47 – Economic Growth, $22m Ransom, CHS, Mayo, UPMC, GLP-1, & AI in Healthcare

Vic: [00:00:00] It’s going well, I’m excited to get into a lot, a lot of stuff going on in the world now.

Marcus: Yeah, for me personally, March has been a lot better than January and February. Uh, things are kind of stabling out, smoothing out. Uh, the world, maybe not so much. We’re on the other side of Super Tuesday, so that’s good.

Marcus: Yeah. At least we’ve sort of put to bed the circus that was the primaries, and now we know who the, who the, they were always going to be. Yeah, that’s right. I’m

Vic: sad about the candidates, but we’ve known them, and now we don’t, we can just stop talking about it. We can stop talking about that, right, exactly,

Marcus: exactly.

Marcus: So we’ll see, we’re on the other side of Super Tuesday. Um, what other things have we, have we passed as we got into March? Well, we’re recording

Vic: before the State of the Union, but we’ll, it’ll. That’s right. Drop right after that. So we, that’s right. We’re gonna have to talk without knowing how Biden looks like young.

Vic: He’s gonna look like a 30-year-old, young, confident, uh, JFK AI tonight. . Yeah. Yeah.

Marcus: Uh, yeah. Hey, hey. Jen’s gonna make some money tonight. Yeah. Uh, making making’s, uh, president Biden look [00:01:00] good. Uh, yeah. And, and it’s a busy week in the, in the roundup. You’ve, you’ve, uh, pulled together. Yeah. A lot

Vic: of, a lot of stories

Marcus: feels, it feels like 40 stories.

Marcus: We tried to cut ‘

Vic: em, but we couldn’t, we could do a lot. We couldn’t cut.

Marcus: They were too good. So, uh, so with that, let’s dig in.

Marcus: All right. First, we always love to start with our buddy, Jay Powell. So he lifts the rate cut hopes and the stocks rise. I mean, consistent theme, stock market running, running, running, uh, everyone feeling really happy with the way that Jay Powell is leading, uh, in this moment. Um, I mean, not really new news there, but just more of the same.

Vic: Yeah. I mean, I think, uh, He spoke to the House or Senate or someone and was talking about basically the soft landing. He, he has got inflation controlled and nothing’s really gone badly. And he kind of held out hope for rate cuts if inflation [00:02:00] continues to improve. We’ll talk about it in a minute. I think there’s a lot of signs that the economy is really kind of, Heating up, which is great, but I’m not sure.

Vic: We’re looking at rate cuts anytime soon.

Marcus: Well, it’s, it’s, it’s heating up that’s always great for investors because people, yeah, it’s for, for the stock market, it’s great for

Vic: risk, on risk, risk on again on, yeah, we’re making money just vc. That’s good. , I like risk on,

Marcus: I got a lot of, I got a lot of assets to sell.

Marcus: Right? Yeah. But like the reality of like, what’s underpinning it may, maybe, maybe not as strong. Okay. So. So this was a great find, uh, on, on, on Reuters. Um, China’s exports top forecast is global demand returns. And when I read the headline, I was like, okay, so big deal, right? China. Okay, good. And then you pointed out the numbers, just how much they beat the, uh, the projections by

Vic: the estimate was for one and a half percent growth.

Vic: And you know, China is really the manufacturing. engine for the world. So if their exports are growing quickly, shows the world’s buying a bunch of stuff [00:03:00] and putting orders in. And the estimate was for, people expected one and a half percent growth. You know, not contracting, but not that exciting. It came out with 7.

Vic: 1. Yeah. So three X. Yeah. Yeah. More, I think more than three X. So, um, now China’s stats are, let’s say opaque.

Marcus: Right. Right. Right.

Vic: So I don’t, yeah, but

Marcus: they can only be so opaque. I mean, listen, that’s a, that’s a crazy. Swing to the yes to the good and I think I think 1. 5 was the imports But it was 1. 9 for the exports, which was where I was getting the 3x, but still I mean, it’s still a ridiculous swing Yeah, and and I mean we need to think about what that means for the rest of the world, right?

Marcus: China is the manufacturing hub for the world. So if their exports are up three and a half X over what was projected. That means we’re buying again,

Vic: right? We’re buying. It means Europe’s buying. Right. It means commodity prices have turned up. So it means commodities are going to be more and more expensive.

Marcus: Supply chain [00:04:00] is largely fixed. I mean, that was a storyline that kind of bled all the way through 2023, right? People were saying, Oh my God, the supply chain is taking so long to get back to get back. And it feels like supply chains probably worked out at this point, right?

Vic: Yeah. So this is. Exciting for economic growth and maybe a little, it’s going to put pressure on inflation.

Vic: Inflation is going to be somewhat more than it would be otherwise.

Marcus: Yep. Next, we go to the OECD government. Um, so this is basically all the developing, uh, countries. At least every world government. Yeah, yeah. And I’m talking about the borrowing and the borrowing is it’s expected to rise to a record of 15.

Marcus: 8 trillion this year. That’s a, that’s a record. Um, we, we all are just starting to get very numb, uh, to the constant borrowing that, that governments are doing. Certainly in America, you know, we’re at all time highs in terms of our deficit and we keep borrowing and acting. We’re

Vic: leading the way. Yeah. Yeah.

Marcus: Acting like, you [00:05:00] know, this is never actually, we’re never going to have to like actually. Pay this stuff off, right? Um, meanwhile, we’re in a constant state of near government shutdown over this, um, that, and I feel like I remember when, when the sequester happened during Obama’s term, and that felt like a really big deal, right?

Marcus: That we actually did. hit a point where we were at a gridlock, had a shutdown, had to actually dial things back, you know, come back to the table with a different agreement. And now it’s every three months.

Vic: And it’s not, um, I don’t think there’s really much hope of cutting back. I mean, the last record was 15.

Vic: 4, I think, or three, because we had a global pandemic. It was the first year of the pandemic. Everything shut down. We were in our house. And the government was sending us money to buy food, and we don’t have that today. Now this is just like, just running the mill, [00:06:00] we’re just every day producing more government stuff.

Vic: And interest rates are a lot higher. I mean it was 1%. In the pandemic. And now you’re three or four. So

Marcus: just from a theory perspective, uh, what is driving the larger budgets? Um, is it investment? Is it infrastructure build out? Is it, um, race to AI? Is it, uh, national defense? I mean, all of these things feel like going concern, certainly in America.

Marcus: That we’re dealing with, I look at our, our roads, our bridges, um, our, our waterways, uh, our electricity lines, our grids, all that stuff needs work, needs repair, um, We’re trying to onshore chip development. Chip development’s a massive thing, and we’ve, we’ve obviously cut a really big check, um, uh, thanks to President Biden on that front, so that, just the whole race, uh, around AI seems like a big deal, and geopolitics, you know, we have two fairly [00:07:00] big wars going on right now.

