“Walt Disney and I always said we were two children looking for our inner adults.” Dick Van Dyke, who is 99 years young, said that about the man who made it possible for him to dance with cartoon penguins. Now he is featured in a heartwarming Coldplay music video, “All My Love,” that you should seriously watch right now. Grab a tissue first. I will be right here when you come back, and we can discuss why this relates to the topic in the One Thoughtful Paragraph below.
Other news that would be more interesting if cartoon penguins were involved:
- Halle Tecco, founder of Rock Health and adjunct professor at Columbia Business School, published a blog outlining what happened to digital health unicorns of 2020 – 2022.
- The HTI-2 Final Rule was posted for public inspection on the Federal Register. It is a pared-down version of what was proposed – only including provisions relating to TEFCA and amending information blocking definitions. Another final rule is currently under review at OMB, titled “Health Data, Technology, and Interoperability: Protecting Care Access.” Many in the industry believe this rule could include the rest of the proposed provisions, including updates to certification criteria that align with CMS APIs.
- Schadenfreude is a German word that Casey Ross uses in his article about startups that are leveraging AI to combat AI-supported coverage decisions by health insurance companies. It is among many articles that could have invoked the word in the aftermath of the murder of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO: WSJ, Politico, Axios, Washington Post, Healthcare Dive, Newsweek.
“Old age is hard, say it over town…everything I wish went up started going down.” You see? It writes itself. That is the ridiculous comment the talented Chris Martin of Coldplay says to Dick Van Dyke as he composes a brilliant song for him three seconds after the suggestion is put to him. It is as ludicrous a comment as Dick Van Dyke’s in the video when he says, “when you think how lucky I am…” Luck, clearly, didn’t have much to do with Dick Van Dyke’s storied career. He is a brilliant, talented man with an incredible attitude for what’s possible – which is not unlike Brad Smith, the new leader of the shrink-the-federal-government initiative (the cheekily named Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)). Brad Smith, who is all of 41 years old, but — like Dick Van Dyke — looks 20 years younger, was a sharp kid when he impressed his Walt Disney – former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist – and together they created Aspire Health (a palliative care company later bought by then-Anthem, now Elevance) and Carebridge (Elevance also plans to buy this home health company for $2.7 billion). Brad even took a minute to run the federal government’s venture capital firm – some know it as the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), the HHS department in CMS that tests alternative payment models. So Brad Smith is an expert in federal health programs, a wunderkind who is now being asked to figure out how to cut waste from the federal government – from a budget where 20% of the spend is on healthcare. When Brad Smith is 99 years old like Dick Van Dyke, maybe he can have a Coldplay song too. Maybe Viva la Vida, which starts with some appropriate lyrics: “I used to rule the world.”
