56 – Humana $741m, Optum Layoffs, FTC Bans Noncompete, Hip Fracture Survival Lower Than Cancer

Marcus: [00:00:00] If you enjoy this content, please take a moment to rate and review it. Your feedback will greatly impact our ability to reach more people. Thank you. All right. I am recording a solo show because Vic is on vacation. And this is the first time where one of the two of us was out and The other one did not have his act together to bring in a guest host.

Marcus: So, uh, but we have a job to do here, which is to every week, keep you up to speed on what’s going on, uh, what’s going on in the markets, what’s going on with health systems, with payers and the regulatory world and the AI world, um, generally speaking in the healthcare world. And so, uh, we’re going to do our job.

Marcus: So, uh, Uh, this week’s show will be a little bit faster cause I’m not going back and forth with Vic, but we will touch on the topics of the week and, uh, keep you informed. So, uh, with that, let’s dig in.[00:01:00]

Marcus: All right. So starting off, uh, the U S GDP was announced for a Q1 and came in at a very, very disappointing 1. 6 percent growth. It was projected to be 2. 2 percent growth. And really when you unpack it, it boils down to consumer spending. So it seems that finally, uh, the, the U S consumer has felt the pinch of inflation has felt the pinch of rising prices has felt the pinch of higher interest rates and quite frankly, uh, you know, 12 months of really difficult labor disputes, as well as layoffs that happened at companies around the country, as well as bankruptcies.

Marcus: And Q1 seems to sort of reflect that the U S consumer is now starting to spend less. And so, um, yeah, 1. 6 versus a 2. 2 percent projection. What does this ultimately mean? It means that it. It is continuing to be difficult for the Fed to justify a, um, a set of [00:02:00] rate cuts this year. So, uh, they continue to be in a bind.

Marcus: Inflation is sticky. It continues to sort of test the high threes, potentially get into the four range, which is, you know, obviously the wrong direction. It needs to be going towards two. And, uh, And now we’ve got GDP numbers that sort of reflect that. So, uh, obviously also not going to be great for, uh, the Biden administration as they try to tout really, really strong economic growth.

Marcus: Obviously they had a fantastic Q3 and Q4 of, uh, economic growth for 2023, but we’re now in the election year and Q1, uh, dropping down. Uh, 0. 6 percent from what was projected, obviously not great. So, um, that’s the basics there. Um, it, it looks like if you really dig into the consumer spending on healthcare services actually increased spending on services generally increased, but the decline in the purchase of goods was down 0.

Marcus: 4%. And so that’s a, that’s a pretty big decrease in spending on goods. Uh, also just anecdotally, you know, what [00:03:00] I’ve seen around the country, I’m on the board of. Nashville CBC. We get a lot of data for travel that’s happening around the country. Hotel occupancy rates and Q one was a soft quarter around the country as well, even on the travel side of things.

Marcus: So people are just spending less money. Um, and we’ll see if that changes. But as we head into the summer, it does seem like the company layoffs have calmed down. Seems like everyone is sort of Made their moves on that front. And now it’s trying to stabilize the company and, and see how they can maximize, uh, returns with the, the employees that they have.

Marcus: So it does seem like we’re, we’re in this cycle. Everything has to sort of correct. And now maybe finally, we’re getting to the point where the consumer has decided to start correcting in a Q1 of 2024. Um, so that’s all the news we have there. No real news from the fed, no print on the CPI side of things.

Marcus: Uh, moving into deals that have been done. So we have three deals to talk about today. Um, one, a company called summer health. Uh, they raised 12 million series a, uh, this is a company in the pediatric space, seven wire and Lux [00:04:00] capital are, are sort of the big backers here. And this company is, is focused on the shortage of doctors in the pediatric space and doing telehealth, but a lot of telehealth through messaging.

