Every once in a while a coincidence will happen that makes you wonder about who exactly has his hand on the tiller of the universe. Back in 2006, Kim and I were meeting some friends for dinner at a restaurant on the upper east side of Manhattan. Neither of us frequented the area, but Kim had an orthopedic appointment nearby. In fact, I noted that I had last been in that same area in 2005 when I met a woman I dated for a few months (Kim and I had actually agreed to meet at that same restaurant, strangely enough). I parked 2 blocks away and headed to the place a bit early with Kim expecting to catch up later. I had only one intersection to cross to get to my destination and while I waited at the light, who should bump into me at that precise moment, but that very woman I had previously dated. The otherwise unfamiliar location had caused me to think of her and suddenly… there she was, staring at me. We hadn’t seen each other for a year, so it was an awkward moment with her asking me how I was and me telling her I was engaged (to Kim). It ended quickly as the light changed and I was on my way to the restaurant again. But my head was still shaking as I arrived. How in the hell does that kind of shit happen? It’s a big city and I NEVER go to that area, much less at that exact moment. Crazy!
I have often noted that my business life has had a habit of intersecting me with lots and lots of people who either were at the time or later among the ranks of the rich and famous. Some of that was logical since I ran a global private banking business and several money management businesses. But I tended not to live with “hoi oligoi”, as the Greeks might say, and I certainly wasn’t a member of their elitist clubs for the most part. So it was always a surprise to me when someone hit the front pages and I realized that I had interacted with them. That happened with Ghislaine Maxwell, who I had dined with perhaps three times in New York and London in 1990. That was before she hooked up with Jeffrey Epstein. But then again, I saw (didn’t actually meet) Epstein at Mar-a-Lago dancing the night away at 2am with Donald Trump holding up his infant daughter Tiffany like she was a rag doll. It happened like that quite a bit more with Trump and his various family members including Ivanka and Don Jr. back in the days when I was running a distressed real estate development company. I spent time in Ivanka’s office with her trying to work out a deal and Kim sat next to Don Jr. at a fancy dinner before heading to a show at Carnegie Hall. Hell, we even sold the Times Square building to Jared Kushner (sorry to say he has lost a bundle on it since) and I used to party in Miami Beach (if that’s what you call sitting at a disco sipping a Diet Coke) with Steve Witkoff…that was before they solved the Middle East crisis, but after he took lenders on drunken and debauched private jet flights to his property in Las Vegas next to the Hard Rock Hotel. I talked movies with Ron Howard and he told me I saw more movies weekly than he probably did. I’ve motorcycled with Dale Launer, the guy who wrote and directed My Cousin Vinnie and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. I wrote a story made into a TV movie (Subway Stories: The 5:24) by Rosy Perez and starred in by Jerry Stiller and Steve Zahn. I stood next to Michael Bloomberg talking about the skyline of NYC and drank champagne in his townhouse with him. I even met with Eric Adams when he was Brooklyn Borough President and before he went on to his corrupt NYC mayoral stint. Suffice it to say that I have had more than my share of strange and offhand celebrity and politician encounters.
But now I have a coincidental incident in the making that is blowing my mind on several levels. About eight years ago when things started to get serious between my son Thomas and his college girlfriend, Jenna, Kim and I had the occasion to “meet the parents” of the fair Jenna. They were a Connecticut family, slightly younger than us, but more or less in the same generational cohort. Steve and Jamie are lovely people who we connected with easily and warmly. He is a physician (Ear Nose and Throat guy) and she is a personal fitness trainer. He is a keyboardist in a local rock band and she is off climbing some mountain or hiking some trail. As we spoke over dinner, Steve told me about his retirement plans, which included a start-up medical device invention/solution that would screen patients for hearing loss while they were doing their annual physical exam with their primary care physician. All sorts of research shows that hearing loss is not only on the rise with the aging population, but it is being linked more and more to other debilitating conditions. It seems logical that it should be part of the annual screening for sound healthcare maintenance. This start-up business idea took the form of an iPad application and efforts by Steve and his small team of partners/helpers to place the device in the offices of several large medical systems. I invested a meaningful sum in the start-up both because it sounded entrepreneurially interesting and to show support for a soon-to-be extended family member. And then COVID happened.
All of the best efforts to gain traction for the device moved forward nicely, from FDA approval to patent to interest from large medical practice networks. But the commercial side of the program was far less successful. The healthcare arena, one with which I am largely unfamiliar, has many purveyors of many devices and presumably good ideas that run the gamut from unhelpful to critically impactful. Being just another good idea is never enough in the start-up game, you have to be a compelling good idea with an adoption and implementation team that can make things happen. For reasons Steve could not completely explain, good clinical results and positive feedback were not translating to meaningful commercial traction. The COVID pause had not helped and the overall confusion in and over-saturation of the healthcare field seemed to be the main culprit. After several years of lifeline added funding by a small group of us (including Steve), we were ready to throw in the towel. Then we got a call.
It seems that with all the headline machinations of the Trump Administation’s assault on government spending, the ACA programs (Obamacare), Medicaid, Medicare, NIH research funding, CDC management, and even academic scientific research funding, there is some concern among the base constituency, and therefore the Congressional playing field, that there is still a need for government assistance in the health and wellbeing of at least the MAGA base. The war cry is MAHA and the leader of the effort is none other than the very high-profile RFK Jr. and his protege, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Apparently, part of the Big Beautiful Bill passed by the Congressional Republicans this past summer included something called the Working Families Tax Cuts Legislation (Public Law 119-21) that allocated $50 billion to the Rural Health Transformation Program. Every state was invited to submit a plan for transforming its rural health care system, where a good deal of the MAGA base resides. It’s all about expanding access, enhancing quality and improving outcomes for patients through sustainable, state-driven health care innovation. Working with the state of West Virginia, the second biggest Trump state (with 70% of the electorate voting for him), our start-up’s hearing loss screening device was submitted as part of their plan. It now sits on the desk of RFK Jr. and Dr. Oz, awaiting consideration. If it is approved, the other states will have the ability to consider adding it to their program (best practices review). Wouldn’t that be an interesting turn of events in many, many ways? How does this keep happening?