New therapies could cut healthcare costs in half

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 1:10:02

   AI and robotics and I'll add longevity medicine could help get us out of this $40 trillion of debt? It doesn't get us out of debt as much as it just makes the debt not that important. But I do buy that. Yeah, I think that, you know, if let's just take like this next generation of GLP-3s plus some cancer vaccines. You know, can you shrink healthcare as a percentage of GDP to under 10%? You probably could. Forget the waste, fraud, and abuse. I think he's bringing up an important point, which is the system is riddled with waste. And I think that everybody got too caught up in the fraud. What do I mean by that? Like, I think it's sort of like the situation where everybody was looking for somebody's hand in the cookie jar like i gotcha and it turned out it was it was just like a little bit more leaky than that you know

2. 1:10:55

   where it's like a hospital maybe up codes for a couple of extra things you come in for your knee you know it tags you for the sore throat and then you know it doesn't necessarily get repudiated or pushed back on and so then it gets reimbursed and blah blah blah so it's i think that there's a lot of probably waste in the system. And whose incentive is that? Again, just to pick on health care, is it the insurers? Well, they necessarily would recognize less revenue as well on top of it all. So I don't know. I think you're probably, if we're going to see this problem solved, I think it's probably going to start by things that are just discontinuous improvements so that the systems aren't used, and then that way the fraud and the waste and the abuse can't happen. So again, RETA plus some cancer vaccines plus all that stuff, I think, like I said,

3. 1:11:54

   that probably clips the cost of healthcare in half. And I think that there's probably some stuff on the productivity side. Robots are definitely one. And I could see where maybe maybe our debt kind of slows down, but then GDP is much higher. I could see that. Yeah. Alex, I don't know if you saw the news that LP1 drugs are slowing aging by 9%, which is pretty extraordinary. We've talked about this being the first- Peter, you don't know if I saw the news?

4. 1:12:27

   I'm flagging this for you every five seconds. Yes, of course I saw the news. I'm the one banging the drum that we may already be in spiky LEV. What are you talking about? Of course I saw the news. All right, pal. Yeah, I- Ooh, stepped on a landmine there. I do think, just regarding the debt increase, you have to look at where the debt is growing. Debt is growing from entitlements. It's growing from defense costs.

5. 1:12:53

   And I think there are sci-fi scenarios where maybe it's a bit of sleight of hand almost with AI, where existing increases are sort of translated over from the way they would be conventionally spent over to robotics and AI. And I'm reminded again, we went from, say, a world in the 1980s where if you wanted to have knowledge at your fingertips. You had to do something silly like buy the Encyclopedia Britannica and then fast forward and Wikipedia is free and available for everyone. Similarly with defense spending and Medicare and entitlement spending, I do think there may require a forcing function or a crisis, but I do think there's a way through ephemeralization and superintelligence, there can almost be a sleight of hand where, OK, one day defense spending is $7 trillion or $8 trillion, or similarly with entitlements, and the next year through a combination of

6. 1:13:56

   robotics, don't look the other way, look this way, suddenly it goes down to near zero in terms of new spending through automation. I think something like that is possible, where if we look back at it, it looks almost like a rebasing of the currency, not a debasing, but a rebasing. But I think it'll require a few more years worth of technological advances before we're able to do that. And I'll predict, not financial advice, but I think it will look, with the benefit of hindsight, like sleight of hand that erases ultimately a good chunk of the national debt increase. You know, Dave, when we interviewed Elon back last December, he said he's going to