Marcus: So the ability for parents, uh, in an emergent situation to be able to message in problems and get answers to their questions. Um, I think there’s just a broader challenge here that we’re facing. Um, And we’re trying to solve it with technology. But, uh, the truth is caring for people requires people. So I do think that these things will be really good stop gaps and they will end up making money and they will end up attracting more capital because in the absence of people, we’re going to need something there.

Marcus: People do need at least the right information, but it does seem like we’re moving into a world where people are going to have to be. more sovereign over their family’s health, whether it’s their aging loved ones or their children. Um, there are less specialists, there are less home aides, there are less pediatrics, you know, clinics there.

Marcus: There’s just less people there to [00:05:00] care. And we’re going to need to a give people rapid response technology solutions, but also we’re going to need to empower them to actually provide care. So I think we’re going to see, um, over the course of the next 10 years, a lot of these, different barriers and, and physician sovereign rules that are in place, get relaxed just because the pressure on the healthcare system is going to become too intense.

Marcus: Um, specifically on the workers, there’s going to be, you know, panel sizes that are too big. There’s going to be, you know, uh, too much pressure. You’re not gonna be able to take proper vacations. People are going to be asked to work longer shifts and that’s not going to work either, right? You’re going to have more burnout, more fallout inside of the industry, and that’s only going to lead to more problems.

Marcus: So we’re going to have to find. Entirely different models, um, to handle the scale of the care that we need, um, that, that doesn’t require their own bodies at it. Areef, which is a company that has portable defibrillators. They, uh, raised 57 million in growth capital to speed at cardiac arrest response. So, uh, congrats to them.

Marcus: That’s, that’s [00:06:00] obviously great, great business. Cuesta Capital. Um, and Catalyst Health Ventures are sort of the big backers here. Um, we, we love to see growth rounds happening, uh, especially as early stage investors, it just lets us know that, you know, we’re not totally running into, uh, into a cliff of funding and have to make all of our seed stage companies cashflow positive.

Marcus: Uh, and then a company that I actually, uh, had a chance to look at, but, but didn’t, uh, have an opportunity to invest in a company called the Lafayette, uh, that really focused on the inefficiency in the way that. Medical billing happens, all the errors that are there leveraging, um, LLMs and other AI, uh, AI capabilities in order to eliminate fraud, uh, waste and abuse in the medical billing process.

Marcus: They were able to raise a 10 million series a. So congrats to them. First smart capital led the round, uh, along with, uh, Anthem is aperture gingerbread, remarkable, remarkable ventures, 1984 and towel ventures. Uh, so congrats to, uh, to the Lafayette team definitely thought they were, they were really, really strong in what they were.

Marcus: We’re creating and they’ve, [00:07:00] they’re saying that their revenue has now, um, increased Forex over the last 12 months. So obviously that’s, you know, when you Forex in 12 months, you’re hitting that venture scale. So that’s, that’s really strong results and congrats to them for successfully raising a series. A very few companies are actually getting to series a, and it’s no surprise.

Marcus: They’ve got a, an AI component to what they’re doing. And so it makes sense that they were able to get to a series a. Moving to the payer side of things. So we talked about UHG, um, beating EPS. And we talked about Humana was, was, uh, next up to announce they have reported 741 million in profits and they’re boosting their Medicare forecast.

Marcus: So, you know, these payers there, they have the data. They have the foresight, they have incredible modeling and actuary capabilities, and they have the ability to raise premiums if they need to. And so, um, and they, and they have a very, especially in the case of like a Humana super focused on the Medicare advantage space, it’s very captive audience.

Marcus: I mean, you know, you need that insurance. Most [00:08:00] Americans don’t have long term care insurance, and so they’re going to need to. keep their capital for long term care needs that are not covered by any insurance policies. And so you kind of just need to have that base Medicare, um, Medicare advantage, primary, secondary setup in place.

