Vic and Marcus discuss easing inflation, the growing number of workers locked out of the job market, and major venture funding rounds for AI-powered healthcare companies. They examine proposed Medicare physician payment cuts, prior authorization policy, Medicaid challenges, insurer earnings, and mounting financial pressure on hospitals as care continues shifting to outpatient settings. They also cover Eli Lilly's latest acquisition, a first-of-its-kind cholesterol pill, food safety concerns, new wearable health technology, Visa's stablecoin platform, AI agent commerce, and China's rapid advances in artificial intelligence that are reshaping global competition.

Story Lineup

1 — In This Economy

📊 Economy Vitals — this week's macro readings

6:56 - Story 1: 📉 Inflation — CPI (June, rel. Jul 14):  CNBC

8:09 - Story 2:👷 Labor — initial jobless claims (wk ending Jul 4): https://www.wsj.com/economy/jobs/unemployment-long-term-job-market-629199f9?mod=Searchresults&pos=1&page=1

2 — VC Deal Review

10:05 - Story 1: Chai Discovery Raises $400 Million Series C for AI Molecule Design Platform Adopted by Pharma Giants  [Fierce Biotech]

11:07 - Story 2: Neko Health Secures $700 Million Series C for U.S. Clinical Diagnostics Expansion  [MedCity News]

3 — Policy

12:16 - Story 1: CMS Proposes 2027 Physician Pay Cuts Amid Broader Medicare Value-Based Payment Reforms  [Healthcare Dive]

13:46 - Story 2: Senate Republicans Block Democratic Bid to Repeal Medicare AI Prior Authorization Pilot  [Healthcare Dive]

4 — Health Payors

17:30 - Story 1: UnitedHealth Reports $5.5 Billion Q2 Profit, Raises 2026 Guidance on Cost-Control Discipline  [Healthcare Dive]

18:17 - Story 2: Elevance Shuts Down D.C. Medicaid Business, Eyes Additional Market Exits  [Healthcare Dive]

19:35 - Story 3: CVS/Caremark Settles FTC Insulin Pricing Case, Required to Stop Formulary Bias Toward Higher-Cost Drugs  [Healthcare Dive]

5 — Health Systems

21:09 - Story 1: HCA Healthcare Slashes 2026 Earnings Forecast After Losing $400 Million in ACA Plan Dropouts  [Healthcare Dive]

24:21 - Story 2: Health Systems Race to Build Ambulatory Surgery Center Networks as Outpatient Revenue Growth Outpaces Inpatient  [Becker's Hospital Review]

6 — Pharma & Novel Therapies

28:48 - Story 1: Eli Lilly Acquires AtaiBeckley for $2.8 Billion, Entering Psychedelic-Based Mental Health Market  [MedCity News]

30:23 - Story 2: Merck's Lipfendra Approved as First-of-Kind Oral Cholesterol Drug Beyond Statin Monotherapy  [WSJ.com: Health]

7 — About Health & Us / The Clinician's Voice

32:56 - Story 1: Cyclospora Outbreak Spreads to 30+ States; CDC Struggles to Identify Source Amid Surveillance Capacity Gaps  [WSJ]

38:55 - Story 2: New Smart Ring Technology Enables Non-Invasive Blood Pressure Measurement Without Calibration  [9to5Mac]

8 — Web3

41:48 - Story 1: Visa Launches Institutional Stablecoin Platform for Banks and Fintechs; Enables Digital Dollar Integration  [Decrypt Media]

9 — The AI Tracker

52:32 - Story 1: China's Moonshot AI Releases Kimi K3 Model, Claiming Parity with GPT-5.6 and Anthropic Systems at Lower Cost  [Axios]

1:00:40 - Story 2: Meta Negotiates ~$10 Billion Compute Lease to Anthropic; AI Infrastructure Bottleneck Fuels New Business Models  [The New York Times]

1:07:57 - Story 3: Former Mayo Clinic Leader Sues System Over Alleged AI Safety and Privacy Concerns Retaliation  [MedCity News]

1:15:36 -  Story 4: https://x.com/chamath/status/2077018028852588687?s=20

Vic and Marcus discuss uncertainty around Federal Reserve interest rate policy, continued strength in AI infrastructure and semiconductor markets, and major venture funding across biotech and value-based care. They examine proposed NIH research policy changes, the impact of Medicaid enrollment reductions and rising ACA premiums, Medicare Advantage legal disputes, healthcare bankruptcies, labor strikes, and Ascension's acquisition of Williamson Health. They also cover major pharmaceutical acquisitions, expanding access to peptides, advances in brain-computer interfaces, the challenges of integrating wearable data into clinical care, blockchain's growing role in banking, China's evolving AI strategy, Apple's lawsuit against OpenAI, and the rapid expansion of AI data center infrastructure.