Marcus: So, um, That could spill over and, and we’ve got Taiwan heating up, uh, as well. So it feels like, you know, military spending is also likely going up. Yeah, health

Vic: care, I mean, and I think Health care, it’s a health care show. Health care is 20 percent and the government is funding, 20 percent of the economy and the government funds at least half of it.

Vic: Right, right. And, I don’t know, I just feel like, um, inflation is, we showed it a couple of shows ago, the cumulative effect of inflation. Mm hmm. I think I saw somewhere I didn’t pull the story, but the average American home is now 50 percent higher in value than it was in 2019 before the pandemic. That would

Marcus: be true for my home.

Marcus: So,

Vic: yeah. And so that’s great for homeowners, but with the interest rates where they are, you can’t really move because you can’t buy anything. Yeah. I was about to say. And people can’t [00:08:00] buy new, like people now getting out of college and starting their life can’t, can’t access that. And so inflation is It’s challenging.

Vic: I think the government is responding by creating subsidies and support and healthcare and trying to find ways to reduce student debt. All kinds of programs. Right? And I support many of them. That is not a recipe to stop inflation,

Marcus: you know, as, as, as you laid out that stat around the increase in the value of homes, it hit me immediately because this is true in, in, in our household, the only meaningful.

Marcus: Result for that. Cause as you said, we can’t move. Right. The only meaningful result for that is an increased home equity line of credit.

Vic: Yeah. Right. So you can buy, you can buy stuff, go buy stuff, buy a TV, right. Um, but your boy, I mean, we both have, you have two boys. I have two boys. [00:09:00] They’re not ready to, not if we’re ready to buy homes yet, but they’re not going to be in my house.

Marcus: No,

Vic: no,

Marcus: no. I mean, not, not without our help. Yeah. Not without our support. Right. Um, yeah. So just to rewind. Stocks all time high, nonstop. So is, so is Bitcoin. Yeah. We talked last week about how it was arriving. Uh, and it has arrived. It has arrived. It went over 60 high, 9,000. So hit the all time high against the US dollar.

Marcus: Um, so stocks and risk assets going through the roof. China exports going through the roof.

Vic: Yep. Debt going through, going through the roof. Right. And pals talking about, uh, soft landing. Right. And. Money parent

Marcus: to go bur. Yeah. Right. That’s right. Uh, and then circling back to a story we talked about, it feels like about a month ago when we were seeing some cracks in the, in the Yeah.

Marcus: Foundation around New York Community Bank Corp. As a reminder to the listeners, uh, this is the bank that purchased Signature Bank, one of the three big banks, uh, that [00:10:00] failed, uh, last year. A year ago?

Vic: Yeah. Last year. It seems like a long time ago. Yep. Was

Marcus: a year ago. Yep. Sig Signature Bank, uh, interestingly failed.

Marcus: You know, not only on the side of, uh, their real estate book of business, but they also were the big crypto bank, uh, and so they

Vic: got sort of taken out back because that’s,

Marcus: that’s exactly right. Uh, it was a chance for Gary Gensler to be like, you’re already soft on your real estate book and, and I’m tired of you being the rails for the crypto industry, which is going to, you know, shoot you in the back.

Marcus: Um, so, so yes, New York, uh, community bank corp, because they had all of, uh, The real estate from signature bank. It was all New York real estate. We’ve all been saying, when is the shoe going to drop on big city real estate with the loan to value and the repricing and the, you know, debt that needed to be marked up again and New York community bank Corp stock price dropped thing from like 11 a share.

Marcus: It’s like 2 a share.

Vic: Yeah.

Marcus: Uh, and then they received a, basically a bailout investment, thankfully not from the fed, which is great. That’s great. It’s great

Vic: that the market [00:11:00] solved it without. The feds. Yeah, it was not the name. It’s pretty insider, but still not, not the fed. Yeah. So, so, so Steven Mnuchin is the lead, his private equity fund or whatever came in and is a billion dollar investment.

Vic: I don’t know what percent they bought, but a significant percent. They were the lead. They were the lead. Yeah, yeah. And so they came in and private market bailed them out, provided capital yesterday. And without that, the stock was really in trouble.

Marcus: I mean, yesterday was probably D Day. Yeah. Because, you know, you can’t drop from 11 to 2.

Marcus: Like, you’re going through the floor. Next, next stop is the floor. I

Vic: had the, The news item queued up for this show two days ago that they were going to fail, and then Mnuchin came in and bailed him out, which is much better.

Marcus: Yeah. Well, it’s great that a private market actor can come in and buy him for a song better than the Fed having to come bail him out.

Marcus: Just the signal around that is no good. But as you said, Steve [00:12:00] Mnuchin, I mean, former treasury secretary. I mean, that’s obviously, uh, look, it’s, I mean, former, so at least we can say that, but there’s definitely some, some, some in inside, you want to be careful not to say like insider trading. It’s not insider trading, but like, and yeah, closed network deals.

Marcus: That’s right. Yeah. Closed network, uh, uh, business being done here. So anyway, I wonder how many more of these, uh, rabbit in a hat bailouts from the private market inside. People can happen we but we also don’t have any indicators of what other banks might be failing right New York Community Bank Corp Was the one that stuck out.

Marcus: We’re now at March 7th. This is you know, actually time. This is the time

Vic: Yeah,

Marcus: this is when SBB happened

Vic: is is the for some reason March is the day that SBB

Marcus: happened last year I think it was March

Vic: 7th. It feels like it. Yeah, I think it was a Friday. But yeah, I mean, I don’t know It started on Thursday Starting on a Thursday, starting on Thursday.

Marcus: So who knows what group texts are going around [00:13:00] right now, this episode. Um, all right. So that’s kind of our, our, our breakdown on the economy effectively. Uh, lots, lots of debt cracks where people can’t, you know, continue to pile capital in to support the debt. And, uh, other than that, stocks are continuing to run.

Marcus: Yeah, I

Vic: mean, I don’t know what we could ask for from the Fed. I mean, it seems like they’re doing a pretty good job. I mean, there’s no perfection, but, um, This

Marcus: is a much better environment for us than the environment we had last year. So bottom line is, uh, I think we’re thankful as, as, as two VCs. All right.

Marcus: Uh, continuing on with the story around change healthcare, you know, um, I think the big news this week has been that it was announced that there was a, uh, a ransom payment that was made 22 million, uh, It made via Bitcoin. Um, and what I thought was interesting was that the first story on the ransomware payment came out on wired.

Marcus: com. I didn’t see it anywhere else. Uh, so it was [00:14:00] interesting that a tech. Platform covered it. It felt like this was the week that the change health care story hit the more broad Media, right? It was mostly trade pubs up until this point a lot of modern health care and right, you know We’re getting it from our different, uh trade pub, you know, aha’s email list and uh, Uh hfma blah blah blah, but this week, you know, my wife who’s in the music industry was like Hey, this change health care thing is like new york times story hitting my instagram feed, right?