Marcus: And, uh, even though the rates were You know, not what they had hoped for. As Emily said, when you take the growth of Medicare advantage overall, along with their ability to boost premiums, along with their ability to manage costs, we think most of the impact is really going to come to the provider side of things, not so much on the payer side.

Marcus: And so Humana showing a really great, uh, really great result here and just following suit with what, uh, Elevance and UHG already shared the week before in, in earnings reports. Uh, Big update from CMS this week on the Medicaid rule side of things. And so, uh, they have issued the final rule for Medicaid, kind of the big themes here, one, a huge [00:09:00] theme around, uh, consumer transparency, um, forcing every state to have a website where consumers can compare, uh, the different managed care providers, look at satisfaction ratings, um, you know, And and just and also understand more of the cost structure that’s going to be there.

Marcus: So that’s obviously a big burden from a reporting perspective, from a transparency perspective, never something that people love to see, uh, on the payer side of the house or the provider side of the house, sort of more requirements to have to You know, to have to report and create transparency, uh, it’s just added costs.

Marcus: It doesn’t actually, you know, net new revenue for them. So it’s just another requirement in order to get the dollars they were already getting. Uh, I don’t think it’s necessarily that, uh, they fundamentally are against transparency, especially if they are performing really well. Um, if they’re not performing that well, that’s a different story, but if they’re [00:10:00] performing well, they probably don’t mind, you know, kind of, uh, opening.

Marcus: up their books a little bit and showing how well they’re doing vis a vis their competition. But it’s really just the fact that this is going to create more costs. Um, and, and that’s, I think, across the board going to be challenged. Another big thing that happened following suit with what, uh, with the rule that was passed down to, uh, Nursing homes, uh, home care agencies are now being required on their Medicaid business, uh, to spend at least 80 percent of their state Medicaid payments on personal care, home health aid and other home and community based service organizations.

Marcus: Um, and you know, they have, they have to spend this stuff on the workers. So, um, I don’t know. I mean. You definitely want to make sure that workers are, are earning a livable wage. And at the same time, setting hard margins on businesses really means that businesses are not able [00:11:00] to invest in other capabilities.

Marcus: You know, one of the things I was speaking with, uh, the care manager that I recently hired for, for, um, for my family’s needs is how, how behind the times broadly. Home health and home care agencies are when it comes to remote patient monitoring, you know, everyone, uh, rolls their eyes, uh, when they’re in the venture industry or even the healthcare industry, more broadly talking about remote patient monitoring.

Marcus: Let me tell you, like with the situation that my family is in right now, we really, really need remote patient monitoring. It’s, it’s actually critical. The, the, the amount of, um, data capture that we need, uh, On my loved one, uh, is significant. And the, the status quo today is, Hey, family member, take the blood pressure cuff and you record it three to five times a day.

Marcus: I [00:12:00] mean, which is just stupid, right? Like they ought to be able to put some things in the house, uh, that can regularly track it and then pipe it up to the cloud via Bluetooth or whatever. Um, and they don’t have that stuff. It’s not, you know, it’s not. It’s not actually by default there. And I think when you set margins that force, uh, organizations to spend a certain percentage of their PNL on workers, uh, you, you just, the downstream impact of that is they cannot invest in improving some of these other things that they need to do to serve the families that they are out here trying to serve.

Marcus: So, you know, Yes. Do I want workers to make a proper wage? Of course you want them to, you know, do well so that they are in good spirits as they’re taking care of your family. Of course you like, that’s something you want. And at the same time. You have [00:13:00] to always know that there’s unintended consequences of, um, forcing things like margin on a PNL, uh, for businesses.

Marcus: Right. And, and it’s gone. Businesses are at the end of the day going to make money. So it’s got, something has to fall to the bottom line. And so, uh, yeah, it’s just, Going to, you know, you’re taking 80 percent of the money they receive and forcing it to go to the worker, uh, politically, I get it. It’s very labor friendly.

