screen for athletic prowess?

Should you screen for whatever, not just prevent disease, but enhance things.

Um, and so they're, they're sort of moving in that direction.

They're not doing the longevity enhancement right now, but, but I think that's, that's why to cover it.

Okay.

Foresight Robotics raises 125 million for, uh, a trial, cataract eye surgery platform.

Yeah.

So this is robotic surgery.

Um, sort of like, um, the robots that we use in, um, in healthcare right now.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, but for cataract surgery and there is not enough, uh, ophthalmologists in the market.

To do the cataract surgeries that we need.

So I think it's a great thing.

I don't mean there, it's early, so they are getting started.

They haven't, they haven't done any human trials yet.

Uh, but, but could be great if it works out.

Okay.

Uh, they raised a series B led by Eclipse.

So it's a big firm.

Yeah.

Alright.

Precision medicine firm, Carris breaks bio IPO drought.

Although, I mean, I take a little bit of issue with that because they're really an AI machine learning company, not a proper biotech.

Biotech selling to bio.

Yeah.

Yeah, they're selling into bio.

Uh, but they raised, uh, $494 million for a cancer analysis tool and, um.

They have a, they have a market cap north of 7 billion.

So this is press a pretty, you know, great.

IPO for the biotech world, even though it's not an asset-based biotech company.

It's a, you know, tech-based biotech company.

Yeah.

I mean, it's not directly in life sciences.

No, it's more adjacent, but I'll, I'll take the wind.

I mean, it sort, you know, they, they got out public, the stock price closed up almost 30% on day one.

Yeah.

It's great.

Um, so it's good.

Yeah.

So I mean, look, I, IPO news is, is great.

Congratulations to, uh, to Caras for, um, a successful IPO that ended up, up and like I said, seven, $7 billion.

That, that's a, that's a decent size IPO lately, you know?

Yeah.

So that's great.

Alright, moving into policy from, uh, NPR, which.

You know, uh, they're on the chopping block too for funding with the house right now.

Yeah.

Uh, but Medicaid changes don't meet Senate rules in big beautiful bills as parliamentarian.

I mean, the drama in this story, uh, it is June 26th, Vic.

Yeah.

And, and like, you know, when we talked about whether or not they were gonna get this done on time before it was, it was about alignment, but, you know, we're throwing in some twists and turns to the story here.

Like all of the Medicaid stuff everyone's been freaking out about this.

Parliamentarian says it, it effectively doesn't count as a proper budget adjustment in a reconciliation process.

Is that correct?

Yeah.

Let me try to say this correctly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Correct.

What's, what's the, what's the correct terminology here?

I think that's basically right.

Okay.

Uh, in order to not be subject to a filibuster.

Okay.

Which is a archaic Senate only thing.

Yeah.

But it happens.

Um, you, um, Senator Bird who's not alive anymore, created this reconciliation process to avoid the filibuster and be able to pass legislation with 51 votes or 50 plus the vice president.

And they need to do that because the Republicans don't have 60 votes.

Right.

And so they have put, that's why it's called this big beautiful bill.

They can only do one bill and that's probably the only thing the Senate will pass all year.

Right.

Of consequence.

Um, and so they put a, a bunch of stuff in it and there's a title called a Parliamentarian of the Senate who's not in either political party.

Yes.

Nonpartisan is work works for the, the Senate itself.

And I think it's a woman she.

Has declared that the, the reduction in the cap of the Medicaid supplemental tax process in the states going from 6% to 3%, which would save a bunch of money for the federal budget, even though it would save money for the federal budget.

It is not a budgetary item.

I'm not sure how she made that determination, but she, she did.

And so it can't be included in the big brief bill because it, it's not a budgetary item, so they cannot keep it in, if they wanna use the reconciliation process, which they have to do, which means they gotta take it out, and then it's gonna increase the, the debt and, and cost a lot more money, and it doesn't have the offset.

And so a bunch of people on the Republican side won't vote for it if it, if it raises the debt too much.

So it's in chaos right now.

I think as we are recording this.

Trump has a whole maybe 20 Republican leaders in the over office trying to strong on them into doing something.

Um, but it's not clear what they're gonna do, and then they have to go to the house.

I mean, yeah.

Yeah.

We, we still haven't even gotten back to the house yet.

Right.

Yeah.

Uh, I mean, not much more to talk about, but it, it, you would think that they would've asked the parliamentarian ahead of time, but maybe she doesn't opine until the end.

I don't know.

Maybe.

Who knows?

But, gosh, high high drama.

Yeah, high drama for sure.

Um, a win for, uh, HHS and, and and RFK Jr. Uh, this is a. Press release on the HHS website.

Uh, HHS Secretary Kennedy, CMS Administrator, Oz Secure Industry Pledge to fix broken prior Authorization Systems.

So basically this week, um, they got, and, and ah, h had had a big conference this week.

Mm-hmm.

So potentially this was something that was announced for, for, ah, I, um, but they had a round table.

It was a hip Aetna, blue Cross, blue Shield Association Care First, Centene, Cigna, ance, GuideWell, Highmark, Humana, Kaiser, and UnitedHealthcare all basically pledged to, um, improve prior auth.

Yeah.

So, you know, I mean, I think the, the interesting thing is this is the kind of administration that I feel like they, they will hold people to things like this, you know, this, this, right.

They're not, hopefully, they're not really like a press release kind of kind of administration.

They're, they're pretty like nail to the wall on stuff administration.

So, uh.

I, I, I actually think this is news.

Yeah.

Actually this is news and it'll be, it'll be great if we can have just fair and clear kind of rules of the road.

Like, these things are approved, these are not approved unless you do A, B, C, and DI think physicians can, can manage with that.

Yeah.

It's, it's the unknown, the uncertainty and the rules different every time.