Story Lineup

1 — In This Economy

00:58 - Story 1: Fed Chair Warsh Signals Divided Views on Inflation Path Amid AI Buildout  

2:12 - Story 2: SK Hynix Lands $26B Nasdaq IPO, World's Largest Non-US Chip Offering  [CNBC]

2 — VC Deal Review

4:00 - Story 1: Leo Cancer Care Secures $65M Series D for Upright Radiotherapy System Ahead of IPO  [Fierce Biotech]

4:42 - Story 2: MeiraGTx Secures $400M Growth Capital for Gene Therapy Commercialization  [Fierce Biotech]

5:57 - Story 3: Pearl Health Raises $110M to Scale Value-Based Care Infrastructure for Medicare  [MedCity News]

3 — Policy

7:04 - Story 1: Trump OMB Grant Overhaul Draws 99K Comments From Scientists Warning of NIH Politicization  [The New York Times]

9:06 - Story 2: Biotech Revenue Projections Darkened by Trump Tax Bill's Medicaid Enrollment Impact  [Fierce Biotech]

4 — Health Payors

11:39 - Story 1: ACA Marketplace Insurers Propose 14% Median Premium Hike for 2027—Second Straight Double-Digit Increase  [Healthcare Dive]

13:54 - Story 2: Elevance Healthcare Sues CMS Over Medicare Advantage Stars Recalculation, Alleging $115M Loss  [Healthcare Dive]

15:39 - Story 3: Alignment Healthcare Faces Whistleblower Accounting Fraud Lawsuit Over Capex Misclassification  [Healthcare Dive]

5 — Health Systems

16:56 - Story 1: Healthcare Bankruptcies Accelerate in 2026, Driven by Staffing Costs and Reimbursement Pressure  [Becker's Hospital Review]

17:49 - Story 2: Massachusetts' Largest Healthcare Strike Ever: 4,000+ MGB Nurses and Home Health Staff Walk Out Over Wages  [MedCity News]

20:33 - Story 3: Ascension Acquires Williamson Health for $1B, Securing Regional Hospital Consolidation in Tennessee  [Healthcare Dive]

6 — Pharma & Novel Therapies

22:01 - Story 1: Vertex Acquires Crinetics for $10B—Largest Deal in Company History—Targeting Endocrine Diseases  [Fierce Biotech]

24:30 - Story 2: FDA Advisory Committee to Vote on Peptide Regulation July 23–24—Major Inflection for GLP-1s  [Becker's Hospital Review]

26:57 - Story 3: AstraZeneca's Late-Stage Cardiac Trial Failure Narrows Pipeline Beyond Oncology  [WSJ]

7 — About Health & Us / The Clinician's Voice

28:21 - Story 1: Non-Surgical Brain-Computer Interfaces Increasingly Match Surgical Performance, Reshaping BCI Strategy  [MedCity News]

30:18 - Story 2: Physicians Cite Reimbursement and Workflow Barriers to Actionable Wearable Data Adoption  [Healthcare Dive]

8 — Web3

36:88 - Story 1: Circle Wins Final OCC Approval to Open National Trust Bank—First Crypto Firm to Secure Charter  [The Block]

37:28 - Story 2: SWIFT Launches Blockchain Ledger Enabling 24/7 Tokenized Payments for 17 Major Global Banks  [The Block]

39:09 - Story 3: CFTC Chair Warns Regulators Will 'Write All the Rules' for Crypto If Clarity Act Stalls  [The Block]

9 — The AI Tracker

43:15 - Story 1: Beijing Weighs Limits on Homegrown AI Models—Escalating US-China AI Geopolitics  [WSJ]

46:10 - Story 2: -  https://www.wsj.com/tech/apple-openai-lawsuit-f86bd58c?mod=breakingnews 

46:52 -  Story 3:

Vic and Marcus discuss slowing U.S. job growth, Meta's move into AI cloud infrastructure, record venture funding driven by AI, and what those trends mean for the technology sector. They examine Medicare coverage for weight loss drugs, proposed CMS changes affecting hospitals, Medicaid work requirement lawsuits, and the continued shift of care away from hospitals. They also cover major healthcare advances, including expanded gene therapy for children with sickle cell disease, AI-powered drug discovery partnerships, and the first FDA-approved Treg cell therapy. The episode concludes with the record-low U.S. death rate, stablecoin adoption, blockchain tokenization, and the growing AI competition between the U.S. and China.

Story Lineup

1 — In This Economy

3:47 - Story 1: U.S. labor market cools sharply: June jobs report shows only 57,000 positions added  [WSJ]

7:14 - Story 2: Meta Is Planning a Cloud Business to Sell AI Computing Power  [Bloomberg]

2 — VC Deal Review

10:30 - Story 1: Global startup investment surges to record $510B in H1 2026 as AI exits accelerate  [Crunchbase News]

12:40 - Story 2: Beeline raises $126M Series A extension on heels of $300M launch, bolsters autoimmune pipeline  [Fierce Biotech]

3 — Policy

14:15 - Story 1: Medicare begins covering GLP-1 weight-loss drugs for seniors at $50/month out-of-pocket starting July 1  [WSJ]

15:17 - Story 2: CMS targets 340B drug discount program and site-neutral pay in 2027 outpatient rule overhaul  [Becker's Hospital Review]

21:20 - Story 3: Twenty-six states sue Trump administration over Medicaid work requirements rule implementation  [Healthcare Dive]