Marcus: So it it definitely I think

Vic: wired Pulled it from the, from the cyber attack thread. So when the payment came through, Wired’s the one that found it, or sourced it, or confirmed it, or whatever. Right. I

Marcus: mean, it was the Bitcoin

Vic: piece, right? Because you

Marcus: got to be tracking the Bitcoin network to kind of know.

Marcus: Yeah, you can see

Vic: it on Bitcoin too. It’s

Marcus: pretty easy to see. Yep, yep. So, So that’s like part one of the ransomware thing. And then part two is basically how criminals who have no scruples [00:15:00] and would organize a group of, you know, terrible black hat hackers to attack, uh, a healthcare payment network that keeps the United States healthcare system running.

Marcus: Right. So let’s, let’s talk about sort of the, the lack of scruples that this group has. The kind of person that would attack

Vic: the payment rails for the U. S. healthcare system. Right. Yeah. Knowing that it was going to take down, let’s say, 80 percent of all payments, in order to get a big ransom, ethical profile is not an honest profile.

Vic: Right. Just, but inherently.

Marcus: Yes. And that, that kind of person might also screw over the people that it enlisted to help them with the hack. Yes. Right. And, uh, on Krebs on Security, we’ve got this story here about how, uh, The ransomware group, black hat basically implodes because as soon as they get the money, they run.

Marcus: And all of the hackers that actually did [00:16:00] the dirty work and have the data didn’t get any of the money. Yes, they trusted, trusted the big goes to single address,

Vic: so whoever Yeah. To collect the bag and then dole it out. Right. And you can’t, you couldn’t trust them. Yeah. And so it disappeared. Black cat disappeared, like smoke, I think.

Vic: And they put on their website that they imploded and were done.

Marcus: Yeah. So now there’s all sorts of confusion, right? Because the, the primary point of contact. Is has vanished right now money’s gone. The secondaries are coming up and they’re saying, Hey, look, we didn’t get paid. And unfortunately, since we didn’t get paid, like this ain’t over well, effectively.

Marcus: Yeah. And

Vic: change health care didn’t get what they bought. Like they paid 22 million, presumably to get their data back and the deencryption key or whatever they need. And they didn’t get that. And so the yeah, the subcontractors. Are now [00:17:00] messaging people saying, well, we still, we can give it to you, but you got to pay again.

Vic: It’s crazy. It’s crazy. Like this is just, and I mean, so complicated, so difficult and the change. I think they’re, I feel bad for them. They’re, they’re, they’re trying. I’m sure they’re running, like not sleeping, trying all night. They pay the ransom and that it doesn’t work.

Marcus: So I I’ve been having conversations with, with good friends who are in the industry, who are really smart people.

Marcus: And one of those conversations led to a point that I just think needs to be made because, you know, you can always sort of look at this and say a million different things, but as you and I know, um, Change Healthcare, Nashville company, uh, was acquired by United Health Group. You know, it was just closed last year, right?

Marcus: I mean, you know, I think they started the process in 2022, um, but it didn’t close until 2023. And they, you know, the [00:18:00] reason why UHG acquired them is because they’ve been really successful in, in acquiring, uh, you know, control of the network through, through acquisitions, but through some great business development, right?

Marcus: You know, to get to the point where they were. far and away the number one payment network claims processing network in the, in the country, right? Um, and as bad as we might think this is, think about what would have happened had this hack happened prior to UHG acquiring it, right? Yeah. Because Change Healthcare on their own, while they were a really strong company, if they had to both dedicate all of their resources to resolving the security error and any of the technology issues and also come up with the solution.

Marcus: The ransom didn’t navigate this. It couldn’t do it. I don’t think they would have been able to do. I mean, like change health care is not UHG, right? So, so it’s really, it’s really actually a blessing that UHG was able to make the acquisition prior to to this happening because [00:19:00] UHG has the heft to navigate.

Marcus: The company through this kind of situation, um, and there aren’t a lot of companies, I think that would be able to do that, you know, both address sort of the technical issues. You issue has tens of thousands of developers on staff. I think a lot of people don’t know that, but you know, since they’ve been building optimum over the course of the last 20 years, they built a ridiculous list.

Marcus: Yeah. Tech company, uh, underneath there. And so, their technical capabilities, obviously their balance sheet capabilities to be able to, you know, address supporting providers in the interim or paying a ransomware, like, there’s not a lot of outfits that actually could handle this situation.

Vic: Yeah, I think that is true.

Vic: I also think it’s I mean, I, you know, I’m not involved in any hacking stuff, but it’s my belief that they wouldn’t have attacked Change Healthcare. Because they wouldn’t, there’s not enough money, it’s not a big enough target until it gets bought by United. And so it’s like a chicken and egg thing. It’s a chicken and egg, yeah.

Marcus: I didn’t want to say that part. I [00:20:00] think maybe I shouldn’t have. Well, no, no, no, no, no. Listen, I mean, I think you’re right about that. But I guess the point I’m just I do think you’re right about that. The point I’m just making is change was just as important of a target prior to the acquisition, right? I mean, oh, yeah, they they they had

Vic: that network.

Vic: They had the network dominance before they got that’s that’s right. And it’s been being assembled since the 90s. I mean, a lot of that tech is I mean, they’ve been, they’ve patched it and duct taped it. It’s old McKesson tech. Yes, it’s old, old, old tech. And it, it works okay, but there are, there’s a lot of places to try to get in.

Vic: Yeah, it’s called technical debt, folks. Yeah, a lot of technical debt.

Marcus: Uh, all right, moving on. So, HHS made a statement regarding the cyber attack on change healthcare. Uh, Vic, share a little bit about this. Okay.

Vic: Yeah, this was a classic, uh, HHS coming to the rescue, but not really being [00:21:00] clear about how they were going to rescue people.

Vic: So, it’s great that they’re getting involved, and they want to be helpful. And then they put a bunch of suggestions about other places, um, like the Medicare administrative coordinator, contractor, other things, um, and so I guess I felt mixed about it, like, what they really should do is say, we are backstopping all the payments and please file your claims here, but they didn’t do that, they sort of put all of this other stuff that you need to apply to and work on.

Vic: CMS is going to issue guidance for Medicare Advantage. And they’re pointing people to this Mac thing. So I dunno, I guess it’s. It’s just how the federal government works. It’s very complicated. It’s not as easy as I’d like it to be.

Marcus: I mean, it does seem to me though. I mean, I actually talked to one of our portfolio companies today.

Marcus: I asked them, they provide [00:22:00] services, they file claims. I asked them like how they were doing. And they said, you know, they just have paused filing claims. Um, they’re still collecting. They’ve paused filing claims. They think there’s going to be a little bit of a working capital issue, but generally speaking, they think as long as the network kind of comes back, they’ll be able to push a bunch of claims through.

Marcus: Yeah. Um, You know, I mean, I’ve been engaging with the health care system throughout this process, and I have to tell you, it feels to me like it’s continuing to run. It’s finding ways to run. I know at the end of the day, there are cash flow, cash on hand, PNL issues, no question about that. I know those things are real, but it does.