That's hard.

Yeah.

So look, I mean, I, I think that's, that It's a good thing.

It's a good thing.

Yeah.

Um, you know, and, and, and look, credit, credit to, to, uh, at, at, at least Dr. Ross.

I'm, I'm not sure if Arthur Jr.

Was, was actually at, um, a hip, but it sounds like he was, um, you know, Dr. Oz also, you know, came out to the HFMA, uh, not-for-profit.

Um.

Conference, um, investor conference.

Yeah.

So like the guy's making the rounds.

Yeah.

He's not just sitting in DC he's, he's getting out to these, you know, big industry events.

Yeah.

And he's, and he's meeting with the industry and he's, he's kind of making the points that, that need to be made.

So, yeah, I mean, you know, that's, that's, I don't know that I agree with everything that the Trump administration's cabinet does, but one thing that we've talked about before that I think is true is they all have pretty good ability to speak with credibility to whatever industry they're covering.

You may not like what they're saying, but they know the different sides of the issue, and then they take a strong opinion and they're not having to like, wait for President Trump to do something.

They're out doing it.

Which I think is a good template for both sides, Democrats and Republicans going forward.

I mean, at least true in the industries that we, that we.

We track.

Yeah.

You know, um, you know, when I think about Best End, Dr. Oz, you know, David Sachs again, may not like, may not like, you know, their positions on base.

Yeah.

But they know, they may not like their positions on base.

They know the big players, but Yeah.

Yeah.

But it's not, yeah.

But it's not, it's not intellectually honest to say that they're not Right.

Well-informed people.

Right.

So, uh, alright, moving to the next story.

RFK, Junior's Public Health Plan.

Get every American to buy a wearable device.

So this story came out on Tuesday and, uh, it kind of blew my mind because right before I, I had scrolled up on my phone and seen that, that this story came out.

Um, I just watched, uh, Dr.

Vin Gupta at HFMA do a keynote where he basically, his whole.

Premise was that we need to, to incorporate wearables into proper healthcare because the way that we currently ask people to participate in diagnostics, um, they're they're not doing it.

They're not doing it.

Yeah.

And, and, and, and we're so hung up on 99%, you know, accuracy that we're not, we're Yeah.

Perfection.

We need it.

Yeah.

But we don don't care.

But what we don't care about is adherence.

Yeah.

You know, and so it's like, okay, like let's, let's say that the Apple Watch is 15% less accurate than the Omron uh, you know, blood pressure cuff.

Right.

So it's 15%.

Yeah.

But it gets 10 x more.

Right.

I was gonna say more data.

Collect thousand more, uh, adoption.

Yeah.

Right.

You know what I mean?

You gotta kind of, at some point you gotta kinda make a call.

What do you want?

Do you want participation?

And then you come up with a protocol to sort of deal with the false positives?

Or do you wanna just be all proud of yourself because this device is so accurate, even though nobody's freaking using it?

You know, it's, I mean the, the current protocols around diagnostics are not moving the needle on heart disease.

That that's right.

That's the point.

Right?

That's right.

And I mean, I think that, uh, it's not complicated to tear these things, right.

Like you should have a wearable Yeah, it's triaged.

And then once you get a, a, you know, nervous making reading, then you give them the, the folk cough that has 99%.

It's not that hard.

So, um, so, uh, Robert Kennedy Jr. Is saying that he would like to, I don't know that he has a way to fund it, but he'd like to have every American buy a wearable device in the next four years so that we can collect.

Health and wellness biometrics on everyone and try to, you know, pursue his, make America healthy again.

Thing we, we, we probably have a decent penetration, and when I say decent, I'm talking 20%.

I mean, I see so many people wearing Apple watches.

Yeah.

And that doesn't, you know, you're not wearing an Apple watch wearing Garin.

Yeah.

But I'm wearing Garmin.

Yeah.

We, we, we wear Garmin, right?

Yeah.

So, so Apple Watch, or Garmin or, or, or Fitbit or, you know, so many people I see are already wearing these things, like, I don't know what percentage it is of, of total Americans, but man, it's, it's already pretty high.

It's already pretty high.

Like it's, it's high enough that if you just turned on whatever pilot you wanted to do with the group that's already wearing them all the time.

Yeah, yeah.

You'd make the point.

Oh, there's no question about that.

You know what I mean?

I don't think you need to get to a hundred percent where, you know, usage.

I think above some income level or net worth level, it's probably 50%.

Yeah.

There, there's a lot of people that.

Or not at that income level that are not wearing it.

Sure.

I, but you could definitely test it and prove that it has an effect and saves lives and then start going down, uh, down the socioeconomic And also that that income level has nothing to do with chronic disease rates.

Like, you know, oh, yeah, yeah.

There's plenty of sick people.

Right, exactly.

There's plenty season diabetes, you know?

That's right.

You know, among the, you know, the middle class and the, and the, and the upper class.

So, so anyway, look, I mean, I, I think, you know, the, the byline here is, you know, will this lead to the government collecting your health data?

And, and look, that's, um, I. The Trump administration has kind of earned that.

Between the Doge data collection and all the Palantir stuff, they've kind of earned that as like, so I, I actually don't take issue with it because I think it's fair.

It's earned, the concern is earned.

Yeah.

Based on the, you know, all the Doge behavior and now they, it's just something they're now gonna have to overcome, you know, like actions have consequences.

You know, you take off everyone's data and you start talking about creating a unified database with this privately held company.

It's like, okay, you know, that's, yeah, that's fine and true.

And there's a bunch of other people that have my data already now.

Yes.

So the US government is not any worse than North Korea.

That's not, that's not the point.

That's not the point.

Right.

I, I'm, I'm just saying.

The critique, they are gonna have to defend that and, and fight it off.