4 — Health Payors

28:59 - Story 1: Evernorth commits $100M through 2028 to AI-powered specialty pharmacy program expansion  [MedCity News]

5 — Health Systems

30:28 - Story 1: 10-year outlook: outpatient volumes set to grow 20% while inpatient discharges rise just 7%, reshaping hospital economics  [Becker's Hospital Review]

32:45 - Story 2: Large health system EHR migrations collapse 40% year-over-year as Epic dominance and vendor delays lock in incumbency  [Becker's Hospital Review]

6 — Pharma & Novel Therapies

37:55 - Story 1: FDA expands Vertex's Casgevy CRISPR gene therapy to children as young as 2 with sickle cell disease  [Becker's Hospital Review]

39:36 - Story 2: Takeda partners with Insilico on AI drug discovery platform worth up to $600M across multiple therapeutic areas  [WSJ]

41:21 - Story 3: Orca Bio's Tregzi becomes first FDA-approved regulatory T cell therapy for graft-versus-host disease  [MedCity News]

7 — About Health & Us / The Clinician's Voice

43:45 - Story 1: U.S. Death Rate Falls to Its Lowest Point on Record [WSJ]

8 — Web3

46:52 - Story 1: Open USD stablecoin launch backed by Visa, Mastercard, and Google challenges USDC/USDT incumbents  [Decrypt Media]

49:41 - Story 2: Ondo launches SEC-compliant tokenized ETF and equities with Ethereum settlement, signaling institutional crypto infrastructure maturation  [The Block]

9 — The AI Tracker

51:28 - Story 1: Health systems pivot from proving AI efficacy to scaling implementations; inflection point for health tech adoption  [Becker's Hospital Review]

56:53 - Story 2: Anthropic unveils Claude Science AI workbench for pharma research execution ahead of anticipated IPO  [MedCity News]

59:52 -Story 3: New Chinese AI model matches Anthropic Claude performance; likely to reshape White House AI policy overhaul  [WSJ]

1:08:23 - Story 4: OpenAI proposes handing Trump administration 5% stake [FT]

Vic and Marcus discuss rising inflation, the AI-driven data center boom, and growing concerns about the long-term economic impact of artificial intelligence. They examine major healthcare venture funding rounds, the resurgence of biotech investment, Medicare policy changes, PBM scrutiny, rising healthcare spending driven by GLP-1 drugs, rural hospital transformation, chemotherapy drug shortages, new cancer treatments, and the growing use of Wegovy in children. The episode also covers Bitcoin's sharp decline, venture capital consolidation, and the future of healthcare innovation.

Story Lineup

1 — In This Economy

1:59 - Story 1: PCE Hits 4.1% — The Iran War, the AI Build-Out, and a Fed Caught in the Middle  [WSJ]

7:13 - Story 2: AI Infrastructure Is Inflation's New Structural Driver  [WSJ]

16:17 - Story 3: AI Bubble Fears Trigger Nasdaq Rout; KOSPI Crashes 10% Overnight  [Axios]

18:02 - Story 4: Scott Bessent: Hamilton Inspires Trump Economic Statecraft  [WSJ]

2 — VC Deal Review

20:33 - Story 1: Menlo Ventures Closes $3B Fund — Biggest Ever — on the Back of Its Anthropic Bet  [TechCrunch]

28:49 - https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/ai-and-machine-learning/assort-health-scores-120m-series-c-scale-voice-ai-agent-platform-healthcare 

30:21 - Story 2: Cadence Closes $100M Series C at $1.23B Valuation for AI-Powered Chronic Care  [MedCity News]

31:33 - Story 3: Ollin Biosciences Hauls In $330M Series B to Challenge Roche's Vabysmo in Wet AMD  [Fierce Biotech]

3 — Policy

32:34 - Story 1: U.S. Health Spending Hits $5.7 Trillion in 2025 — GLP-1 Costs Are a Primary Culprit  [Healthcare Dive]

34:43 - Story 2: 31 House Democrats Demand Transparency on CMS's AI Prior-Auth Pilot in Medicare  [Healthcare Dive]

4 — Health Payors

38:35 - Story 1: Florida Opens Antitrust Probe Into CVS/Caremark as State-Level PBM Crackdown Accelerates  [Healthcare Dive]

43:07 - Story 2: Abarca Health and LucyRx Merge to Build a Scaled Independent PBM Alternative  [MedCity News]

44:33 - Story 3: Medicare Advantage at an Inflection: Reset or Retreat?  [MedCity News]

5 — Health Systems

50:11 - Story 1: Cancer Chemo Shortages Force Hospitals to Consider Rationing  [Becker's]

52:33 - Story 2: Eli Lilly Halts 340B Discounts for Non-Compliant Hospitals, Triggering Legal Battle  [MedCity News]

55:39 - Story 3: States Are Using the $50B Rural Health Fund to Shrink Hospitals, Not Transform Care  [Healthcare Dive]

6 — Pharma & Novel Therapies

57:38 - Story 1: FDA Approves Two New Drugs to Replace Chemo as First-Line Treatment for Triple-Negative Breast Cancer  [WSJ]