Marcus: Um, and it ensures that the government is putting money in people’s pockets. So I get it. And at the same time, pretty tough, right? Pretty tough, pretty tough to run businesses. With those kinds of requirements. So anyway, that is a, that’s a really, really big deal. Uh, and also there’s going to be some new national wait time standards.

Marcus: They’re going to be put in place around routine primary care appointments. I think that’s great. Um, they’re going to be forcing, uh, secret shopper, uh, events [00:14:00] to happen. I think that’s great. Um, I think it’s great to know that. you know, these organizations will never know whether or not they’re talking to an actual patient or they’re talking to a secret shopper.

Marcus: I think that’s fantastic. That’s a really smart move here. Um, we do generally need to try to improve the. the customer service in, in the healthcare industry and particularly in the, in the Medicaid segment. I mean, um, these are, these are people who in many other areas of life don’t receive, you know, humane treatment and in the healthcare industry, they really ought to receive humane treatment and they ought to be, um, seen in a, in a reasonable amount of time.

Marcus: So, um, anyway, I, I think there are things about this, this new Medicaid rule that make a lot of sense and there are things that are, I’m not too sure about, uh, and then final story for the payer segment, Optum, uh, announced some layoffs. So, uh, starting in the virtual care business that was shuttered Navi health, which was a business that was actually based, uh, here in [00:15:00] Nashville, making some leadership changes.

Marcus: Um, so, so look, I mean, They had to spend a lot of money on the change healthcare thing for sure. And they’re also, you know, I think they really didn’t do any layoffs last year. So maybe they’re due for some layoffs this year, uh, as well. Um, but obviously doing that after earnings, uh, was announced makes sense.

Marcus: Um, What, why would you do that before, you know, your earnings? So it’s going to be interesting. I mean, I think again, you’re talking about, you know, the healthcare business in America with the most data. So whenever they make a move like this, I don’t entirely chalk it up to a business performance. Uh, some of it, I just think.

Marcus: You know, it might be a sign of where the winds are blowing for the entire industry. We need to remember that all of the pay viders are basically following their playbook. So unite is not following anybody. So when they, um, when they make a change, when they make a shift, it could be signaling something that’s a broader shift for the rest of [00:16:00] the industry.

Marcus: So this is something we’re going to need to really sort of watch broadly watching virtual care at scale. Is there something happening in the policy world that is making this just an inviolable business? Um, they’ve got. you know, closed loop opportunity because of the United healthcare side of the side of the business.

Marcus: So when they on the OptumServices side decide to stop doing a particular line of business, to me, that says that’s probably a pretty difficult line of business to execute. Um, so those, that’s what I’m sort of taking from it. I’m going to be watching virtual care much more closely. Uh, we don’t really have any a hundred percent virtual care based businesses in our, in our portfolio.

Marcus: Um, I’ve always sort of felt like those businesses are one bad regulatory rule away from being, uh, from being wiped out. So I just never felt good about them, um, as like the, the primary thing. If they’re an aspect of a business, if they’re a feature of a business, I’m okay with it. If it’s the entire business, I get kind of worried.

Marcus: And, um, [00:17:00] You know, seeing them shutter their entire virtual care business just kind of worries me. But, you know, at the same time, we just talked about summer health. It just raised, uh, 12 million doing, uh, uh, basically a virtual based, um, pediatrics business. So lots of data points to continue to track, um, as we are watching the evolution of, of healthcare.

Marcus: Uh, okay. Big story here in my neck of the woods, Oracle. Larry Ellison announced that Nashville is not going to be the home of their HQ2. It is going to be their world headquarters. And, uh, what’s really funny about this is when they announced it, Metro Nashville, the mayor’s office, as well as the state of Tennessee economic development office did not know this.

Marcus: Uh, and this has gotta be like a first in terms of like a massive, you know, fortune 500 company like Oracle making an announcement. of this magnitude, uh, in this city, in this state, [00:18:00] and our ECDs are, and the mayor of the city not actually knowing about it. So, uh, I think that’s, that’s incredible. But what’s really funny is he said it, I think on stage with Senator Bill Frist.

