THCB

Categories

Tag: Kim Bellard

Health Care Needs Its Mary Barra

• 0

By KIM BELLARD

With all that has been going on, I’ve been remiss in reflecting on General Motor’s big announcement a couple weeks ago: it is going to have an all electric, zero emissions fleet of “light duty” vehicles (cars, SUVs, pickups) by 2035, and be carbon neutral by 2040.  One of the largest manufacturers of internal combustion vehicles for over a hundred years is recognizing that its past is not its future.

Of course, I immediately wondered what the equivalent move in healthcare would be, and from whom.   

In the announcement, GM Chairman and CEO Mary Barra declared:

General Motors is joining governments and companies around the globe working to establish a safer, greener and better world.  We encourage others to follow suit and make a significant impact on our industry and on the economy as a whole.

You can just imagine Henry Ford fuming in his grave.

GM has had electric vehicles for some time, but they remain a small percentage of its business, as they do among the auto industry generally (Tesla’s market cap notwithstanding).  GM had supported the Trump Administration’s policies efforts to rescind emission standards, which benefited internal combustion engines, but quickly changed course in light of Biden Administration priorities on climate change.

 GM now plans to spend some $27b on electric and autonomous vehicles over the next few years.  “We’re committed to fighting for EV market share until we are No. 1 in North America, Ms. Barra said at an investor’s conference.   “EVs are core to creating GM shareholder value.”

Continue reading…

THCB Gang Episode 42, Thurs 11th

• 0

THCB Gang was live on Thurs Jan 28. The recording is below.

Joining me, Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) were patient safety expert and all around wit Michael Millenson (@MLMillenson), THCB regular health writer Kim Bellard (@kimbbellard),  futurist Ian Morrison (@seccurve), surgeon & innovation dude Raj Aggarwal (@docaggarwal), patient advocate Grace Cordovano (@GraceCordovano), and policy & tech expert Vince Kuraitis (@VinceKuraitis).

The impeachment barely came up but several of us had direct experience of the chaotic vaccine rollout. Lots of speculation about what aspects of shoring up the ACA in the stimulus $1.9bn, and a bunch of discussion and disagreement about whether the lava is cooling in a new data and technology infrastructure on which to build a new health system. A great conversation.

The video is below but if you’d rather listen to the episode, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels.

If It Ain’t Real Time, It Ain’t Really Real

• 0

By KIM BELLARD

Here’s a damning opening paragraph from an article in The New York Times about the frustrations that COVID-19 vaccinations are causing:

For a vast majority of Americans, a coronavirus vaccine is like sleep for a new parent: It’s all you can think about, even if you have no idea when you will get it.

Because, as Kaiser Health News reported: “Many states don’t know exactly where the doses are, and the feds don’t either.” 

Think about that: in 2021, we can’t – or don’t – track something as vital as where vaccine doses are, in the midst of the pandemic they were designed in record time to mitigate. Nor, as it turns out, are we doing a good job of tracking how many have already had them, who is now eligible for them, or assuring that essential workers or disadvantaged populations are getting them. 

Amazon tells me when my purchases have shipped, where they are in the shipping process, and when they’ve been delivered.  They even send me a picture of purchases sitting on my porch to make sure I notice. Walmart’s supply chain management is equally vaunted. 

Health care executives evidently aren’t required to learn supply chain management. 

Continue reading…

Better Get Your Quantum Computer

• 0

By KIM BELLARD

By all rights, I should be writing about the battle between Reddit forum WallStreetBets and Wall Street hedge funds. Depending on one’s point of view, it’s hilarious, frightening, or a searing indictment on stock trading – maybe all three. 

But I’m going to let Elon Musk and Elizabeth Warren handle that one.  Instead, I want to talk about quantum computing – and why healthcare needs to be looking ahead to it.