59:23 - Story 2: Pfizer's First Major ADC From the $43B Seagen Acquisition Fails Phase 3  [Fierce Biotech]

59:47 - Story 3: AbbVie Pays $10.9B for Apogee to Challenge Dupixent in Eczema  [Fierce Biotech]

7 — About Health & Us / The Clinician's Voice

1:00:39 - Story 1: Wegovy for Elementary Schoolers: Pediatricians Turn to GLP-1s as Childhood Obesity Rates Climb  [WSJ]

8 — Web3

1:03:47 - Story 1: Bitcoin Hits Multi-Year Low of $58K as BTC and ETH Each Post 20%+ Monthly Losses  [CoinDesk]

9 — The AI Tracker

1:06:18 - Story 1: Anthropic Accuses Alibaba of Running a 'Brazen' Campaign to Illicitly Access Claude  [WSJ]

1:10:30 - Story 2 : https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/glm-52-why-im-replacing-opus-in-claude

1:12:32 - Story 3: OpenAI Unveils 'Jalapeño' — Its First Custom AI Inference Chip Built With Broadcom  [WSJ]

1:13:05 - Story 4: X - Satya Nadella - "Frontier without an ecosystem is not stable."  [X]

Marcus welcomes Ash Shehata, former KPMG executive and current Impact Advisors leader, as guest host for a wide-ranging discussion on healthcare, technology, finance, and policy. They examine the Federal Reserve’s evolving approach under Kevin Warsh, the economic implications of reopening the Strait of Hormuz, and SpaceX’s historic IPO alongside its reported Cursor acquisition. The conversation also covers the resurgence of biotech and pharmaceutical M&A, FDA flexibility around gene therapies, rural hospital transformation funding, information blocking enforcement, Medicare Advantage contract disputes, PBM transparency battles, smart hospital rooms, longevity medicine, GLP-1 coverage expansion for seniors, digital assets, tokenized stocks, and the growing role of AI across healthcare and society.

Story Lineup

1 — In This Economy

2:34 - Story 1: Warsh's Fed Ditches Forward Guidance — Markets Brace for Hikes  [NYT]

• New Fed Chair Kevin Warsh holds rates but abandons forward guidance at his first FOMC presser, sending rate-hike odds higher and rattling markets — a fundamental shift in central bank posture.
• Tension / discussion: Is Warsh's opacity a feature or a bug? Does removing guidance restore Fed credibility or introduce dangerous ambiguity for markets and borrowers?
• also: Axios
• also: WSJ

6:22 - Story 2: U.S.-Iran Deal Reopens Hormuz, Sends Oil Prices Tumbling  [NYT]

• Strait of Hormuz reopens under a U.S.-Iran MOU signed ahead of schedule, driving oil prices lower, gas below $4 nationally, and stocks higher — the biggest macro relief valve in months.
• Tension / discussion: How durable is this deal? A fragile MOU with Iran may give markets false comfort while the underlying geopolitical fault lines remain very much alive.
• also: Axios
• also: Axios

11: 07 - Story 3: SpaceX Acquires AI Coding Agent Cursor for $60 Billion  [WSJ]

• SpaceX deploys post-IPO capital in a $60B all-stock acquisition of Cursor, extending Musk's empire into enterprise AI tooling and setting a new benchmark for AI startup valuations.
• Tension / discussion: Does a $60B price tag for a coding agent represent genuine enterprise value or peak AI deal froth? And what does it mean that a rocket company is now a software conglomerate?
• also: Strictly VC

2 — VC Deal Review

14:52 - Story 1: Biopharma M&A Is Back: PwC Reports Strongest Deal Quarter Since 2020  [Fierce Biotech]

• PwC data shows life sciences deal values exceeded $65B in Q1 2026, the strongest quarter in six years — a macro signal that the biopharma financing cycle has turned.
• Tension / discussion: Is this a genuine ecosystem recovery or a buyer's market where big pharma is snapping up distressed assets at favorable prices while smaller biotechs remain starved for capital?

17:58 - Story 2: Kardigan Prices $400M Upsized IPO to Fund Cardiovascular Drug Push  [Endpoints]

• Cardiovascular biotech Kardigan prices above expectations in a upsized $400M IPO, the latest evidence that the biotech IPO window is open for the right therapeutic areas.
• Tension / discussion: Cardiovascular drugs have a historically brutal Phase 3 attrition rate — does the IPO enthusiasm reflect genuine science confidence or investor FOMO in a hot market?