Marcus: Weirdly, seem like the system has managed to be a little bit more resilient, um, maybe than would have been expected. And so that may be feeding into the lack of, uh, we’re just going to backstop everything, you know, this doesn’t have the same kind of, you know, when you said backstop, it triggered the whole SVB thing.

Marcus: And I just thought about the, the depth of the [00:23:00] uncertainty when you had all those companies with their entire. Cash treasury locked up in a bank that was dead, effectively a dead bank with with the potential of not getting any of that money back. Like that was the that was the conversation we were having that weekend, right?

Marcus: Yeah, bunch of venture backed companies, millions of dollars of LP to GP to portco. Dollars locked in a bank that was dead and maybe vanishing, right? So the backstop was absolutely necessary there. And I wonder if here it’s it’s largely an inconvenience, but everyone sort of understands it’s going to get worked out.

Marcus: And maybe that’s why they don’t have to push so hard on the full backstop.

Vic: Yeah, I think that’s right. It’s also I think there’s so many providers. Basically, every hospital, every provider group, every pharmacy is somehow affected by this. So widespread that I think banks and [00:24:00] other providers of lines of credit and, and other, Payers and agencies sort of everyone is trying to navigate this and it’s, I mean, it’s pervasive.

Vic: It’s the entire system. So it’s a little bit easier in a sense, cause it’s not, it’s not only SVB clients where someone else who just might happen to be another bank. Right. Is saying, well, okay, I’m okay. That’s right. That’s right. That’s right. This is kind of everyone. And so in a weird way, I think that makes it easier where a bank might, they might let someone go over a covenant or, I mean, they just.

Vic: There’s lots of stories with individual health providers that are trying to figure out how to make payroll and how to keep delivering care. But I think you’re right. In general, so far, everyone has been okay. Found a way.

Marcus: People have found a way, right? So, um. Yeah, we’ll continue to watch this one. It does feel like we’re getting close to [00:25:00] resolution on this.

Marcus: Uh, you know, I, I certainly hope so. I hope so for everybody that we’re close to getting resolution, but the, what I’m hearing through the grapevine is it sounds like nine, you know, 80 to 90 percent back, you know, maybe another 30 to 45 days of, of work to fully resolve things, but. There have been enough remedies sort of put in place and certain things have sort of come back online that we’ll make it to the other side of this, which is, which is good.

Marcus: But, but still, still, we are trending poorly here in terms of incidents, right, that have been happening. Ardent last November, Lurie Children’s, Change Healthcare, right? I mean, we’re just trending badly, uh, in terms of cyber attacks on, on critical hospital infrastructure.

Vic: And, and I guess we only hear about the ones that are successful, but.

Vic: It pays, like, so the, the bad guys are getting paid millions of dollars and I don’t think that [00:26:00] means they’re gonna stop. No, of course not. So, so, yes, it’s a trend that is worrisome.

Marcus: Alright. And then, uh, here’s the story from the DOJ. Um, we have the trifecta of the DOJ. The FTC and HHS that are all now collaborating.

Marcus: And we need to make clear, this is all under the administration of, of president Biden. Um, we have this trifecta that is all in partnership requesting public input. On an inquiry of the impacts of corporate ownership in health care, and they’re they’re largely focused on, um, health care practices. So this would be everything from from provider groups up to hospitals, uh, and talking about they’re really talking about private equity.

Marcus: So this is less of sort of a venture capital issue, but they’re talking specifically about what happens when these hospitals or physician groups or [00:27:00] ASCs are being purchased, and then they’re being gutted, uh, and there’s less access to care, or the quality of care goes down so that these private market actors can, uh, Presumably, at least that’s the way they’re positioning the inquiry, make more money.

Marcus: Um, so we’ve seen this happen. I think the HHS piece is a new piece for me because they’ve largely been focused on the drug, uh, negotiations, right? With pharma. That’s, that’s, that’s the big private market actions they’ve been taking. FTC and DOJ have been trading, right? You know what I mean? Like, like whose turn is it next to see all three of them now collaborating on what looks like, uh, A long haul thing.

Marcus: I mean, look, this is only going to be as effective as the Biden administration gets reelected. Um,

Vic: right.

Marcus: But it’s, it’s important to say they are now coordinating, uh, with a very, very [00:28:00] targeted approach to address private equity deals.

Vic: Yeah, I have to say I’m biased, even though it’s not really attacking venture I have a lot of friends in private equity, and I’m biased against towards free markets.

Vic: And so I look at this as a, you can always, if you gather enough cases and you look hard enough, there’s no question you can find some examples where individual consumers are worse off. That’s true in every situation, whether it’s private equity backed or public company backed or. A mom and pop, pop group just starting a new business.

Vic: You can always find some percentage of The patients that are worse off on some axes that you’re measuring and looking for private equity and some of the language they use in here is so loaded where they are like, [00:29:00] um, cutting staff, reducing benefits, just, um, um, slash staffing, cut quality patients, lose out.

Vic: It’s just, um, the scrutinizing roll ups and the strip and flip tactics. I mean, those words are. Indicative to me that they are looking to find smoking guns and then patients that were harmed. And there’s a lot of times when private equity is on balance helping make the system run more efficiently. Not always, certainly there’s bad actors in everything, but, um, It just reminds me of like, people always blame speculators whenever there’s a crash in financial markets.

Vic: But the speculators are there all the time, and, and, when times are good, no one’s [00:30:00] Upset about speculators. It’s just like when people are looking for someone to blame. They blame the speculator. So I don’t know. I mean, I don’t have a lot of confidence that this request for information will be sort of fairly done and done.

Vic: And they’ll find only bad actors.

Marcus: So, the two things that consistently get me worked up whenever I see these kinds of things are, um, and they all stem from a single thing, which is their tagline of increasing competition. Yeah, right. So first of all, the number one thing you could do, at least when we’re talking about hospitals to increase competition is get rid of the certificate of need.

Vic: Yes, full stop. And that they don’t need to do it. Or if I for that, they could just full stop.

Marcus: Full stop. So, so, I, I always get a little like distrustful when they go after private [00:31:00] equity and use increasing competition. Like if you want to just talk about the practices of private equity and the strip and flip playbook, which certainly some private equity firms do not all to your point to your point, certainly not all this, there’s more and more.

Marcus: Long hold private equity players out there that are investing that are starting up companies. So, you know, if you look at like what Welch Carson is doing, if you look at what CDNR is doing, you got a lot of examples of like private equity that kind of play like VC, like long hold VC, where they’re incubating, creating, building with the intent of innovating on the model and being competitive.

Marcus: Right, so for sure. It’s not a hundred percent true that all private equity does this, right? The Pharaoh’s capital folks, they focus on, on Medicaid specifically. They definitely don’t strip and flip. So there, there are clearly good, good actors in the private equity space. It’s when you say that these deals are in impairing competition.

Marcus: Then I’m always just like, Oh, give it a break. Like get rid of CON. [00:32:00] And then we’re, then we can have an honest conversation around increasing competition. The second thing is it always sort of leaves out the impact of CMS pricing and the, the, the plans that they construct on the viability of the business model, right?