Correct.

And I'm, it's deserved me.

I'm not concerned about it.

I, I'm, I'm not, but some people are.

I'm, I'm not terribly concerned about it.

Yeah.

For my, for myself.

But I think the critique is deserved.

Yes.

Based on, you know, the, the pattern behavior.

Yeah.

Uh, alright.

Healthcare dive oz hints at impending CMS rule to force drug price transparency.

Yeah.

So this is, um, gonna be really another big swing if they can pull it off, which is to get the, the net price published, like through the PBMs.

Not the, not the like list price that no one pays, but what, what is the actual net price through the PBMs that your employer or you are paying and they want that disclosed.

Oz dropped it at a. Drug Transparent pricing conference.

So pretty friendly audience.

Whether he can get it actually pushed through, I don't know, but, but it's, it'll be great that they're trying to do this.

I think transparency and pricing is always positive in the long run.

It, I mean, it would have consequences.

You'd see how expensive and what the difference is.

You know, 1, 1, 1 thing I'm struggling with a little bit here is.

Are we just seeing more of Dr. Oz at these events because it's Dr. Oz and the brand ID is, is higher than previous CMS administrators have been, or is he simply touring these events more than previous CMS administrators have been.

And and I I, I don't expect us to answer that right now, but that's actually something I'd like to know.

Um, it makes sense that he would be, this is more his bag, he's more comfortable with media.

He's very comfortable doing it.

Yeah.

Right.

But I think the implications of this and the impact of it are gonna be pretty interesting if, in fact, this is a different tact for CMS administrators because he's a, a public speaker and a television person, so he's used to being on planes, hopping around and doing appearances that this is no big difference to him.

Um, it's likely to make him a much more influential CMS administrator.

Yeah, well that doing the road show, you know what I mean?

Going to all these different events and, and I do not believe that Dr. Oz does anything by mistake.

No, of course not.

So he dropped this at this conference very intentionally to make news.

We we're talking about it now.

And so it's not only that he is comfortable take, you know, traveling around and making these public appearances.

He also is really good at, at sort of getting into the news cycle and getting his point made in a way that is draws attention.

And I think that's true about Robert Kennedy Jr.

It's true about Trump.

It's true about all those guys.

Yeah.

I mean they, they are media savvy people.

Do you remember when he was at Health Further?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

2017. Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, he was the only person we ever had that looked like he was ready to go on tv.

Yeah, right.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Like he was ready to go on tv.

Yeah.

I mean, he's always ready to go on tv, I think.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Uh, alright.

Ahab 2025, uh, executive insights from Aetna.

Anterior, and, well, they, they're just going with all the A's here.

Yeah.

I mean, uh, that other thing is Blue Cross BlueShield of California.

Yeah.

They rebranded it.

Okay.

Um, so they had, this was a good kind of summary.

Summary leave.

Okay.

Yeah.

So they have five I think points we can just scroll down and, uh, so, um, they, you know, they, they touch on the prior auth.

Yep.

Aetna was the one that talked about it, but as we, everyone's doing it.

Yeah.

They are paying attention to the food as medicine.

They're moving to nutrition, which I think makes sense from the payer side.

Yeah.

Um, they don't wanna just fund groceries, but they wanna make sure you have nutrition.

Right.

Um, cybersecurity is probably gonna be a topic forever.

Yep.

Now, yep.

And then Blue Cross Blue Shield of California.

Who picked the worst new name ever?

My Ascendion.

Ascendion.

Yeah.

Um, Paul Vic is the CEO and he said that the industry has a cliff out there and is not sustainable.

And so Okay.

But he's in, he's in the middle of the industry.

Yeah.

Like, I, I don't, I don't see what the point is with that.

Like the, the business of healthcare is not sustainable, if any industry is not sustainable.

Okay.

Then make a, make a change.

I mean, then he goes on to say, that's why they got rid of CVS Caremark as their PBM.

Okay.

I mean, but that's a, you know, a drop in the bucket for what the whole industry needs to focus on.

I would've liked to see him come out with something more optimistic and positive than just.

You know, talking about how bad things are.

Yeah.

I mean, I, I think, I think it's, um, I think it's challenging for the indu industry leaders because they, they have to acknowledge just what, what a, what a challenging moment the industry is in right now.

Mm-hmm.

And, and there are, there are no great solutions for it because the industry has held itself in place with poor outcomes.

Um, continuing to grow the overall size of the market, largely through lobbying, you know, largely through lobbying.

You know, they've never sort of had the hammer dropped on them, like it's being proposed to be dropped right now.

And so they're, they're, they don't have a real good adaptability muscle.

Yeah.

It's atrophied quite a bit.

And, and so I, I feel like that's, I, I feel like that's something that, that people in the industry know.

They, they, you know, and then they also know that.

The work that they have to do will continue to have to be done.

Like, you know, especially, yeah.

Someone's gotta take care of these people.

Somebody's gotta take care of these people.

The, you know, the, these, especially the nonprofits, right?

Especially the community.

Mm-hmm.

Um, anchor institutions.

It's like, okay, you can screw with all the numbers all you want, but like, these people still have to be cared for.

They, they're still gonna have to do it.

Yeah.

Um, and it's just gonna be less profitable and it's gonna, it's gonna result in chaos.

Right.

I mean, that's, that's sort of where it's headed.

So it's like, okay, okay, cut the me cut the numbers if you want.

Cut the rates if you want, but like, it's gonna cut jobs, it's gonna cut the care, the access to care.

It's, you know, it's gonna make the, the community less stable.

So, you know, so I, I, I think, I think it's hard for them, right.

This is probably because I just came from Yeah.

A very big, you know, conference, which we'll talk about next, but, um, yeah.

You know, I agree.