Let’s start with this: for the low, low price of $5,000, you could have your very own quantum computer.  Spin Q Technology, a Chinese company, has recently introduced its Spin Q, a less expensive, less powerful version of its Spin Q Gemini, which went for $50,000.  Other quantum computers, such as those by Google, IBM, or D-Wave, have a few more zeroes in their price.  Spin Q Technology has a clear goal in offering this version:

We believe that low-cost portable quantum computer products will facilitate hands-on experience for teaching quantum computing at all levels, well-prepare younger generations of students and researchers for the future of quantum technologies.

You may remember that Steve Jobs and Apple had a similar strategy in the 1980’s, establishing a presence in the education market and among a generation of users that has served it well. 

If you’re looking for something more powerful, maybe even use for business purposes, you are also in luck: today Microsoft announced that Azure Quantum “is now open for business.”    Microsoft bills Azure Quantum as “the world’s first full-stack, public cloud ecosystem for quantum solutions.” 

Continue reading…

THCB Gang, Episode 40

• 0

THCB Gang was held live on Thurs Jan 28 1pm PT -4pm ET. The recording is below.

Joining me, Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) were fierce patient activist Casey Quinlan (@MightyCasey), consultant/author Rosemarie Day @Rosemarie_Day1),  THCB regular health writer Kim Bellard (@kimbbellard); employer health expert Jennifer Benz (@jenbenz) & patient safety expert and all around wit Michael Millenson (@MLMillenson).

There was almost nothing to talk about. No inauguration, no riots, pandemic under control via vaccination….oh wait. Actually a lot to talk about with the vaccination rollout, the likelihood of health policy changing in the COVID relief bill, and how the wild world of Gamestop stock trading might impact Digital Health –well we didn’t talk about that but we did talk about employers and what they were going to do!

The video is below but if you’d rather listen to the episode, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels.

And You Thought Health Insurance Was Bad

• 0

By KIM BELLARD

I spend most of my time thinking about health care, but a recent The New York Times article – How the American Unemployment System Failed – by Eduardo Porter, caught my attention.  I mean, when the U.S. healthcare system looks fair by comparison, you know things are bad.

Long story short: unemployment doesn’t help as many people as it should, for as much as it should, or for as long as it should. 

It does kind of remind you of healthcare, doesn’t it?

The pandemic, and the associated recession, has unemployment in the news more than since the “Great Recession” of 2008 and perhaps since the Great Depression.  Last spring the unemployment rate skyrocketed well past Great Recession levels, before slowly starting to subside.  Still, last week almost a million people filed for unemployment benefits, reminding us that unemployment is still an issue.

Keep in mind that unemployment rates do not tell the full story, as they don’t count those only “marginally attached” to the workforce – people who would like to work but have given up – and counts part-time workers who would like to work full time as “employed.”  The “true” unemployment rate is reckoned to be much worse than the official rate.

Congress has enacted several COVID relief measures, including in late December, to extend duration, amount, and applicability of unemployment benefits, but our unemployment systems remain predominantly state designed and administered.  The shortcomings of these systems have been severely exposed over the past few months: neither the processes nor the actual technologies supporting them proved robust enough for the volume of applicants.  Last December Pew Trusts reported that “unemployment payments were weeks late in nearly every state.” 

Continue reading…

The Cost of Free Speech

• 0

By KIM BELLARD

Well, you’d have to say that the past week has been interesting.  It’s not every week that Joe Biden “officially” won the 2021 election, again, as Congress certified the election results.  It’s not every century when the U.S. Capitol is overrun by hostile forces.  And it’d never been true before that Twitter and Facebook banned President Trump’s accounts, or that various tech companies belatedly acted on the threat that Parler poses.  Oh, and we hit new daily records for COVID-19 deaths (over 4,000) and hospitalizations (over 132,000) in case you’d forgotten there is still a pandemic going on. 

Yes, all in all, a very “interesting” week.

I’m going to skip talking about the horror that was the Capitol insurrection, in part because I fear that we’re going to find out more details that will make it clear that it was even worse than we now know.  Similarly, I’m not going to dwell on the shame that Republicans should feel about the fact that two-thirds of their House members still voted to object to certifying the election results even after they’d been forced to flee from the terrorists who sought that very goal with their violence.