Marcus: I mean, you control the pricing for more than 50 percent of the healthcare in the country. You regularly price in a way that is not in line with inflation. You only provide. Price updates once a year, not quarterly, right? And so talking about competition, competition can only thrive in environments where the pricing is determined by the market, right?

Marcus: And literally drive delivering a better service can potentially demand better pricing that we don’t have that in this market. We have fixed prices. Okay, we have no transparency. Exactly.

Vic: So, I mean, if you got rid of CUN, had open [00:33:00] pricing that is changing quarterly or monthly, and full transparency, that would drive incredible competition.

Vic: And then they could step away and let the free market go, or they can also step in and make sure it’s fair competition, whatever way they want to do right. But this is I mean, you led with it. This is the Biden administration trying to continue to sort of build their case that they’re helping make the economy fair for everyone or something.

Vic: And I don’t know. I don’t believe it works. But, um, it might, it might work in getting votes. Well, I mean,

Marcus: look, it’s a request for information from the public, right? Clearly, it’s timed alongside the campaign.

Vic: Yeah.

Marcus: Right? So, um, there’s a reason why they’re all coordinating. There’s a reason why they’re requesting from the public, right?

Marcus: They’re looking for backing. Yeah.

Vic: People are gonna They’re looking for backing. [00:34:00] Anytime, anyone who’s, wants to complain about anything. Can can call them up.

Marcus: Yeah. I mean, this is part of where we are. We’re post super Tuesday. Here we go, right? In fact, this was released on super Tuesday Uh, so no coincidences in politics.

Marcus: Okay Uh moving on so we’re gonna start talking about some stuff in the health system world Uh, the first story from fierce healthcare story about mark cuban and his uh, his his drug venture Inking a deal with community health systems right here in uh, middle, tennessee.

Vic: Yeah, so he’s telling them epinephrine.

Vic: It’s a small deal Um, only a few facilities, maybe eight, ten facilities, and a limited number of drugs. But I think, great, and it’s going to lead to lower prices on the drugs, and better service, and good for everyone. Cuban, I’m sure, will make money. These are generic drugs. [00:35:00] And he’s delivering low, low cost.

Marcus: Yeah. Uh, also in the story, they mentioned that he has, uh, launched a 22, 000 square foot manufacturing plant in Dallas. So he’s, he’s building vertically here, right? He’s going direct to the hospitals doing deals. He’s manufacturing

Vic: on shore on shore in, in Texas. Right. So it sort of hits, he’s giving things that everyone wants, right?

Vic: More access to medications, lower prices, jobs for people in Dallas. Cuban smart.

Marcus: Yep. Yep. I love the impact that Cuban is having in the healthcare industry because it’s an informed. Healthcare approach, but it is coming from the mind of an innovator, right? You know what I mean? He’s, he’s, he’s deconstructing the healthcare business model from an innovator’s perspective, leveraging tech in exactly the right ways in healthcare.

Marcus: He took the time to learn the industry, you know, um, and figure out what are the entry points? What are the [00:36:00] weak points? Where, where can, where is there so much frustration that I actually can go in and make a difference and get deals done, right? And, and leverage my brand to, to positive effect. And I think he’s doing a fantastic job.

Marcus: Um, so this is really exciting. Uh, Mayo. Closeout 2023 with 18 billion in revenue and 6 percent operating margin. Um, these numbers were already sort of intimated in, uh, in, in January, but like, here we are with the official results, incredible year for, for Mayo. Congrats to that, that leadership team. Yeah, they do a great job.

Marcus: And then, uh, UPMC, uh, not, not as great of a year. Twenty, two hundred million in, uh, operating losses as their expenses rise. And I think this one is interesting because both Mayo and UPMC are, are, you know, academic centers. Um, UPMC got really aggressive on the venture side. Um, got really, uh, sort of [00:37:00] aggressive on the innovation side over the last ten years.

Marcus: Um, And so They have

Vic: a big payer,

Marcus: too. Yeah, yeah,

Vic: yeah. That’s where they really are differentiated. I mean, I think they have, we can check it out, I think they have more in revenue than Mayo. Um, But they’re not making money.

Marcus: Yeah. So anyway, just continuing to track the performance of different health systems.

Marcus: Um, and, uh, yeah, look, congrats to Mayo, you know, great, great, great job by those folks. So let’s take a break. Let’s let, uh, Doug share a little bit about jumpstart foundry. We come back, we’ll get back into, uh, the whole GLP one

Doug Edwards: situation. Thanks guys. For the opportunity to talk about our pre seed fund jumpstart foundry.

Doug Edwards: My name’s Doug Edwards, CEO of jumpstart health investors, the parent company of jumpstart foundry. We’re so excited to be able to talk about, uh, early stage venture investing. Certainly the need for us to change the crazy world of healthcare in the United States. We are spending 20 [00:38:00] percent of our GDP north of 4 trillion a year on healthcare with suboptimal outcomes.

Doug Edwards: Jumpstart Foundry exists to help us find and identify and invest in innovative companies that are going to make a difference in healthcare. In our country, every year, Jumpstart Foundry invests a fund, raises a fund and deploys that across 30, 40, 50 assets every year, allowing ease of access for our limited partners to invest, to help us make something better in healthcare.

Doug Edwards: Some of the benefits of Jumpstart Foundry is there’s no management fees. We deploy all the capital that’s raised every year in the fund. We find the best and brightest typically around single digit percentage of companies that apply for funding from Jumpstart and we invest in the most incredible, robust, innovative solutions and founders in the United States.

Doug Edwards: Over the last nine years, Jumpstart Foundry has invested in nearly 200 early stage, pre seed stage companies in the country. Through those most innovative solutions [00:39:00] that Jumpstart Foundry invests in, we also provide great returns and a great experience for our limited partners. We partner with AngelList.

Doug Edwards: To administer the fund, making that ease of access, not only with low minimums, but the ease of investing in venture much better. We all know that healthcare is broken. Everyone deserves better. Come alongside us with Jumpstart Foundry, invest in making the future of healthcare better and make something better in healthcare.

Doug Edwards: Thank you guys. Now back to the show.

Marcus: All right. Novo Nordisk, uh, releases a pill. And this reminds me when we first started talking about the GLP ones, Vic, you sort of pulled https: otter. ai Uh, a poll of different people talking about it. And you pointed out that the injections were the big barrier to broad adoption, you said?

Marcus: Yeah. You know, for you, you would take it if you didn’t have to kind of stick yourself all the time. Yeah. Pill people a pill people, people are

Vic: scared of needles. Yeah.

Marcus: If it was in a pill, you, you would, you would take it.

Vic: Yeah.

Marcus: And so here we are. No Nortis releases a pill and their [00:40:00] stock shoots through the roof.

Marcus: Yeah. The pi,

Vic: they, they have a daily pill. It’s a lot easier. It, it also had better results than the. The traditional treatment,

Marcus: probably adherence is a factor there.

Vic: Yeah, so their, their stock did great. I mean, the GLP one treatments are, are here. I mean, it’s, it’s like all the American true values. Give me something that’s just easy and then I don’t have to worry about anything else.

Vic: Right.

Marcus: Right. Uh, and then. At the same time, employees, and this, this may be offset now that we’re moving into a PIL format, right? You know, we’re getting a certain level of saturation in the market of options around GLP 1. That should mean prices will come down. We’re getting out of the novelty phase. We’re getting into multiple options, multiple delivery mechanisms.

Marcus: So it seems like the price should start to drop. But employers have been blocking coverage of GLP 1s.

Vic: Yeah, yeah, that’s right. So, the um, [00:41:00] They are concerned, I think, because even though it clearly helps employees lose weight, if they then take on the job a year from now, a lot of the savings associated with that.

Vic: Lower weight, even though it will be that they’re healthier and they have longer, longer health spans and they spend less money. They may not be on that employer’s books. And so I think there’s um, there’s just a concern about that underwriting.

Marcus: Yeah, I’ve, I’ve had some conversations with, with employers and it’s like some of them are covering in 100 percent and some have totally wiped it out and are not covering it at all.

Marcus: So it’s, it’s, you know, different people have done different risk assessments of it. They have different actuary models for it. and have sort of decided, I’ve actually seen folks who are more pro value based care, who have more of a long term view of it, and they’re thinking more like, hey, you know, if I allow this person to do this, less [00:42:00] sick days, you know, better morale, um, you know, more productivity, uh, happier person in the, for the, for the contribution to the culture, and so some, some employers are finding an ROI model that makes sense, but I think a lot of them who are thinking about it In straight up terms.

Marcus: And especially as we have, uh, you know, AI on the scene, that’s, that’s changing people’s plans in terms of what their future staff plans are. They’re just saying, Hey, we don’t want to make that long term investment in, in their employees. So,

Vic: yeah, yeah. And I’m working on getting a guest. Show around, uh, CEO of nourished RX, who’s really into food as medicine and can cover all these topics.

Vic: So hopefully that’ll come in the next little while.

Marcus: And then the story in the Atlantic that, that basically frames up that we’re, we’re talking about GLP one as a weight loss drug, but, but really what’s happening here is that it’s, it’s impacting the brain and it’s the, it’s the brain’s decision making that GLP one is, is impacting.

Marcus: And we need to be focused much more. Uh, on what GLP 1 is [00:43:00] doing to our brains than what it’s doing to our waistlines.

Vic: Yeah, that’s right. The, the, um, I mean, the science is a little bit over my head, but I think the point is that the, the GLP 1 is a hormone or a signal that our body naturally creates, but it, when we create it, it only lasts a matter of five minutes before it deteriorates, and so it doesn’t make it very far.

Vic: Uh, Doesn’t like get into our blood and circulate all around. It’s sort of, it’s, it’s half life is, you know, measured in like three minutes, two minutes. And, the initial products, you had to inject yourself twice a day, and that was really bad. That’s hard. That’s hard. And so, we have manufactured longer lasting GLP 1, so you can do a once a week injection.

Vic: But what that means is it’s the artificial GLP 1 then circulates through the [00:44:00] whole body. And what this article is talking about is that because it has such a short half life, there’s GLP 1 that’s made in the gut that does manage, um, hunger and, and, You know, whether you are full or not, but then it also is manufacturing their brain for other purposes and the half life is such that it evolution really felt like that was fine.

Vic: It didn’t have negative effects because it never they never cross pollinated and we have now. Change that where the half life is much longer measured in several days And so we’re mixing signals and that’s some of the benefit. I think that people are seeing that they’re able to not Be so addicted to things not not not smoking not Whatever any kind of addictions, but we don’t know what else This hormone regulates and we don’t know [00:45:00] what the long term effects gonna be.

Vic: We just don’t know we don’t know a lot of things You And so it is effective at losing weight. That’s clear. You lose a lot of weight, but it’s not clear what the long term effects is going to be. Yep. And, uh, who’s studying that? Nobody. Yeah. So, or no one that’s funded very much. I’m sure someone’s studying it.

Marcus: Right. Uh, on the other end of the whole sort of healthy living, uh, Dr. Rhonda Patrick, who I think is. Probably known by people who track Joe Rogan and, and, uh, any of his shows where he has had different doctors on. There was a, there was a moment in time where he was really heavy on the carnivore diet and he was like debating all the vegans and stuff like that.

Marcus: And so Rhonda Patrick sort of showed up amongst that series of shows. A lot of people don’t know, but Peter Attia, I think, Mostly rose to prominence on the Joe Rogan show. Um, and so Rhonda Patrick was, was one of the docs that would appear on Joe Rogan, but did not rise to the same level that Peter Ortega did.

Marcus: I think [00:46:00] mostly just because she hasn’t been as, um, uh, as consistent or prolific in terms of content creation, uh, but, but has her own sort of. You know, model that she talks about. She’s talked a lot about saunas and things like that. So she’s, she’s Rosen risen back to prominence on social media over the last week or so, because she appeared on modern wisdom, which is a show by this guy named, uh, the Brit name, uh, Chris Williamson.

Marcus: And she, she was basically hardcore that. The thing that got her the most attention is she said exercise is more important than sleep, right? Which is a that’s a very counterculture thing to say in 2024 Everyone’s like sleep is number one sleep is number one sleep is number one and she has basically gone out on a limb and said vigorous cardio she speaks Specifically to a model called 4×4 Norwegian, which I think could be wrong, but I think means four consistent minutes of like zone five level effort.

Marcus: Um, and then you take a break and then you get back at it. Four

Vic: minutes, four times a day of like [00:47:00] vigorous zone five means you can’t do anything else. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. In it. Yeah. So

Marcus: you, you

Vic: do this for like a sprint

Marcus: or something? Yeah. So you do this for basically a half hour and, and you know, you’d be able to do this on like a bike.

Marcus: So like assault bikes generally are where you can get to zone five Yeah. Most easily because you’re pushing with your arms and your legs. Yeah. Right. And, and the wind is sort of drying you off so you’re not overheating. Right. Um, so. She’s basically saying nothing matters more, you know, you can reverse heart health by decades by doing this, um, and that it also will fix sleep issues, um, you know, because you get

Vic: more better quality sleep,

Marcus: you will get better quality sleep an

Vic: hour and a half less, you get better quality sleep.

Vic: That’s her. Assertion which makes sense. Yeah.

Marcus: Yeah. Well, she she is she’s largely focused on um, she’s a she’s a doctor But I think she’s a md Um, so a lot of her stuff is just like a lot of studies And it seems like she’s she’s effectively saying do this four by four norwegian or really? Make sure you have an [00:48:00] intense cardio portion of your You know, overall exercise regime, and that’s the that’s the way to long lasting health, right?