Marcus: So it’d be funny if Senator Frist knew this before Stuart McWhorter, uh, the commissioner of ECD for the state of Tennessee and Freddie O’Connell, the mayor of Nashville knew about it. Um, but anyway, obviously huge announcement. I mean, for, for anyone who knows Nashville, they’re building their, their headquarters over on our East bank.

Marcus: Um, so that is happening in, in tandem with the buildout of the new Titan stadium. So you’re talking about a massive, uh, renovation of an entire side of the river. So kind of think about it like the way that Chicago is right now, where both sides of the river are fully built out and developed. Um, right now we really kind of have.

Marcus: One side of the river fully built out and developed. And then on the other side, it’s East Nashville, which is a really important neighborhood for people who live here. Uh, but business wise, it’s not like fully built out and, [00:19:00] you know, this Oracle move now, especially with them increasing the positioning from HQ two to world headquarters, uh, is really going to build that out.

Marcus: And I think what’s, what’s interesting is they’re, they’re moving here. Obviously there’s going to be some, some tax benefits, but like I said, Stuart McWhorter didn’t even know. So it seems like it wasn’t even really that, that big of a bargaining chip in terms of the negotiations from a tax positioning perspective.

Marcus: But from a healthcare perspective, from a Oracle health, Oracle health, that acquired Cerner perspective, continue would continued growth of the healthcare industry and the position that Oracle keeps in the healthcare industry, really not at the EMR layer. , but at the data layer, you know, that infrastructure, that data infrastructure, um, seems like it’s a really smart play for them, uh, all the way around.

Marcus: And, uh, it continues, you know, a, a move of many really, really big headquarters out of coastal, um, states. Uh, [00:20:00] you know, I’m pretty sure Oracle was headquartered in California and now you know, they are moving here to Nashville, Tennessee. So that is a big move. I think it does solidify Nashville. Um, as a tech city now, as well as, uh, probably even more importantly as a health tech city.

Marcus: So, um, big move to sort of anchor Nashville’s future as a really, really strong healthcare city going into the future. Massive news on the regulatory side of things, the FTC. Banned non compete agreements. I don’t want to say this came out of nowhere because we had been hearing about this for years. This was one of the things on the early agenda when Lena con was installed as the chair of the FTC.

Marcus: But I actually heard about this. I was sitting at a bank board meeting and, uh, one of my fellow bank, uh, board members is a, uh, he’s an investment banker and you know, that’s a, that’s a pretty tough business because it doesn’t take a whole lot to kind of get it started up. It’s very much a relationship business [00:21:00] and I could just like see his, he looked at his phone and I could see his face.

Marcus: And then later on at lunch, he was like fricking FTC. Oh my God. Uh, and, uh, you know, I, I think. I think this is going to be a massive deal in healthcare. You know, you think about doctors, um, and you think about their ability or inability today, uh, to switch teams, um, and how this is going to shift. But again, you have to also think about what are going to be the, the new changes that businesses make.

Marcus: You know, one of the things that, that I think about is, um, you know, how, how do we respond as business owners. In terms of investing in talent, right? If, if talent can easily not just leave, but go to our number one competitor, how might that change the way that a business will invest in, you know, a [00:22:00] senior or not even a senior person.

Marcus: Cause I think there are some exemptions around, uh, you know, senior executives and certain salary levels, but probably more importantly, the rising, uh, executive, right? The one who is very, very talented. Um, but doesn’t really make that much money yet. And so, and they’re probably a little green. So you’re going to invest a lot of time and a lot of energy and, and probably some money into, you know, that person’s future, obviously this is very, very friendly to labor.