FYI

• InStride Raises $30M Series C for Pediatric Mental Health  [MedCity News]
• Altaris Acquires AI Drug Dev Platform Simulations Plus for $375M  [Fierce Biotech]
• Vedana Therapeutics Emerges With $46M for Next-Gen Migraine Prevention  [Fierce Biotech]

3 — Policy

20:01 - Story 1: FDA Reverses Course on uniQure Huntington's Gene Therapy — A Signal of New Regulatory Flexibility  [MedCity News]

• FDA greenlights uniQure's Huntington's gene therapy for accelerated approval filing after reversing a prior requirement for an additional trial — a bellwether for how the agency will treat the broader rare disease pipeline.
• Tension / discussion: Is this welcome regulatory modernization for patients with no other options, or does loosening approval standards for gene therapies create a safety accountability gap that will haunt the field?
• also: STAT News
• also: Fierce Biotech

23:35 - Story 2: Rural Hospitals Told to 'Hang On' as Medicare Opt-Outs Accelerate and Closure Funds Lag  [Becker's]

• Rural hospital leaders are skeptical the $50B HR 1 transformation fund arrives before closures hit, while a parallel JAMA analysis shows rural physicians are opting out of Medicare faster than anyone is tracking.
• Tension / discussion: Is the Rural Health Transformation Program a genuine lifeline or a political promise that arrives too late for the hospitals and patients that need it most?
• also: Becker's

31:28  - Story 3: Trump HHS Launches Active Information-Blocking Enforcement Under 21st Century Cures Act  [Becker's Hospital Review]

• After years of soft implementation, HHS is now actively enforcing information-blocking rules — a compliance wake-up call for health systems, EHR vendors, and health IT companies.
• Tension / discussion: Will enforcement pressure actually unlock data interope...

Vic and Marcus discuss rising inflation tied to escalating conflict in Iran and the broader economic implications for energy markets, review major venture capital and healthcare startup funding activity including surgical AI company Uncovr, examine developments in AI adoption and productivity across healthcare, analyze the competitive landscape between Apple and leading AI labs, explore IPO activity ranging from SpaceX demand to healthcare and pharmaceutical offerings, and close with a discussion on robotics, automation, and the impact of humanoid robots on future labor markets.

Links

Story 1: Economy

5:16 - Inflation Jumps as Iran War Intensifies Price Squeeze NYT

9:16 - SpaceX IPO Draws at Least $5 Billion Order From BlackRock

Story 2: VC rundown

15:32 - Surgical AI Startup Uncovr Emerges from Stealth with $7M Seed Funding HIT

16:55 - Stepful raises $55M for healthcare training platform Mobi Health

Story 3: Price transparency

17:40 - Kennedy & Oz Discuss Price transparency on X

Story 4: CMS Top 5 Priorities

22:39 - The 5 Areas Where Dr. Oz Says CMS Can Make Healthcare More Affordable MedCity

Story 5: Drug prices inside EMRs

26:41 - BCBS of Massachusetts partners for lower-cost drug alternatives Healthcare Finance

Story 6: GSK Oncology

28:21 - GSK to Buy Nuvalent for $10.6 Billion in Oncology Push WSJ

Story 7: GLP-1 Pills

28:40 - Novo Nordisk Weight-Loss Pill Prescriptions Hit Three Million Since Launch WSJ

Story 8: Pharma IPO in Canada

30:01 - Apotex Shares Rally as Trading Begins Following Pricing of C$1.3 Billion IPO WSJ

Story 9: Wearable Showdown 

31:33 - The Wearable Showdown: Oura Ring 5 vs. Fitbit Air vs. Whoop MG vs. Apple Watch WSJ

Story 10: Agent Payments

34:41 - Coinbase Launches Tool That Lets AI Agents Trade Crypto and Make Payments for Users Decrypt

35:35 - Mastercard Launches Agent Pay for Machines, Ripple and XRPL Join 30+ Partners to Power AI-Driven Commerce Merkle

Story 11: Abridge growth

38:53 - Abridge picks up strategic investment from Eli Lilly, expands payer, research workflows Fierce Healthcare

Story 12: Claude Fable5

40:08 - Anthropic Releases New ‘Mythos-Class’ Model to General Public With Guardrails WSJ

41:16 - bWe've Never Seen an AI Like This (Claude Fable 5) YouTube

Story 13: Price War Coming?

1:05:55 - OpenAI Considers Drastic Price Cuts, Anticipating War for Users With Anthropic WSJ

Story 14: Apple Developer Conf

1:07:37 - Apple Unveiled the New Siri AI. Here Are the Key Takeaways. WSJ

Story 15: Apple Developer Conf

1:12:47 - Driverless Trucks Are Here—and They’re Delivering Bags of Doritos WSJ 

Vic and Marcus discuss signs of stress in the private credit market, including redemption pressure at Blackstone, major healthcare and AI funding rounds, and the growing interest of technology investors in longevity startups. They examine legal and regulatory developments involving generic drug marketing, Massachusetts' lawsuit against UnitedHealthcare over alleged Medicaid fraud, and California's action related to the 23andMe data breach. The conversation also covers health system adoption of artificial intelligence through partnerships with General Catalyst, new healthcare AI investments, the evolving IPO market, and growing debate over AI regulation and the role of companies such as Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI.