I. We need to be optimistic, but if the leaders are more conventional old school operators, yeah.

They can't, they can't really do it.

They can't do it.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

All right.

And then, and then ai, this other point is about AI make prior auth obsolete.

Um, yeah.

Okay.

Alright.

Those are the big points.

Got it.

So HMA also had their annual, uh, event.

You know, I would say, you know, from the perspective of the, the.

Quick disclaimer, I'm on the board.

I'm, I'm an officer, uh, secretary, treasurer, uh, of National Board right now.

Um, I I thought it was a great event, you know, uh, you know, well attended lots of engagement.

People were, uh, eager to learn a lot of focus on ai, a lot of focus on the big beautiful bill and, and what will or will not be in there.

Everyone's sort of admitting they don't really know how it's gonna land, but most people are pricing in the loss of about 10 million, um, you know, people from the Medicaid program over the coming years and sort of figuring out what to do around that.

Uh, the big reveal from HFMA was, um, a new strategic initiative called Vitalic Health.

And, um, uh, a US Healthcare Vitals Tracker being the first sort of deliverable out of that initiative, which is really cool.

Um, a a variety of, of different people, not, not just all sort of providers, which is HFA, is sort of bread and butter.

Uh, but people from across the industry, you know, analysts on the payer side, on the tech side, um.

You know, credit ratings folks, uh, all came together to contribute insights into, uh, putting together a new, a new tracker and a new index for like how we're doing from a, from an affordability perspective.

How the whole industry is doing, how the country, it's, it's, it's how, it's how, how affordable is healthcare in America.

And it's like, it's, it's cool 'cause I, I'll, I'll just scroll down here.

You know, they've got sort of two different cohorts of data that they're pulling in.

One is national health affordability, and then one is longevity.

And so, you know, the categories are purchaser, satisfaction, economics, affordability on the national health affordability side.

And then on the longevity side is public health, environmental, and social and wellbeing.

So it's all these different, all these are public data points, um, data sets mm-hmm.

That they pull in.

And then they've, they've come up with an algorithm, you know, waiting them all to sort of score it and compare it.

Yeah.

And, and basically that, I don't think they have it, uh, I don't think they have the, the visual here, but basically we're, we're at the lowest point that we've been in 30 years, you know?

Mm-hmm.

Based on all of these factors.

Right.

So it's not CMS and it's not the payer's fault.

It's not the provider's fault.

Yeah.

It's like there's all these things happening at the macro level and they collectively contribute to.

Us being at the lowest point of affordability that we've been in, in, in 30 years when you weigh it all together.

So it, it's, it's pretty cool to have this, you know, nonpartisan, um, you know, yeah.

Fully, fully publicly data based index out there that kind of says, you know, it's not, it's not, it's not the social determinants of health, but it's directionally like that, right?

Yeah.

It's, it's saying what are, what are all the factors that come in.

Yeah.

Um, it's more quantified than social determinants of health.

Yeah, it is.

It's definitely more quantified than that.

And, uh, and, and, and, and it's cool.

So I'm, I'm really proud that HFMA, you know, is taking the lead and, and, and putting this out there.

So that was, it's really, it's valuable.

It's also kind of sobering and sad.

Oh, oh yeah.

Oh yeah, for sure.

So it's, it's not, it's not finalized yet.

It's going out to, for public comment and stuff like that, but No, I mean, the goal is to try to make this like a real.

Point of data that everyone can sort of like look at, work on and think about.

You know, I mean, it makes me think about the work I do with Nashville Health, you know?

Yeah.

Which is much more politic oriented.

That's what I was gonna ask.

You think there'll be, uh, regional or state based versions of this so you can compare and maybe learn from other states, or, I think you can.

I, I think you could take the same model and then drill down at, at the, yeah.

At, at a region or state or probably even the zip code level, you know?

Yeah.

To some degree.

You may not have every single data point, but you probably have most, yeah.

'cause it might be cool to see like, okay, Atlanta is really good in environmental, right.

And Nashville's better at affordability.

Let's try to steal from them and this, or not steal, but co-op, co-op investing co.

Yeah.

Yeah, of course.

I mean, and they can take from us.

Yeah.

Great artist steal Of course.

Yeah, you should.

You should.

So anyway, that was really cool.

Um, I, I had a great time.

I was on a, uh, a panel opening, uh, day, um, with, uh, yeah, scroll down.

You're on here, I think.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Uh, so it was, it was, it was me, um, Robin, Dan Schroeder, who's the CFO from, uh, Henry Ford.

Um, Chelsea Glenn, who is, uh, the Chief Growth Officer from Northwell Health.

Um, they've got a really interesting model, their, their health system up in the northeast, and they're very, very focused on direct contracting with employers.

So their position was pretty cool.

Um, and then Dan Lili Quist is the, uh, the Chief Strategy Officer and Intermountain, um, and he's also, uh, one of the co-founders of, uh, Civica rx.

Yeah.

Which is that consortium that, that health system, nonprofit consortium of, uh, generic drugs.

Mm-hmm.

Um, so it was cool.

It was cool, you know, being able to be on that panel and, and, and, you know, meet Chelsea and Dan, who I didn't know prior to this.

Robin.

Robin, and I know she's on the board with me.

But, uh, yeah, it was, it was.

It was, it was awesome.

Awesome.

You know, conference, awesome conversation.

Um, and, uh, I had a good time.

Yeah.

Good.

Uh, alright, moving on.

Moving on to the payer side.

Uh, so we, we've covered this story several times, but now it's, it's now officially confirmed as of last week I think.

Right.

Uh, Vanderbilt University's medical center is, has announced up to 650 layoffs.

This is less than 2% of their total headcount.

So yeah, quantifying it that way I think helps.

Um, but this is, this is the, the first, you know, real staff-based, uh, adjustment to try to reconcile the decrease in funding coming from, uh, the Trump administration.

