Vic and Marcus cover Marcus’s recent keynote to community health centers, the industry’s struggle to break out of legacy regulatory thinking, and why AI is becoming essential as labor and funding decline. They analyze unreliable jobless-claim data, Powell’s rate-cut outlook, and how AI is reshaping the relationship between labor, productivity, and corporate earnings. They discuss CMS rolling back staffing mandates, vaccine-policy debates, the extension of hospital-at-home, and Humana’s move into employer drug-cost management. The episode highlights HIMSS & Hers expanding into diagnostics, the rising burden of caring for aging parents, Texas buying Bitcoin, Google challenging OpenAI, Anthropic’s Opus 4.5, and character.ai restricting teen companion bots.

Links

7:20 - Jobless Claims Fell to New Recent Low Per Labor Department WSJ

11:31 - Fed Chair Powell’s Allies Provide Opening for December Rate Cut WSJ

26:13 - HHS repeals staffing mandate for long-term care Healthcare Finance

31:18 - FDA adopts agentic artificial intelligence in latest push to infuse AI into agency Fierce Healthcare

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) STRATEGY HHS

FDA Official Pledges New Vaccine Standards WSJ

33:05 - House votes to extend acute hospital care at home Healthcare Finance

35:39 - Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drugs, Humana exploring partnership to tackle employer drug costs Fierce Healthcare

38:38 - Hims & Hers expands into diagnostics, moves into Canada as it evolves DTC telehealth platform Fierce Healthcare

39:48 - ‘We Had No Idea What Was Coming’: Caring for My Aging Father NYT-op

46:19 - Texas Puts $10M Into Bitcoin as BTC Fights to Hold $78K Support Coin Paper

47:19 - OpenAI Declares ‘Code Red’ as Google Threatens AI Lead WSJ

50:35 - Anthropic introduces cheaper, more powerful, more efficient Opus 4.5 model ArsTechnica

53:35 - Teens Are Saying Tearful Goodbyes to Their AI Companions WSJ