Links

Story 1: Economy

2:41 - U.S. Job Openings Increased While Hiring Fell in April WSJ

3:17 - U.S. Jobless Claims Rose Last Week WSJ

3:27 - Kevin Warsh Wants the Fed to Think About Inflation Differently WSJ

Story 2: Private Credit - Blackstone

5:44 - Blackstone Investors Ask to Pull $4.4 Billion From Private-Credit Fund WSJ

Story 3: VC rundown

7:14 - Coinbase Founder’s Longevity Startup Triples in Value WSJ

8:15 - Adaptive Innovations Raises $50M in Series A Funding FINSMES

9:37 - Advanced NanoTherapies raises $31M for drug-coated balloon tech Drug Delivery

9:58 - Contraline and its male birth control candidate rally $92.5M amid push into 'massive white space' of men's health Fierce Healthcare

10:52 - Novellia raises $18M for patient-controlled health data platform MobiHealth

12:55 - Ilant Health Secures $15M to Expand Value-Based Precision Obesity Management HIT

Story 4: SCOTUS

13:45 - It's unanimous: SCOTUS agrees with Hikma in 'skinny label' case vs. Amarin Fierce Healthcare

Story 5: MA sues UHG

16:06 - Massachusetts sues UnitedHealthcare for alleged Medicaid fraud Healthcare Dive

16:58 - California attorney general sues over 23andMe data breach Healthcare Dive

Story 6: Ardent new CEO

18:41 - New Ardent Health CEO inherits growth ambitions Healthcare Dive

Story 7: Ascension

21:56 - Ascension closes its $3.9B AmSurg purchase following FTC's all-clear Fierce Healthcare

Story 8: WellSpan

24:18 - WellSpan Health strikes strategic partnership with Philips to deploy, co-develop new healthcare tech Fierce Healthcare

Story 9: New Brain Tumor Treatment

25:33 - Radiation Device Placed in Brain Cuts Tumor Recurrence, Boosts Survival WSJ

Story 10: Lilly 340B

27:53 - Eli Lilly issues data sharing ultimatum to 340B hospitals Healthcare Dive

Story 11: Autism Fraud?

30:53 - The Autism-Therapy Business Is Booming—and So Is the Billing Abuse WSJ

Story 12: Crypto Winter

39:06 - The Crypto Winter Turns Colder as Bitcoin Extends Its Slide WSJ

39:21 - Strategy shares fall after selling $2.5 million in bitcoin, its first sale since 2022 CNBC

Story 13: Tokenized Bank Deposits

42:34 - JPMorgan, Citi and Big Banks Plan New Tokenized Deposit System to Answer Crypto WSJ

Story 14: Mayo Teams with Microsoft

43:44 - Mayo’s latest AI bet: A frontier model with Microsoft Healthcare Dive

Story 15: AI Regulation

45:23 - Trump Signs AI Executive Order to Increase Government Oversight WSJ

Story 16: IPOs

53:50 - Anthropic Files to Go Public in Blockbuster Year for IPOs WSJ

53:59 - Google Seeks $80 Billion for AI Buildout; Berkshire Will Buy $10 Billion Stake WSJ

54:16 - SpaceX Sets Price for the World’s Largest I.P.O. NYT

Story 17: PCs for AI Agents

55:35 - Nvidia Introduces First PCs Designed for AI Agents WSJ

Story 18: Anthropic Reg Capture

56:31 - Anthropic Urges Global Pause in...

Vic and guest host Emily Evans discuss declining consumer sentiment, challenges in the labor market, and the growing impact of AI on jobs and small businesses. They examine FDA food regulation and the debate around "generally regarded as safe" ingredients, Medicaid policy changes and fraud enforcement efforts under CMS, the expansion of AI from large enterprises to Main Street businesses, concerns that GLP-1 weight loss drugs may contribute to muscle loss and frailty, and major developments in the AI infrastructure race, including Amazon's multibillion-dollar chip deal.

Links

Story 1: Economy

00:41 - U.S. Consumer Sentiment Worsened in May WSJ

1: 39 - This Summer’s Teen Job Market Is the Toughest in Decades WSJ

4:05 - Phoenix Built an Empire of Cubicle Jobs. AI Is Coming to Tear It Down. WSJ

7:32 - The App for Trump Accounts Will Launch Thursday. Here’s What to Know. WSJ

Story 2: VC rundown

11:04 - Commure raises $70M, boosting post-money valuation to $7B Mobi Health

13:08 - Benefitbay raises $18m Series A to scale ICHRA platform FinTech

18:50 - Nourish raises $100M, plans to expand care model with physicians Fierce Healthcare

23:07 - Private Loans to Venture-Backed Startups Surge Despite AI Disruption Concerns WSJ

Story 3: Political Hard-Ball Impacts Medicaid

25:50 - Trump Nemesis Sen. Bill Cassidy Defeated in GOP Primary WSJ

26:04 - Paxton Wins Texas Republican Primary After Trump Endorsement WSJ

29:58 - Trump administration proposes crackdown on Medicaid state-directed payments Healthcare Dive

Story 4: New CMS Health Plan Flexibility
45:08 - New Final Rule Pushes Marketplace Enrollees Toward Lower-Quality, More Expensive Coverage CBPP

Story 5: HHS Fraud Crackdown

58:19 - HHS launches AI-backed health fraud crackdown Healthcare Dive

Story 6: CVS and the end of PBMs

1:06:01 - CVS sues to challenge Tennessee's new PBM law Fierce Healthcare

1:08:17 - Bipartisan lawmakers reintroduce bill barring PBMs from owning pharmacies Fierce Healthcare