Yeah, that's right.

And I think, uh, I mean, they're doing the best they can.

They, they lost a lot of support from NIH and so they had to cut 650 people, which as you said is not a big percentage, but it's still 600 people in the Nashville area that.

They used to have a good job that now they don't anymore.

Yep.

Yep, that's right.

Uh, the, a HA is launching a seven figure ad campaign against Medicaid cuts.

Yeah.

This is, uh, I don't know, I think it's a waste of money, but maybe they have to do it just for show.

They're putting, they're running TV ads.

We have one here so people can watch it if they want.

Um, and you know, it's a, it's a nice feel good story about how important health systems are in our rural community, and I agree with that, but I don't think it's gonna, at the end they say, call your congressman.

I just don't think it's gonna have the, it's not gonna translate to like, changing the legislation.

I, I don't think.

Yeah.

I mean, look, this is literally the AJ's job, right?

Yeah.

Um, now, now, uh, well the job is to get it changed.

Or lobby to get it changed, I guess.

Yeah.

But I think their lobbying has probably never been less effective than it has been.

Right.

During this particular, you know, Trump administration plus, you know, Republican led right.

Uh, house of Senate, right.

I mean, it, it's just, yeah.

They don't, you know, this, this, they don't have the same kind of sway.

I mean, most people don't, like if, if you're not a loyalist Right.

You kind of don't.

So, so No, no.

I, I, I think that, that this, this is literally their job.

Uh, and so it, it's what I would expect, especially given, uh, the, the real, the real impact.

I mean, you know, I, I won't name names, but, you know, A-A-C-E-O of a, of a health system, you know, sort of framed it to me as, uh, you know, it's like taking a trillion dollars out of the system, right?

You know, the like, like what this cut is doing.

And I, I, I've not run the numbers, but I trust that that person has run the numbers more than I trust myself.

You, you know what I mean?

And, and so, um, obviously if you're the a HA.

Looking at the spectrum of, of taking out anything close to a half billion to a trillion dollars out of the, the healthcare system.

Um, I mean, it's 25% of, of the system, dude, that, that's 25% of it and it's, and it's the, the poor people Yeah.

And less well off communities.

Yeah.

They're gonna take the brunt of it.

Yeah.

So, so the a HA and America's Essential Hospital, those are two, that's, they are Right.

Those are two orgs that really should be like Yeah.

You know, spending money on ads right now, this is, you can't do it after this bill has passed.

Right.

I mean, there's no point in doing it then.

Yeah.

So this is it.

Yeah.

I agree with that.

You, you, I'm just cynical about the number of people that will call and then, which, which, which is fair fact.

They'll have, which is fair.

Which is fair because people are just overburdened with too much stuff.

There's a million things to worry about.

So I, I agree.

It's a hard market.

It's hard to, it's hard to cut through the noise.

Yeah.

You know, and add, so I, I agree with you on that, but I, I think in terms of them doing it to me, yeah.

It's, it's literally their job.

It's like, you know what I mean?

Um.

Alright, moving on.

Walgreens sales rise on improvements in US healthcare segment cost cutting efforts.

CEO, Tim Wentworth said the results showed, uh, continuing weakness in its us front end sales, however.

Yeah.

So they had a lower than an expected loss.

This is, they're about to go private.

Yeah.

This might be the last earnings call before they go private.

And so I think, I believe management was cutting costs and really working to.

You know, beat expectations on the way to getting their go private deal done.

Yeah.

And you know, their business is decaying a little bit.

They have weak sales, but they cut costs and they had a lower loss than expected.

Yep.

I, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm glad I, it's good operations.

I'm glad, I'm glad we have something positive to, to say about Walgreens over the course of our last year.

It's been, it's been rough.

It's been really rough.

Uh, alright.

New York Times, we are moving into, is this health in us?

No, this is the, the pharmaceutical.

This is pharma.

Oh, oh pharma.

Okay.

Yeah.

New data shows just how powerful the next weight loss drugs may be.

Oh, this is, this is, uh, the, the pill.

Pill, yeah.

So we're moving pills two Glip, one, uh, in a pill form.

And New York Times has this article, it's coming out and at pretty much the same effectiveness.

My belief is it's gonna get much broader adoption.

A pill is just a much easier, uh, thing for people to adhere to.

Mm-hmm.

And want to do.

Mm-hmm.

Um, so it's gonna, I think it's gonna be even more of a influence on our health system.

When we first talked about this, you Yeah, that was, that's, I've been waiting for that.

I'm not gonna do a shot.

Yeah, no, no.

I mean this, this, this, I, I, I remember, you know, feels like a year and a half ago we were talking about this, it, this and you were like, I'm not doing the shot, but I'll do the pill.

Yeah.

So here we are.

Time, time for your pill, Vic.

Yeah.

Uh, alright.

HIMSS and her stock drops more than 30% after Novo Nortis breakups.

So that was quick.

I mean, yeah.

What was it?

Two months they've been together.

Yeah.

Not even, because the, this is definitely, this definitely this year.

Oh yeah.

'cause the Super Bowl ad, they were not, yeah, were not together at Super Bowl.

That's end of January.

Right.

So sometime maybe Mar early March they signed up together.

Yeah, a couple months.

Yeah.

Um, and Novo is cutting them off, you know, like in their supply of Wegovy anymore.

I think because they didn't like how they were sort of positioning wegovy, but then sometimes compounding.

Compounding and providing a less expensive.

Uh, option and there's no exclusivity, but they didn't like the, uh, deceptive marketing practices is what Novo said.

So I don't know, but my guess is Novo is more reliable than himss than hers.

And yeah, so I I, I actually with them I agree.

I agree.

I fully agree.