Marcus: Um, it needs to be said that this was, uh, approved on a three to two vote. So it’s a democratic majority in the FTC. You know, all these commissions have basically. You know, the majority goes to the administration’s party, and then there’s a dissenting group. So it was a three to two vote. Clearly a party line vote here.

Marcus: Um, this is a very labor friendly move in an election year, right? Um, I, I think most people I know would be like, great, this is awesome. You know, less, less shackles on me. [00:23:00] I tend to, as an entrepreneur, uh, think about what will be the, the moves that business owners and business leaders will make. Um, and I know they’re already thinking about it.

Marcus: I know they’re already thinking about changing their compensation structure. I know they’re already thinking about changing the terms around their options. They won’t, you know, I just think everyone needs to understand when the government rolls down these kinds of regulations, the business world doesn’t just take it on the chin and say it’s business as usual there for every action there is an equal and opposite And there will be a reaction here that will be felt by many, many employees, um, from their employers.

Marcus: And so what those are, I don’t know, but I would say places to look are probably going to be professional development. Compensation structure, uh, vesting schedules for options, as well as terms on those options when people depart, [00:24:00] especially buyback rates or just the full evaporation of those options.

Marcus: Yeah. Those are all areas I would really, really think about, you know, um, as well as how much free reign do companies give, uh, you know, sales and business development and customer relationship people with their clientele. Right. I think companies are going to probably feel that they need to keep a much closer tab on those customers.

Marcus: And they probably will think it’s more important to round Robin, uh, customers or clients with, with particular personnel, as opposed to letting a single person have a really, really deep relationship with a person. And at the end of the day, the customer really loses there. Right. So, um, so yeah, I think.

Marcus: This is, this is a big deal. It’s going to face all sorts of legal challenges in the courts. So we’ll see how that all plays out. But. Huge, huge deal hits every single industry. Certainly massive deal for healthcare, massive deal for health systems, massive deal for [00:25:00] physician groups. Um, doctors kind of really come to mind here.

Marcus: Um, doctors really come to mind cause they are, you know, a pretty hot commodity in the, in the healthcare space when it comes to talent. All right. And then. More on the labor side of things, Tenant Healthcare reached a tentative contract with 2, 800 workers. Not much to say other than the fact that they’ve got a 7 percent raise for per diem workers, contract ratification bonuses of 750 for full time, 500 for part time, 250 for per diem employees.

Marcus: Um, and a 14 percent raise for full and part time employees. So this is, I think another win for, for the union, 14 percent raise, um, across seven hospitals. That’s a pretty strong bump. Um, and, and it, I don’t know, it seems to signal that maybe the bump was, was overdue because 14 percent is pretty, pretty big.

Marcus: Um, so anyway, uh, this is, this is labor unions in, in California, um, [00:26:00] tallying another win. And it just continues to lay out the dynamics around this country between red states, blue states, especially states like California, you know, very, very labor friendly states versus states like, you know, Tennessee, Texas, Florida.

Marcus: Uh, so this continues to, to, to play out and, um, is, is really interesting. We’ve seen Kaiser and now tenant, uh, have to resolve their, their big labor union issues in, in California. And in both cases. You know, the health system paid. Uh, and then one more, uh, case, but this is, uh, this is not a workout. This is a jury award.

Marcus: Uh, Providence was made to pay by a Seattle jury again, blue state, you know, West coast, uh, made to pay 98 million in unpaid wages, uh, to their hourly workers. So again, labor coming up strong, uh, out on the West coast when it, when it comes to health systems. On just general wellbeing, and this is super relevant for me, [00:27:00] uh, with everything I’m doing for my dad right now, Forbes had a story about the survival rates in senior citizens for hip fractures being worse than many, not all, but worse than many cancers.

Marcus: This just made me so grateful because, um, my dad had a, had a, had a fall, but he, um, he’s got a lot of muscle. And his legs. And so it bruised, but it didn’t break. Um, and boy, has that made a difference in his ability to recover from this situation that, that he’s, he’s in right now, because had he on top of everything else broken a hip, it would have been, I mean, Um, basically the five year survival rate, uh, is, is terrible.