1:10:27 - Brokers increasingly recommending ICHRA to employers Fierce Healthcare

1:12:36 -  Hospitals sue CVS Health alleging it redirected $250M in 340B funds Healthcare Finance

Story 7: Training more Docs (finally)

1:15:26 - 5 physician residency programs launching or expanding in 2026 Beckers

Story 8: Quorum as a Nonprofit

1:16:09 - Quorum Health transitioning to nonprofit for financial pickup Fierce Healthcare

Story 9: Big Health Brands moving quickly

1:20:06 - Amazon taps Roy Schoenberg to lead healthcare business as Neil Lindsay plans to step down Fierce Healthcare

1:20:53 - Amazon One Medical launches GLP-1 program integrated with primary care Fierce Healthcare

1:22:33 - Smart ring maker Oura files confidentially for IPO as consumer demand propels revenue growth Fierce Healthcare

1:24:33 - GoodRx launches subscription program for low-cost generic medications, telehealth services Fierce Healthcare

Story 10: Lilly’s moves

1:30:22 - One-and-Done Heart Disease Prevention? Scientists Show It May Be Possible. NYT

1:32:00 - Lilly Agrees to Buy Trio of Vaccine Developers WSJ

Story 11: GLP1 Side Effects

1:39:13 - Is the Weight-Loss Drug Revolution Causing a Frailty Epidemic? WSJ

Story 12: Ebola Watch

1:41:49 - Doctors, Hospitals Struggle to Keep Up With Ebola’s Spread WSJ

Story 13: New Chip Entries Grow

1:44:25 - Huawei Says It Has Workaround to Match Leading Chips WSJ

1:45:42 - Amazon Strikes $6 Billion Deal With Snowflake for Agentic Computing Chips WSJ

Story 14: New Chip Entries Grow

1:47:09 -

Vic and Marcus sit down with Chris Boone, Group Vice President of Research Services at Oracle Health and Life Sciences, live from the Jumpstart Health Summit. The conversation explores Oracle’s growing role in healthcare following its Cerner acquisition, the future of real world evidence in drug discovery, how artificial intelligence is reshaping clinical research and healthcare organizations, and the opportunities and challenges surrounding AI adoption, regulation, workforce transformation, and precision medicine. They also discuss predictive healthcare, autonomous agents, the evolution of healthcare leadership, and what a world free of disease could realistically look like.

Vic and Marcus discuss rising inflation driven by energy costs and the impact on consumers, travel, and wage growth. They examine newly confirmed Fed Chair Kevin Warsh and debate whether AI investment and market enthusiasm are creating an economic bubble. The episode covers healthcare job growth becoming a key driver of California’s economy, major healthcare venture funding activity, and the resignation of FDA Commissioner Marty Makary and what it could signal about the future of regulation. Additional topics include declining overdose deaths, changes to PBMs after Optum Rx moves to a fee-based model, Hims & Hers struggling after the GLP-1 shift, General Catalyst’s healthcare transformation efforts, US and China negotiations, and broader conversations around healthcare, policy, and technology.

Links

Story 1: CPI

1:44 - Inflation Soared to 3.8% in April, Driven by Gasoline Prices WSJ

3:24 - Prices at the Pump Are Wiping Out Wage Gains WSJ

Story 2: New fed Chair

4:51 - Kevin Warsh Is Confirmed as Fed Chair in 54–45 Senate Vote WSJ

Story 3: Jobs

11:42 - U.S. Adds 115,000 Jobs in April With Solid Hiring Across Sectors WSJ

13:43 - Cisco to Shed Jobs for All-In AI Push WSJ

14:21 - Forget Tech and Hollywood. California Is Powered by Healthcare Jobs. WSJ

Story 4: VC rundown

15:14 - Chromie Health picks up $2M in pre-seed funding, launches SMS AI-powered nurse staffing agent Fierce Healthcare

16:07 - Salesforce Ventures, Echo Health Ventures back Optura's $17.5M series A to track AI performance Fierce Healthcare

18:03 - Basata Secures $21M to Rebuild Healthcare’s Operational Layer: Automating Referrals and Scheduling End-to-End HIT 

19:14 - Urologic Health: $11 Million Seed Financing Raised For Non-Invasive Bladder Function Monitoring Pulse 2.0

20:04 - Google-backed Isomorphic Labs raises $2.1B for AI drug discovery platform Mobi Health

Story 5: Policy rundown

21:08 - FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, Under Pressure From Trump, Resigns WSJ

33:11 - Vance to States: Address Fraud or Lose Federal Medicaid Funding WSJ

43:24 - U.S. Drug Overdose Deaths Fall for Third Straight Year WSJ

44:17 - Trump Was Flattering, Xi Was Resolute. The Difference Spoke Volumes. NYT

Story 6: Optum Moving Away from Traditional PBM Model

49:39 - Optum Rx replaces traditional PBM model with a fee-based structure Healthcare Finance

Story 6: UC reaches deal with Union

51:38 - University of California, union reach late-night deal to avert system-wide strike Fierce Healthcare