Uh, and on that note, Nova Nordisk inks a partnership with Weight Watchers to broaden BOGO access.

Yeah.

So they trade 'em out.

Yeah.

So they, they, I think probably called Weight Watchers and said, Hey, we, we, can we, can we move some supply over to you?

Uh, which Weight Watchers needs?

I mean, they, they're struggling.

Yeah.

Weight Watchers definitely needs, needs, needs something.

So this is probably good for them.

Uh, alright.

People with severe diabetes are cured in small trial of new drug, new New York Times.

Most in a small group of patients receiving a stem cell based infusion, no longer needed insulin.

But the drug may not suit those with more manageable type one diabetes.

So this is focused on type one diabetes, not type night, not type two, type one.

And it's a very small trial.

Yeah.

12 participants, yes.

But 10 of 12 were, were cured.

Cured.

'cause it's type one, right?

Yeah.

So it's a, you know, type one is incurable until, I guess now.

Until now, yeah.

Yeah.

So, uh, stem cell and cell therapies is gonna be incredible.

Yeah.

I mean, we're starting to see now the, we had that, uh, saving baby's lives saving baby a month ago or so, and now we're curing.

Or maybe potentially curing type one diabetes.

Yeah.

Last year we type one diabetes.

Is is rough.

Yeah.

So, um, last, last year we cured sickle cell.

Yeah.

In that void.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

So, um, it's pretty exciting.

Eyeglasses with built-in hearing aids, this just makes sense.

Nuance audio is a new option for people who resist traditional aids from the company that makes RA bands and operates lens afterafter.

So, um, just to call balls and strikes, uh, what was it a year ago with the, with the new version of the Air Pods?

The Air Pods are also hearing aids.

Yeah.

Right.

So as they, air pods are now medical devices, they are hearing aids as well, but they look kind of weird.

Right.

You know what I mean?

Even though we're all used to them at this point.

Yeah.

Uh.

They're, they're, they're not like socially acceptable to just keeping your ear all the time.

People will think you're being rude 'cause you're listening to music or you're on a phone call if you have 'em in all the time.

Yeah.

One of the stories that I cut that we didn't discuss is a story about that and the tension between, in doctor's offices, doctors don't like it.

Patients uh, sometimes need it'cause they can't hear that.

Well, AirPod Yeah.

Yeah.

Air AirPods literally.

Yeah.

And, and yeah.

It's not socially acceptable in the same way that glasses are.

Yes, exactly.

So, so I tried on the, the, um, meta Ray bands.

Yeah.

I haven't tested that yet.

In December, it was December when I, when I tried 'em on, uh, uh, I've got a good friend who works at Meta.

Okay.

And so I tried 'em on then and, uh, you know, the.

It was a bit of a revelation, um, listening to music through them.

Mm-hmm.

You know, I would say that the quality is about 70% of what an AirPod is.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

So is it, is it a go-to device for me, for listening to music over AirPods?

No, but for a phone call or for a podcast?

Yeah.

I think it's totally, so like with this is like at dinner, people that have slight hearing loss Yes.

When they go to a restaurant with background noise that cannot hear Yes.

And it's really, um, it makes you lonely and depressed and you can't tell what's going on.

Interact with the people.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

So, so for me, having had that experience and actually knowing what it's like, yeah.

I, I absolutely get this.

Yeah.

This, this, this makes total, if you could just combine the fact that AirPods are now actual medical device hearing aids mm-hmm.

And then.

You know, already out in the world right now, the Meadow Raybans, they're Yeah.

General availability.

They have this capability.

It's already about 70% of the AirPods.

Yeah.

Then, and this is the same for, it's the RayBan.

It's the RayBan, it's the same, same glasses.

They just putting new That's right.

Stuff in it.

That's right.

It's not all the ar vr things, the simpler, cheaper device.

But a lot of people, I think they, they don't need all that.

No.

They just wanna be able to hear their daughter at dinner.

Right, right.

So, so I, I think this is re this is really, really smart tech right here.

Yeah.

Really smart tech.

Um, alright, so we are adding a new section to the show as of this episode.

This is 1 45, right?

Yeah, right now.

Yeah.

1 45. So let's mark it.

1 45. We are adding in between the health and us and the AI section, we're doing a small lead in that's gonna be covering Web3.

We have pretty much from day one, just because we've, we've been interested to Web3 ourselves.

Yeah.

We've been talking about crypto.

I feel like all through the Biden administration.

We talked about Gary G, you know.

Yeah.

Yes.

Um, but what was his name?

The SEC Gary Gensler.

Yeah.

Gary Gensler.

Uh, you know, we talked about him all through Yeah.

The Biden administration and, and Elizabeth Warren and how they totally screwed things over and they, they gave, they gave the Crypto bros to the Republicans, you know, Bitcoin conference turned into the RNC part two.

Yeah.

I mean, in Nashville the Republicans raised like $20 million in a day.

Yeah, yeah.

And then, you know, they were off to the races.

That money, that's rights.

Right?

That's right.

Um, and so, yes, you know, we, we've been talking about it for a long time, but, but in the last week, and again, it's, it's kind of a Tennessee story.

Um, the Genius Act mm-hmm.

Was passed in the Senate.

Championed by Senator Bill Haggerty.

Yeah.

You know, um, Senator Haggerty really, really drove that, drove that bill through.

Um, and that act for me, and I think for you too, was the start pistol for, um, regulatory clarity for the crypto industry in the United States of America.

It starts, banks really starting to engage in crypto in a very meaningful way.

And I think we, we should take a second.

It's not in the story here.

We should take a second to just talk through the Genius Act and stable coins, just to frame it up for the listeners.

Yeah.

Because I, I assume, yeah, I think we touched on it last week, but we can, we didn't have a Web3 section.

Yeah.

So we just talked about it in like brief in the policy section.

Yeah.

Let's, let's, let's, let's, let's dig into it just a little bit since this is the first time talking about this.

Yeah, yeah.

This, this, uh, topic.

Um, and, and I, and I think it's got implications for healthcare.

Oh, it definitely has.

I mean, I think it's got implications for healthcare.

Uh, I, I think that.

Payments between parties off expensive rails.

There's not an industry that, that doesn't, you know, track for dollar denominated.

Right?

Yeah.

And, and that's the, that's the brilliance of the Genius Act is that it is not focused on these highly volatile, um, cryptocurrencies mm-hmm.

That we we're still interested in, but, but it doesn't, it it's not focused on that.

It's focused on dollar denominated cryptocurrency.

Yeah.

Right.

Tokens on the blockchain.

Yeah.

So this, this is really, um, basic, uh, financial services, plumbing is how I think about it.

That's right.

And so it is a new technology, but it's not the risky meme, whatever thing.

Right.

Lose money.

It is.

The only thing that a stable coin company is allowed to buy is a less than 94 day treasury bill.

Yes.

That's all they can buy.

And they may not pay interest or current yield to anybody.

And so it's not really an investment vehicle.

That's right.

There's no a PY, there's no, there's no, it's a dollar replacement.

That's right.

Just like a savings account.

Even worse than a savings account because you don't get any, you don't get anything on it.

Anything on it.

Yeah.

So SoFi will beat circle all day if you're trying to like, make money.

But it, it sort of, um, facilitates all of these transactions where like, okay, I gotta settle a bill with a, with a hospital.

I gotta send them $8,000 on a Saturday.

On a Saturday, Saturday on a Saturday, and I'm gonna use a credit card.

And then they want to charge me more because they pay a big fee, 3% and I don't care about the interest on it.

For the one minute I'm gonna put it into this entity.

Yeah.

But I prefer not to pay $30, but I don't wanna pay $30.

So, so I move it into circle, move my dollars from a bank account into circle, and then I wire over Web3 rails.

To the health system.

It's all in dollars and it, the health system is very confident they will get paid back because Circle has one-to-one securities.

Yep.

And it's US Treasury Securities.

Yep.

Um, it's a, it's a great and much less expensive unless you are MasterCard and Visa.

It's good for everyone except MasterCard and Visa.

Yeah.

And maybe Swift.

Yeah.

Um, so, and I think you're right, at least for me, I think you said it a minute ago, it gives regulatory clearance to the crypto rails so that we can do transactions that are dollar denominated.

Yes.

There's no other clarity that we need right now.

No.

That, that's it.

And there'll be other things that, um, the Web3 community is trying to push through, but, but right now, I.

There's plenty of opportunity just in payments.

Huge.

It's huge.

Yeah.

I mean, I, the, the, the other thing that would be good and, and I think we are gonna talk about it, um, the other thing that would be good would be just giving clarity to the tokenization of, of, um, securities.

Yeah.

So that's called market structure.

Yes.

That's the next bill that they're taking up this fall.

And that's gonna be harder.

Gonna be harder.

That's gonna be harder.

That's not gonna be as straightforward.

Yeah.

Um, but also, also the whole Genius Act thing, as you said, short dated T-bills, um, it, it's gonna grow the market for those.

Yeah.

'cause there's more and more of these companies coming to come in.

You know, the circle just had a very successful IPOI think.

I think, I mean, I think it's just like a crazy increase in that stock price since Oh yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

Like, like it's multiples, right?

Yes.

I think it's maybe three x from the point it came out.

It's really, really strong.

I heard something crazy.

Look, can can I just Yeah, you can try to, try to find it real quick.

You keep talking.

So I'm talking about, uh, Fiserv while you're doing that.

So the news that we're covering today is, so Fiserv struck a deal with Circle, um, which added to their market strength.

Fiserv is a, um, financial services business that works with almost all of the banks, a lot of banks.

And so they are able to now facilitate these transactions, um, without having to go through the credit card processing.

So it's much more effective.

It opened at $31 and it's at $217.

That is not three x. Yeah, that is seven x. Yes, that's, that's what I thought.

That's what I thought.

They've seven x the stock price fixed since June 4th.

It's less than a month.

That's what I thought.

They've seven Xed the price.

Oh.

Should have bought it.

You should buy it now.

It's gonna keep going up.

Yeah, it's gonna keep going up.

Um, yeah, so, so, so hopefully that helps people understand the stock price is seven x since the IPO less than a month ago.

Yeah.

Okay.

Like this is, this is for real people.

This is for real and it'll be good for everyone really.

Yeah.

So with all that, we are starting a regular section.

You probably won't have a whole lot of stories.

Yeah.

Probably one or two, just kinda like the health and us area.

But we're gonna start covering Web3 because remember when we started covering ai, it was kind of nascent.

Right?

Right.

And now it is taking over our show.

Yes.

Right.

Uh, okay.

So we have two stories today for Web3.

Yeah.

So I just covered Fiserv.

Uh, they are launching a partnership with Circle to do stablecoin for banks so that banks don't have to lose that transaction.

And great.

And I think it's gonna be very successful.

Yep.

Alright.

Uh, and then th this is more on the market structure side of things.

Yeah, yeah.

So Republic, which is a crowdfunding sort of platform.

Yeah.

They're kind of number one is them and Wefunder, right?

Are that's two big ones.

That's right.

Yeah.

They are using, uh, a token strategy to offer SpaceX to people.

So SpaceX is Elon Musk's company that does, um, oh, starlink.

Starlink.

They do starlink and they're also doing the, uh, satellites and working on gonna Mars.

Oh yeah.

All, all of that is in SpaceX and the Falcon and, yeah.

And so it's very, um, popular.

A lot of people would like to own.

It's not publicly traded, so if you are accredited, you can buy it in secondary markets.

But what Republic is doing is they're, they have bought shares in SpaceX and they're housing it in an LLC or in a Shell and then offering tokens against it in Web3 markets.

And it's very, um.

Transparent.

You can see how many tokens are created and you can see that the SpaceX shares are there, but it is not fully regulated yet.

They're still in a gray area.

Hopefully Congress will clarify what is allowed and what's not.

Uh, but they're moving forward with it.

I love it.

Yeah, I think, I think this is great.

I mean, you know, to me it's, it's, it's highly offensive that it has been okay to buy fart coin.

Yeah.

And that, and that Republic couldn't do this.

Like, it's like, what?

Ridiculous.

It's, it's, it's really ridiculous.

Right.

I mean, so, uh, I think this is great.

Kudos to Republic for sure.

I, I, yeah, I, I, I wanna try to do it a I bet it's gonna be really hard to get these tokens.

I bet they're gonna sell out like almost immediately.

But I want to, I'm gonna try to do it just to like, figure out their process, just to like, see how they've set it up and, and what the purchasing process looks like.

Well, the, won't the price increase if it has a lot of demand.

I mean, I think the price is gonna float.

So, uh, well, since they're gonna mirror the performance of the private shares, so, so is is the, I mean, the demand might, might grow in the secondary markets, but not in the initial offering that they do that.

So I'm, I'm trying to, I'm trying to get it directly from them once it, once it goes on on markets, yeah.

You know, it's gonna float, it's gonna flow like Coinbase or whatever.

It'll, it'll float from there.

Um, and that, that'll be interesting.

Yeah.

Like, like, like, like how, how detached from, from the stated private, see, I think it's gonna be more accurate than the stated private, 'cause the stated illiquid markets on secondary space, they only trade very infrequently.

Yeah.

And, and, and they only mark the books infrequently too.

Right?

Right.

They don't market based on d daily data.

So that, that's, that's super interesting.

Yeah.

You're gonna have a, you're gonna have, you're gonna have like a whole new analyst kind of, you know, it's like a poly market.

It's kind of like a poly market thing.

I mean, it's, it's not exactly the stock price, but it's very.

Analogous to the stock price.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

That's, that's a really, there's probably people that are arbit too.

'cause if you're accredited, you can play both.

Yeah, yeah.

So it's, anyway, the reason that I want to cover this is there's a lot of interesting aspects to it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

I, I, I mean, I hadn't fully played that part out, like, you know, the fact that it's going on tradable exchanges.

Yeah.

And then the ARBs, like a family office can, can do both.

Well, once, I mean, the thing is, Coinbase is already enabled for all that.

Like, it's, it's got all the tools for everything, right?

So the minute the token gets on there, everything is in play against that token.

So, so ARBs options.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know?

Right.

All of the tools you can do Yeah.

Are then available.

That's, that's crazy.

Which drives efficiency.

I mean, it's gonna drive efficient pricing in, in liquid markets.

Yeah.

That's what I think eventually.

And, and it's also going to drive much better analysis.

Yeah.

Like, you know, you know.

But right now, if you can't get access to it.

Who cares.

Yeah, who cares?

I haven't looked at trying to value Space Desk because I don't, I don't care about it.

I, that's right.

I can't get access to it.

But now, like sure, if I can, if I can buy it and it's a better price, people will be focused on it.

Wow.

That's, that's super interesting.

Another, another, uh, difference between uh, crypto markets and stocks is, um, in crypto markets, they can be, uh, all, all these tokens can be fractionalized down to like Yeah.

You know, the nth degree, whereas you cannot generally do that in the stock market.

Yeah.

You have to buy whole stock and they trade 24 7.

There's no, they don't close on Friday night at five.

Right, right.

Yeah.

Uh, just like circle doesn't close just 'cause the bank's closed.

Right, right, right.

Uh, okay.

Moving into the AI rundown, I'm so excited.

We're gonna be talking about crypto every week now.

This is great.

Uh, alright.

Fresh off, $200 million raise, commu rolls out AI agents to tackle front office tasks, patient outreach and billing.

Again, when we say commu.

You need to hear us saying General Catalyst.

Yeah, that's right.

That's right.

Yeah.

So I think, um, that we're just seeing a lot of agents, um, and I think they're gonna be coming quickly.

I mean, we had a couple new raises come year now as, uh, they raised maybe three weeks ago.

Mm-hmm.

I think we covered it.

And now they're sort of coming out with all their agents.

They're not really in the clinic, they're more on revenue cycle administrative things.

Um, but that's where I'm watching now.

Like the, the administrative back office I think is already sort of well on the adoption curve.

And then as, as you go into the clinic, it's less so, but people are trying it.

Yeah.

Tesla's robo taxis are here.

What you need to know, this is the Wall Street Journal.

The Robo Taxii is important because Tesla's multiple versus basically any other publicly traded car companies, multiple, uh, does not make sense.

Especially since all these other publicly traded car companies also have EVs now.

Right.

So the EV is not the thing.

The thing is the, the, the front run on data, the AI play and the robotaxis, this is where the multiple comes from.

Right.

It's is Tesla actually going to be able to be the competitor to Waymo or not?

That's right.

This is where the multiple comes from.

People that think it will be, are willing to pay multiple, are willing to pay that high.

If you think it's a car company, you would, you would not pay it.

That's right.

You would not pay it.

And so the Robo Taxii is, this is the demonstration of whether or not Tesla is actually worth the multiple that the market has given them.

Yeah.

And they have taken a very different approach than Waymo.

They have far less, um, accurate sensors.

It's all video basically.

But they have many, many.

More episodes

Chapters

Show Notes

What is Health:Further?