Raising Health

A labor and delivery nurse who ran Senate healthcare policy now manages $1.7 trillion in federal health spending—and she runs her team like a startup. Steph Carlton, Chief of Staff and Deputy Administrator at CMS, reveals the OKRs driving Medicare and Medicaid, why they're killing social determinants funding while building consumer health apps at scale, and how real-time provider data could collapse the 18-month lag between care delivery and payment. The team mixing founders with policy veterans is rewriting quality measures around VO2 max and app engagement, not just disease management—because preventing illness years before it happens might finally be worth more than treating it after.

Josh Weiner left Meta to return to CVS Health with two painful realizations: consumers don't manage their health—they expect it, and the healthcare market fundamentally violates every principle of economics. In this conversation with a16z's Julie Yoo, the CVS Senior VP explains why 50% of Americans can't afford a healthcare emergency, how CVS is becoming a platform to solve structural healthcare problems, and why the future depends on consumers finally controlling their own health data.

Cancer care in the U.S. costs over $250 billion each year, and nearly 2 million Americans receive a new diagnosis annually, yet too often the journey begins with silence: no call, no plan, no guide. In this episode, a16z’s Vineeta Agarwala and Jay Rughani talk with Thyme Care leaders Robin Shah (cofounder and CEO), Bobby Green, MD (president and CMO), and Brad Diephuis, MD (president and COO) about rebuilding oncology around the patient. They cover where the system breaks, how navigation plus value-based contracts align incentives, how AI can extend clinicians, and what scale looks like today, more than 83,000 active patients. A concise blueprint for truly patient-centered cancer care.

In this episode, Sprinter Health co-founders Max Cohen and Cameron Behar sit down with Julie Yoo to unpack how their home-based care model reaches underserved populations and reintegrates “the unengaged” into the healthcare system.

Malinka Walaliyadde, cofounder and CEO of AKASA, joins Julie Yoo to unpack how large language models have the potential to transform hospital revenue by automating highly nuanced coding and billing workflows.

Arif Nathoo, cofounder and CEO of Komodo Health, joins Jorge Conde and Jay Rughani of a16z Bio + Health.

Seth Hain, SVP of R&D at Epic, joins a16z Bio + Health general partner Julie Yoo.

Neil Parikh and Daniel Cahn, cofounders of Slingshot AI, join Julie Yoo, general partner at a16z Bio + Health.