Story 7: Digital Health Earnings

52:33 - Hims & Hers posts $92M loss in Q1 as it shifts to branded GLP-1 medications Fierce Healthcare

54:22 - Omada Health posts 42% revenue jump in Q1, joins Eli Lilly employer weight loss program Fierce Healthcare

Story 8: GC Hosts Kennedy in Ohio

55:47 - General Cataylst & HatCo host Kennedy in Akron LI

Story 9: Far Reaching Negative Impact of Hearing Loss

58:17 - Walking Slower? Why Your Ears, Not Your Knees, Might Be the Problem WSJ

Story 10: Clarity Act

1:00:27 - Clarity Act clears U.S. Senate committee, on its way to a final test in Congress CoinDesk

Story 11: SpaceX & Google

1:06:06 - SpaceX and Google Are in Talks to Launch Data Centers in Orbit WSJ

Story 12: Googlebooks

1:08:45 - Google’s Android-powered laptops are called Googlebooks, and they’re coming this year Ars Technica

Story 13: Robots You Wear

1:11:37 - Human + Robot Limitless

Vic and Marcus discuss the latest signals from the labor market and growing concerns around AI-driven layoffs, including workforce cuts at Coinbase, PayPal, and other major companies. They examine how AI is reshaping healthcare operations, payer strategies, and pharmaceutical distribution, with conversations covering IBM and OpenAI’s work with Elevance, Hims & Hers launching AI lab interpretation tools, Google’s push into consumer health, and Roche acquiring PathAI. The episode also covers RFK Jr.’s push to reduce antidepressant use, the SEC proposal to eliminate quarterly reporting, CVS and Oscar Health earnings, UPMC acquiring CommonSpirit’s Trinity Health assets, renewed momentum at Pfizer and Novo Nordisk, and the rapid convergence of AI agents, crypto payments, and cloud infrastructure through AWS, Coinbase, and Stripe.

Links

Story 1: Jobs market

1:52 - March Labor Market Was Stable, if Sluggish WSJ

3:08 - Job Market Starts to Show Glimmers of Good News WSJ

Story 2:  Private Credit watch

4:02 - HSBC Takes $400 Million Hit From Private-Credit Alleged Fraud WSJ

Story 3: AI Org changes

5:20 - AI Is Forcing CEOs to Make a Stark Choice: Lay Off Workers or Make Them Do More WSJ

5:40 - Coinbase layoff X

10:46 - PayPal to Cut 20% of Staff Amid Turnaround Push WSJ

12:12 - IBM CEO Says AI Triggers Need for New Operating Models WSJ

Story 4: VC rundown

13:37 -  Startup Enabling Aging at Home Raises $6M, Gains New MA and Medicaid Partnerships MedCity

15:32 - Enzo Health raises $20M to expand AI home health platform Mobi Health

17:09 - XCaliber Health scores $6.5M for workflow platform Mobi Health

19:06 - Village: $9.5 Million Raised For Specialty Pediatrics AI Platform Pulse 2.0

Story 5: Antidepressants

22:02 - RFK Jr. Wants to Wean Some Americans Off Antidepressants WSJ

Story 6: End of Quarterly requirements?

25:45 - SEC Proposes to Eliminate Quarterly Reporting Requirement for Public Companies WSJ

Story 7: Elevance

30:39 - California hospitals sue to block Elevance out-of-network penalty Modern Healthcare

Story 8: Payor earnings

33:22 - CVS’s Results Add to Positive Momentum for Health-Insurance Industry WSJ

35:48 - Oscar Health's profit hits $679M, membership rises in Q1 Fierce Healthcare

Story 9: UPMC

40:02 - UPMC to acquire CommonSpirit’s Trinity Health Modern Healthcare

Story 10: Health provider earnings

42:45 - Ardent touts outpatient volume, margin growth during hectic Q1 Fierce Healthcare

43:54 - Hinge Health lifts 2026 outlook after strong Q1 as it expands to new conditions Fierce Healthcare

Story 11:  Pharma

44:50 - Pfizer Posts Better-Than-Expected Revenue, Profit WSJ

46:30 - Novo Nordisk Shares Jump on Strong Demand for Wegovy Pill WSJ

48:46 - Bayer to Buy Eye-Drug Developer Perfuse Therapeutics for Up to $2.45 Billion WSJ

49:41 - Roche shells out up to $1B for PathAI in move to boost artificial intelligence-powered diagnostics Fierce Healthcare

Story 12:  Pharma

Hantavirus Case in Switzerland Spurs Race to Trace Contacts WSJ

57:06 - Global Health Officials Race to Track Hantavirus but Predict ‘Limited’ Outbreak NYT

Story 13:  AWS agent payments

59:36 - AWS taps Coinbase and Stripe to power USDC payments for AI agents The Block

Story 14:  Hims AI

1:02:57 - Hims & Hers debuts its first AI care agent to interpret biomarker lab results Fierce Healthcare

Story 15:  Google Fitbit

1:04:44 - A comprehensive view of your health: Google Blog

1:06:27 - Google unveils Whoop-like screenless Fitbit Air TechCrunch

Story 16:  Anth...