Marcus: Um, uh, uh, less than a third of men and half of women in the fracture group, uh, survived for more than five years post fracture. So this is a really, really [00:28:00] debilitating injury. I think it’s obviously got. You know, significant physical side effects, but also mental and emotional, um, side effects are really, really significant.

Marcus: And you know, what can you do to, to resist a, a, um, or avoid, I should say a hip fracture, the best you can do is eat a lot of protein, lift weights and stay mobile, right? Um, all those things will. help your improvement time, give you a lot of padding around that, around that space, uh, and give you the ability to, um, lessen the fall, right?

Marcus: Um, make it be less of a dead stop fall and one where you can adjust your body, shift your body, move to the fatty part of your, of your glute instead of fall, you know, directly on your hip, use your arms to break your fall, things of that nature. Uh, so again, this is one of those areas where. As we get older, it is more important to work out and [00:29:00] really weight resistance is, is what we need to be doing.

Marcus: Um, eating protein and lifting weights. I hate to say it. There’s no, uh, replacement for it. Running is not a replacement for it. Yoga is not a replacement for it. And I like both of those things just fine. But Uh, you got to pick up the weights and you got to make sure you’re getting your protein in all right.

Marcus: Shifting to AI to wrap up the show. We have an announcement from meta that they have released llama three, uh, which is their open source model. Uh, they are claiming it as the best open source model available last week. We talked about how the top models and medical LLMs, um, across many categories, uh, chat, GPT.

Marcus: GPT 4. 5 base, I think, uh, was number one, according to hugging face. Uh, well, Meta has released Lama three this week, and they are saying that against Gemini, against Gemma, against Mistral, it’s basically the best in knowledge based in English [00:30:00] evaluation, based best in basic math, and it’s an open source model, so we’re going to announce every week that there’s a new model being released.

Marcus: released. It’s not so much. Hey, everyone, go use this model now. It’s just to demonstrate, um, the rate of change, the rate of improvement, the number of players that are, that are in the space and how, how we can expect continuous improvement in the AI space. Why is that important? It’s important because many people tried chat GPT in October of 23.

Marcus: And they were like, this thing is stupid. And then they never have picked it up again. Um, meanwhile, all of these things are getting better every single week, every single month, every single quarter. And so. If you’re not in some way, shape or form, at least even if you’re not using it, just keeping track of the stories, just so you know, new mop, new versions are coming out all the [00:31:00] time from the biggest tech companies in the world.

Marcus: And they are constantly improving and beating each other on these really clear scientific levels as they’re beating each other. You know, who else they’re beating. Actually, I should say slaughtering. Like, you know, as they are, as they are just like beating each other in medical language and overall comprehensive knowledge and things like that.

Marcus: They are destroying humans because we ain’t upgrading every week, every month, every quarter. Right? So this is a, it’s a space to watch y’all. It’s a space to watch. And at some point we just have to sort of accept, we’re not going to be as smart as these models. We’re not. And so, How do we integrate these models into our business?

Marcus: How do we integrate these models into our day to day lives? How do we integrate these models into our practice? How do we leverage these things to level ourselves up as individuals, as companies, as [00:32:00] cities, as states, as countries? That’s going to, that’s where we’re headed. You know, um, it’s not going to be us competing with these things for a long time.

Marcus: But it is going to be us leveraging them. And those that best leverage these models, uh, are going to far outperform the humans who don’t right. And I can tell you it’s, it’s hard. It’s hard to change my own personal workflow. It’s hard to change how things in our company are done. But just today we found a great project where we’re trying to evaluate how different people on our team use a piece of software.

Marcus: And what we’re doing is we’re doing video recordings, just like a 30 minute interview. And recording it via Google meet with everybody on our team. And then we just take that recording and we just upload it to Gemini. And then we start asking Gemini questions. And Gemini is like spitting out great answers.