Instead, let’s talk about “free speech,” and the social media platforms that helped foster the violence and are now trying to do something about that. 

Continue reading…

Health Care: Don’t Be Evil

• 0

By KIM BELLARD

Google’s corporate motto – written in its original Code of Conduct — was once “Don’t be evil.”  That softened over time; Alphabet changed it to “Do the right thing” in 2015, although Google itself retained the slogan until early 2018.  Some Alphabet employees think Google/Alphabet has drifted too far away from its original aims: they’ve formed a union in order to try to steer the company back to its more idealistic roots.

Parul Koul and Chewy Shaw, two Alphabet software engineers, announced the Alphabet Workers Union in a New York Times op-ed, vowing to live by the original motto, and to do what they can to ensure that Alphabet and its various companies do as well.  They assert: “We want Alphabet to be a company where workers have a meaningful say in decisions that affect us and the societies we live in.”

It’s past time that health care workers, including physicians and executives, stood up for the same thing.

Ms. Koul and Mr. Shaw cite several grievances, including payouts to executives accused of sexual harassment, the firing of a leading AI expert over her efforts to address bias in AI, and company efforts to “keep workers from speaking on sensitive and publicly important topics.”  Doing the work, even doing it well and being well paid for it, is not enough:

We care deeply about what we build and what it’s used for. We are responsible for the technology we bring into the world. And we recognize that its implications reach far beyond the walls of Alphabet.

Their goal is for Alphabet “to be a company where workers have a meaningful say in decisions that affect us and the societies we live in.”  Alphabet, they say, “has a responsibility to prioritize the public good. It has a responsibility to its thousands of workers and billions of users to make the world a better place.” 

Investors may not quite agree.

Continue reading…

No Names, Please

• 0

By KIM BELLARD

Feeling good about your holiday spending?  You’ve made it through most of this mostly horrible 2020, maybe lost a job or even a loved one, but still probably found a way to buy presents for your loved ones and maybe even to give some money to charity.  Indeed, charitable giving was up 7.5% for the first half of 2020, despite the economic headwinds.

Then there’s MacKenzie Scott.

Ms. Scott, as you may recall, is the former wife of Amazon founder/CEO Jeff Bezos.  She got Amazon stock worth some $38b in their 2019 divorce, which is now estimated to be worth around $62b.  She just gave away $4.2b – and that’s on top of $1.7b she gave away in July. 

In case your math skills are impaired, that’s $6b in six months, which Melissa Berman, chief executive officer of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors told Bloomberg: “has to be one of the biggest annual distributions by a living individual.”   Ms. Scott has vowed: “I will keep at it until the safe is empty.”

Kenzie Bryant, writing in Vanity Fair, marveled: “It gives a whole new meaning to “fuck-you money.” 

Private foundations are required to distribute at least 5% of their endowments each year; Ms. Scott not only has given away 10% of her net worth this year alone, but she hasn’t even used a foundation to do so.  As The New York Times reported: “Ms. Scott’s operation has no known address — or even website. She refers to a “team of advisers” rather than a large dedicated staff.”

She doesn’t make recipients plead for money through grant applications.  She doesn’t specify how the money is to be used, or require reports on how it is spent.  She doesn’t expect her name on anything.  She doesn’t even make public how much she is giving each recipient (although some choose to do so).

Continue reading…

THCB Gang Episode 35, Dec 10

• 0

Episode 35 of “The THCB Gang” was live-streamed Thursday, Dec 10. You can watch it below.

Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) was joined by not one but two of America’s leading health futurists Ian Morrison (@seccurve) and Jeff Goldsmith; Patient advocate Grace Cordovano (@GraceCordovano); health writer Kim Bellard (@kimbbellard); employer health expert Jennifer Benz (@jenbenz); and surgeon and innovation dude Raj Aggarwal (@docaggarwal).

There was lots of conversation about who is going to pay for what health care. What are big employers going to do. How is the vaccine going to roll out and are we ready? What does it all mean for the future of hospitals, doctors, employers, innovation and more.

If you’d rather listen to the episode, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels.