“You can never have too much sugar.” Seems a little counterintuitive, but let’s run with that quote from the 1996 movie Michael for a minute. The whole movie is counterintuitive, a useful reminder that things don’t always make sense at first. It is about an angel visiting Earth from heaven, but unlike our common understanding of angels, he is a womanizer, he smokes and drinks, and his wings are dirty. As Jean Stapleton (the great Edith from All in the Family) explains to the national tabloid staff doing a story on Michael: he is an archangel. So the team from the tabloid must suspend disbelief to grasp that the odd character they meet is actually able to perform some minor miracles. And that, in a nutshell, is what I am doing this week – suspending disbelief about the whirlwind of new administration activity. More about that in the One Thoughtful Paragraph.
For now, a few news items about private sector moves that may just work if we suspend disbelief for a minute:
- New Mountain Capital invested in Union Healthcare Insight, a Washington, D.C. health care research and insights platform. Robert Musslewhite, an executive adviser at New Mountain and the former CEO of The Advisory Board Company and former CEO of OptumInsight, will directly partner with Union’s leadership team to help guide the company’s growth and innovation.
- Ambulatory cloud EHR provider eClinicalWorks achieved Qualified Health Information Network (QHIN) designation under the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA), joining other organizations to enhance nationwide interoperability.
- Selfii launched TripleBlind Exchange, a HIPAA/GDPR-compliant data marketplace that will reportedly allow for secure access to protected health information (PHI) without traditional de-identification. This move comes shortly after a partnership with CLEAR – the airport security / TSA pre-check company.
“You gotta learn to laugh, it is the way to true love.” Such is the wisdom of John Travolta as the archangel Michael, who has a great cast to work with (William Hurt, Robert Pastorelli, Terri Garr as a judge!) in Nora Ephron’s little-remembered film. If you skip past the scene where someone allowed Andie MacDowell to sing, I promise you will enjoy this movie. Learning to laugh at dumb movies will help us get through these other nifty moments (who couldn’t use an angel to help explain what the heck is happening?!). First, we have a private sector-funded government-announced company called Stargate that will build “the physical and virtual infrastructure to power the next generation of AI.” And then the administration issued a new Executive Order that instructs all the relevant government acronyms (APST, APNSA, OMB, etc.) to “solidify our position as the global leader in AI and secure a brighter future for all Americans” within 180 days. The Executive Order ends with: “Ready, go!” Just kidding. But maybe we should just see these things for what they are instead of getting all excited. As Michael explains in the film when pressed about whether he has halos, an inner light, and can fly, he leans over and says “I’m not that kind of angel.”
Maverick Health Policy is pleased to announce the addition of three senior policy advisers to our team: Christine Bechtel, Nathan Buttrey, and Marci Nielsen, PhD, MPH. Check us out and stay tuned for more announcements soon. https://www.maverickhealthpolicy.com/about/