Marcus: And avoiding a lot of the, uh, you know, chronic diseases that are plaguing America,

Vic: and it’s an anti inflammatory kind of mechanism, which kind of makes sense. And that would solve the problem. That would help it in a lot of ways. Oh yeah.

Marcus: I mean, we’re talking about dementia, Alzheimer’s, congestive heart failure, ASDVD.

Marcus: So anyway, um, thought it was interesting. And I know you and I want to talk more about longevity stuff. We’re both, we’re both into longevity stuff. Um, this to me felt like a really good starting point, uh, because it’s a, it’s a contrary, but also. Somewhat like when you hear it, you’re kind of like that, but it kind of makes sense, you know, kind of makes sense that I’ve been doing, um, uh, not consistently, but I’ve been trying to do these like 2010, uh, 15 rounds sprints on the assault bike, which are hard enough.

Marcus: And I have [00:49:00] noticed. sort of an improvement in just my cardiovascular resilience doing that. So like 20 seconds all out and then 10 second break and then do 15 rounds of that on the assault bike. Yeah. Um, and for, for, you know, you can

Vic: see the changes. I can, I can feel it. I can,

Marcus: I can feel it that. I just have more cardiovascular resilience when I’m doing other activities, um, than I had before.

Marcus: And so I’m actually starting to prioritize that a little bit more than the Zone 2 work. Um, it’s also more efficient. Yeah, yeah, the

Vic: Zone 2 stuff is, it takes a lot of time.

Marcus: It’s forever. I mean, so anyway, um, just, I thought it was an interesting anecdote. Yeah. Thanks for letting me talk about it. All right.

Marcus: And we’re going to end the show with, uh, our, our rundown on AI. So, uh, I guess first things first, Claude from Anthropic, they released Claude three, um, by most of all the benchmarks, it’s better than both, uh, GPT four and, uh, Gemini 1. 0 ultra. Uh, so we’ve, we’ve got a third contender on the block.

Vic: Pull [00:50:00] up the, uh, Right there for people that are watching on video that they sort of, of course, they are running the comparison, but I think they did a fairly reasonable job that they sort of on several different.

Vic: Um, axes compare themselves to GPT 4, GPT 3. 5, and the two Gemini, Google’s products, and it performs really well.

Marcus: And I think it’s worth reading out the different areas. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I think this helps people understand, like, how these language models work. So, um, undergraduate level knowledge, graduate level reasoning.

Marcus: Grade school math, math problem solving, multilingual math, code, reasoning over text, mixed evaluations, knowledge Q& A, common knowledge. So these are the categories that we’re benchmarking language models on. So, I mean, just think about that. From a knowledge worker perspective, like put

Vic: me up against here. I would not do well.

Vic: Like I look, I might do well and okay at some of that, but not all [00:51:00] of them.

Marcus: Okay. Quick divergence. Cause this is going to move into the JP Morgan story. We’re about to cover. I just actually, let’s just talk about the JP Morgan story. And then we can, so JP Morgan, uh, announced that they have an AI aided cashflow model that cuts manual work by 90%.

Marcus: So this is a really good segue from all those different categories of. Things that a knowledge worker may may perform. We never think about knowledge workers working across those different axes, right? Yeah. But that’s what you’re doing. That’s the work you’re doing. You know, reasoning.

Vic: When I say, uh, revenue, check out what the revenue was last month.

Vic: You know what that is. Because you have I don’t know, a high school degree or something.

Marcus: Exactly. And so J. P. Morgan, biggest bank in the United States, um. They have a lot of checking accounts, business checking accounts that they manage. Yes, yes. And they get attacked by cyber security and stuff all the time.

Marcus: But um, they have cut. Their manual process down by 90 percent for their A. I. Aided cash flow [00:52:00] model. And so this just kind of gets into the future of the knowledge worker right in an age where A. I. Is rapidly improving. rapidly improving. And we live in a capitalist world. Capitalists exist for the benefit of shareholders, not for employees.

Marcus: Um, knowledge workers are expensive. Yeah. Right. They, they are, they’re a very, very expensive variety of employee.

Vic: Yeah. And they don’t, don’t do things that are hard for computers to do. No, no. Like in health there, there’s like drawing blood is hard for a robot to do. That’s right. So, but the knowledge workers are, They kind of float on this, uh, they’re working on their laptop all the time.

Vic: They’re doing knowledge stuff, and I’m this way. This is us. Right.

Marcus: Yeah. This is us, right? And so, I don’t know, man. I mean, I think [00:53:00] we’re heading into And there were a lot of human capital value is likely to be eradicated because when you bind LLMs plus automation plus communication and coordination, meaning different A.

Marcus: I. S. That are specialized against different data sets can coordinate amongst each other. Humans are not gonna be able to beat that. They’re just not and you can always run all the results through a QA filter at the end of the day, right to just sort of, you know, double and triple check the results. Think about how many things human knowledge workers do today that are not QA’d.

Marcus: I think it’s like 95 percent of the work is not QA’d today by, you know, human knowledge workers. So forget about that. I mean, right now the bar is very high for things. In the physical world, the bar is very high for self driving cars, right? Even though, as you and I have [00:54:00] discussed, the likelihood of self driving cars outperforming humans is very high, right?

Marcus: Yeah. The only thing I worry about there is cybersecurity, software downloads, you know, kind of taking over in a bad way. That’s my big worry about the self driving car thing. But, you know. Assuming they don’t get compromised, they’re going to outperform humans, that’s going to happen. But in a knowledge working setting where there’s no real danger?

Vic: Take it to the extreme, like you and I have both seen this. There’s a couple of different versions going around. People are trying to build a single founder billion dollar company. Oh yeah, lots of people. A lot of people are trying to do it. No one has done it yet, but people are going to do it. Of course they’re going to do it.

Vic: They’re building the entire delivery, delivering value through a company that has one person in it for The goal of having a billion dollar in market cap, and that’s the extreme, like you don’t have any employees, and I think the [00:55:00] reason we talk about it so much is the only way to protect myself, forget all the other employees, the only reason to protect myself, or people listening right now, or you, is to learn about these models and figure out, okay, how can I leverage it, so that my knowledge work is a hundred X more, and Incremental progress is not going to get done.

Vic: No, it’s just not going to.

Marcus: No, you, you, you have to have a command of the space such that you can orchestrate all of these different tools to your advantage, because at least in that model, you can compete against other companies and win, right? Like, but if, if your value is on. Your output as a knowledge worker, not leveraging these technologies to compete in the market, I think time is limited because fundamentally, the way the capitalism works is it’s not for the employee, it’s for the shareholder.

Marcus: I mean, we’ve seen that a million times over and people [00:56:00] philosophically can feel how they want to feel about that. Um, but we are in a hyper capitalistic era. That’s that’s what it is. So, um, I’m not saying that’s right. I’m not saying that’s good. I’m saying. That’s what it is. And people need to be really thinking about that.

Vic: Yeah, so let’s just go back to the JPMorgan story. They can cut manual work, I think for their clients, by 90 percent in the, in the cash receipts, cash flow space. There’s a lot of medium and small businesses That have, say, a 10 person accounting team that now needs one person. Ted, that’s today. That’s not some future state thing.

Marcus: I mean, 90%, like it’s, it’s easy to just look at 90 percent and not realize what that really means, but when you think about a

Vic: small business with 10 people in the accounting group, there’s a lot of those. And they, They don’t need 10 people.

Marcus: Nope, intense. Okay. Uh, on a, on a brighter note, back to AI in [00:57:00] healthcare, uh, the healthcare industry is getting their act together.

Marcus: We’re starting to collaborate. We’re starting to create working groups. We’re starting to create initiatives. So two initiatives, uh, where we’ve got friends in both of these initiatives that are, that are involved. Uh, the first one, the folks at Chime are partnering with care. ai and, uh, care. ai. That’s That’s our friend, Bruce Barandos.

Marcus: Um, and uh, and they’re building an entire initiative around the smart hospital maturity model. So basically saying that there’s no good standards around what it means to do artificial intelligence with ambient sensing inside of a hospital. We everyone’s talking about it. You have different hospitals investing in different ambient tools, you know, where awareness tools, um, but we probably need a common nomenclature, a common set of standards around what that really looks like.

Marcus: Um, chime, obviously, you know, sort of the rising power, I would say, uh, in the organization around it and the healthcare world, you know, they’ve, they really their partnership with health. I mean, I was just at vibe. Yeah, it’s great. Yeah. No, they’ve, [00:58:00] you know, look, I can’t say for sure. Cause I’m not in that world that they’ve quote unquote surpassed him.

Marcus: But I think in relevance chime has, you know, certainly outstripped him over the last two, three years since they parted

Vic: with a, with a new, sexy, exciting partner. Yeah. And vibes is still like just plodding along. I know.

Marcus: And, and vibe is like legit. Five is a real, real event now. Yeah. Um, so anyway, this is

Vic: great.

Vic: We need standards. Health systems don’t want to invent their own thing.

Marcus: Yeah. So we’ll, we’ll, we’ll put a link at the show notes, but definitely check this out. Uh, industry advisory panel full of, you know, people. If you’re in the industry, you’ll, you’ll recognize these names. So that’s great. Our friend, Marty Bonick over at, uh, uh, Arden Health Systems on the list.

Marcus: Neil Patel

Vic: who’s in the middle here. Yep.

Marcus: Yep. So, you know, good, good group of people. Uh, and then finally, um, a group called CHI, which is the coalition for health AI. That is focused on the responsible use of AI and health care, and they have a heavy hitter board [00:59:00] of directors that they put together. It looks like it’s largely been incubated out of Mayo, but they’ve got, you know, folks from the FDA.

Marcus: They’ve got folks from the HHS who are engaged. Um, and this is

Vic: a much more ambitious group, but great. I mean, and really, they, they brought in all the different kind of, uh, stakeholders, contingencies that you would need.

Marcus: Yeah. Yeah. So if you go to the website, um, coalition for health AI. org, you go to the leadership page, you know, you look at the folks that they have there and it’s, you know, it’s Duke, it’s Stanford, um, Morgan Cheatham from, uh, from Bessemer Venture Partners, um, uh, Troy Tazbaz, who I got to see live at, uh, Aspen Ideas Health last year, super smart guy.

Marcus: Who was actually talking about basically how the, the, the laws that we’re using at the, so first of all, AI in healthcare largely flows through the FDA because we don’t have any proper infrastructure for today, and the framework that we have for assessing it is the medical device loss laws that we wrote in the [01:00:00] 70s, which

Vic: are not.

Vic: It’s like, just not traditional. It’s not even the same thing. Yeah,

Marcus: so it was great to see him on this list. Um, yeah, so just super solid Microsoft. I think the chief scientific officer of Microsoft is on the list. So super hard hitter group and our friend, uh, Matthews. Yes. Yes. Uh, is, uh, is, is chairing, co chairing the advisory board, which is unbelievable.

Marcus: So, um, you know, not just great people that we don’t know. Great people that we do know, uh, are, are at the leadership helm of this. So this is definitely an initiative we’re going to have to track pretty closely. Yeah. I mean, I

Vic: think the industry is paying attention. Trying to rope in all the different important perspectives as it, as it needs to, but also moving pretty quickly.

Vic: And so I was excited to see both these groups come together.

Marcus: Yeah. And they have a little thing. This has joined the coalition. So I’m going to fill out the form. Um, but yeah, this is, this is good stuff, right? It’s good to see. Industry leaders coming together, um, with, and we’re [01:01:00] talking about legitimate industry leaders, really, in both of these initiatives.

Marcus: It’s very cool. One, one is obviously much more focused on hospitals, where the other one is more broadly focused on responsible use, um, focused on minimizing bias. I mean, obviously, we’ve seen lots of weird things happen with the recent launch of Gemini, uh, you know, where it’s like, if you ask it for a Nazi, it gave you an image of Chris Rock.

Marcus: You ask it for a founding father, it gave you an image of a black guy. I mean, you know, it’s just like, like we. Right. We got to really kind of track this AI stuff pretty closely because, um, it’s only as good as the, as the data you put in it. Right. Yeah. And the open

Vic: web has a lot of not great data.

Marcus: Totally.

Marcus: Totally. So we got to be really, really thoughtful about this stuff. And it is great to see, um, smart, legitimate leaders like Cam, uh, at the helm on this stuff. So that’s exciting. We’ll track this and we’ll find ways for us to get involved. Yeah. We know a little bit about ai. Yeah, yeah. We, we talk about it quite a bit.

Marcus: Um, so yeah, so look, uh, busy week, lots going on, and, and we’ll, we’ll have some stuff to talk about with the state of State of the Union, uh, next [01:02:00] week. Um, hopefully you all enjoyed our, uh, guest episode 46 with, uh, our friend, uh, Jay Bott. Yeah. Who is, uh, a managing director at Deloitte. Heads up their health Equity Institute.

Marcus: Um, awesome guy. Great conversation. And, uh, we’ll be bringing more and more of those conversations to you. So, you know, we’re excited about that.

Vic: Yeah. I think this, this weekly rollup is a great overview of all the different pieces, but it’s really helpful to go deep into one area and bring, bring a true expert in.

Marcus: Yeah. And also like, if you’re a listener and you’ve got somebody that you think we really should talk to, we’re going to do that. Reach out to us, let us know, um, you know, we’re, we’re constantly building up a backlog of great people that we can talk to, and, uh, we’re excited to be made aware of more people that maybe we don’t know about today.

Marcus: So, uh, and then finally, of course, you know, like, share, subscribe, uh, give us five stars on iTunes. Uh, we’re growing, uh, listenership, which is great and, uh, getting some great feedback on how the shows can improve, but are also improving. We’re working really hard on it. So, uh, please, uh, keep us, uh, aware of what [01:03:00] we can do to make the show better.

Marcus: All right. That’s it. See you next week.