Marcus: are using that interview, that customer interview that we did as the data source. Right. Um, so [00:33:00] instead of having to take that and somehow write our own brief or make our own deck or something silly like that, we’re totally outsourcing that work to the AI and it’s not only taking You know, a fraction is not even the right math here.

Marcus: It’s taking so little time compared to what it would take us to do, but it’s better, it’s better than what we would do. Right. So, um, Constantly just trying to find use cases like that and kudos to Vic for figuring that out, that that was a good use case for that, but trying to find little things like that in your day to day in your company, little projects that people.

Marcus: Aren’t that attached to maybe don’t even really want to do. Those are great places to try to find out if AI can help. So just want to encourage you, make sure you’re continuing to push to try to figure out how you’re going to leverage AI in your company. All right. Uh, and then final story to end on a feel good note, GE healthcare has launched a voice [00:34:00] activated AI powered ultrasound machine for women’s health.

Marcus: And basically they are able to diagnose conditions that previously Really wouldn’t have been possible. Um, that’s amazing. The idea that we’re going to take AI. And leverage it in a space that has had the most underinvestment, uh, in terms of a segment of the population, women’s health, particularly looking at, uh, obstetric exams and, and how do we just not incrementally improve it, but how do we totally.

Marcus: Level it up to the next level, make it, make it, uh, respond to voice commands, give it next level image clarity, give it AI’s ability to recognize the image far better than any human could. This, this is fantastic, right? Targeting areas that have previously been ignored. With AI, um, to not just slightly improve them, but to bring them even past what [00:35:00] the baseline is of care is today.

Marcus: That’s fantastic. So huge shout out to GE healthcare, actually a name that we haven’t heard, uh, in a while in the space for, you know, focusing on women’s health, leveraging AI, leveraging their engineering capabilities and producing something that is going to. Give a lot of families a lot of information they need early on to be able to make the right next decision.

Marcus: Give a lot of clinicians the information they need early on to make better decisions, um, uh, in, in, in the process of, you know, one of the most sensitive points in, in a family’s life, which is the, the, the birth of a new child. So, um, kudos to GE Healthcare and love to always try to end on a positive note.

Marcus: Especially when it comes to how AI is going to make health care better. So just kind of rounding everything up GDP, not so great. Um, regulatory stuff, really aggressive. And I think we can probably expect more really aggressive stuff. That’s going to be very labor [00:36:00] friendly, um, for the remainder of this election season.

Marcus: Um, so just buckle up. I would say all the business people out there buckle up because I think there’s going to be more hard stuff coming down. And look, uh, I think that that also has has a particular potential consequences. Well, when it comes to what base you’re targeting and who you think is actually going to come out to the polls for you versus who is not, who’s going to actually write a check for you versus who is not.

Marcus: So, um, I think we just need to remember we’re in an election year. We’re going to see a lot of regulatory stuff, especially stuff that comes out of the administration’s agencies that reflects, um, the, the election agenda, um, of, of the Biden administration. And we’d see the same if it was a Republican administration.

Marcus: So that’s just kind of the game that we’re in. Um, Interesting moves happening in the payer space. Uh, the Q1 results were really, really strong. And at the same time, you know, seeing some changes, especially on the payvider side of the house. [00:37:00] So more to come there, uh, health system and labor stuff still working its way out.

Marcus: Um, and in California, labor still continuing to win, uh, and, and AI continuing to advance. So hope you. Didn’t mind, uh, this week’s really quick rundown of me. Just keeping you up to speed with everything that’s going on. Uh, I kind of skipped our jumpstart foundry ad for, for this week. We’ll we’ll hop back with that next week.

Marcus: And, um, yeah, look forward to the show next week when Vic is back from his well deserved vacation. And in the meantime, thank you all for being listeners and, uh, love y’all see you next week.