Abortion: The Most Emotional Election Issue

Plus, how wearable technology, AI and digital health are transforming medicine. And, Ric explains the risks and rewards of Ethereum staking

 

Ric Edelman: It's Friday, October 11th. On today's show, we'll cover the most controversial of my 34 topics for our political discussion, abortion. Plus, a conversation with Daniel Kraft, the founder and chair of NextMed Health and Digital.Health, about the future of longevity and new advancements in medical science.

As you know, all this month, we're talking about the presidential election and my desperate effort to move from undecided to decided with your help. The emails that you have been sending me are frankly, very helpful. I really appreciate your commentary. I'm getting so many thoughtful remarks, from so many of the listeners of this podcast on a variety of issues, 34 of them, 34 topics that we are covering in 19 podcasts beginning with this past Monday. For the ones we've done so far, the links are available in the show notes if you've missed any of those.

Today, we're going to talk about abortion, perhaps the most controversial and most divisive of all topics.

But before we get to abortion, I've got a question that I received on an unrelated matter from Michael. He's in Palmyra, Virginia.

Michael: “Ric, you have talked a little about owning Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs. You rightly point out that the ETFs are much more convenient. But what about buying Ethereum to get staking rewards? Admittedly, this adds complexity, but isn't the additional compounded return worth it?”

Ric Edelman: Well, I don't know, Michael, if it's worth it or not. I mean, if you engage in staking, meaning you buy Ethereum, say, at Coinbase or some other exchange, and you post your coins as collateral on the Ethereum network, that's called staking and you will receive a staking reward.

Those rewards these days are in the neighborhood of 3% - 4% per year. Is it worth it? Well, a lot of people would say yes. I mean, if you're going to own Ethereum for 10 years and you're earning 4% a year, that's a 40% gain. So just like stock dividends are a big source of the profits of stocks, you could argue that staking rewards are a big part of the profit of investing in crypto. And in fact, about a third of all the Ethereum purchased has been staked. Investors recognizing that they want those staking rewards.

And as you pointed out, the ETFs are prohibited by the SEC from engaging in staking, at least so far under Gary Gensler, that is. We're hopeful that when he's gone and his successor comes in, this moratorium will be lifted. But for now, you're right. If you own the Ethereum ETF, no staking revenue. So, should you do it? It's entirely up to you. If you engage in staking, you are taking a risk. If something goes wrong in the staking activity, it's beyond the purview of this conversation to delve into that detail.

I cover it thoroughly, at our website, dacfp.com. And the link is in your show notes. If you incur risks in staking, you could lose all of the coins you stake, so keep that in mind. Also, some staking pools limit your liquidity. You're not able to pull your money back for certain periods of time. You're not able to sell should you want or need to. So, yeah, you can earn an extra 3% or 4% per year with some risk, with some limitations. So, do your own research, think about the issues, and decide for yourself. I believe, for most investors, the staking revenue isn't all that big a deal, compared to the price appreciation potential, which is the key driver for why people buy Ethereum in the first place.

Let's move on now to today's presidential topic, abortion, and two closely related issues, contraceptive freedom and euthanasia. First, let me share with you what Americans tend to think about these subjects, and in fact, let's focus on white evangelicals. And the reason I'm focusing on white evangelicals is because all the surveys across the country show us that generally speaking, most Americans support the right to choose.

It is those on the extreme left and the extreme right who have different views, and in this particular case, on the extreme right, which is where many people tend to put white evangelicals. They tend to focus on Bible teachings and taking many of Christianity's teachings in the Bible quite literally, and argue very strongly against the notion of abortion.

We have seen this as the result of the overturning of Roe v. Wade. We've seen a great number of states across the country impose new laws strictly limiting abortion, in some cases banning it outright, others having severe limitations, such as how many weeks of pregnancy are allowable before you allow an abortion, or whether or not you can have an abortion, even under rape or incest or threat to the mother's life and so on and so forth.

You're as familiar about all of this as me. I don't have to delve into all these details. The reason I cite the white evangelicals is because of a new survey that just came out. I believe that most people would assume that for white evangelicals, the abortion issue is the number one issue, and they're going to vote for a candidate based on this single issue beyond anything else.

But according to this new survey, that's not true. Only 48% of white evangelicals said in a new poll that abortion is an important issue in deciding how they vote. They cited the economy and immigration as bigger issues. Just like other voters.

My point in raising all of this is simple. While abortion generates very strong opinions from everybody, we all have a point of view on this, and a rather strong point of view. There aren't too many people in America for whom this is the number one political issue. Nor, is it the sole issue for many people. So, while we're about to talk about a very important and very emotional topic, let's put it into context from a voting perspective. It's not as big a deal as many might think. And in fact, I have my own data point  - of all the emails that I received from all of my listeners on all of the topics pertaining to the presidential election -  only one person made any comment at all about the abortion issue. It came from Bernie, and here's what he wrote.

 Bernie: “Ric, my vote is simple. There is only one issue in this man-centric world. Women's choice for their healthcare. Kamala will do her part to secure choice and ensure women have the same rights as men.”

Ric Edelman: So now let's talk about these: abortion, contraception, and euthanasia.

We talked yesterday about states versus federalism and how Donald Trump is a very big fan of states’ rights in so many issues and the abortion issue is one of them. In fact, he has said that he would veto a federal ban on abortion. So, if Republicans in Congress managed to pass a law banning abortion nationally, Donald Trump says he would veto that. He does, however, support one national law and that would have a national limit prohibiting abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Harris, on the other hand, says she supports restoring the federal right to abortion until the point of viability, which was previously the way Roe v. Wade had it. She also supports access to medication abortion delivered via pharmacies and telehealth and the US mail.

So, clearly, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are on opposite ends of this issue, as they are on so many others. On contraception, when Donald Trump was president, his administration issued regulations that allow employers to refuse to pay for contraceptive coverage in their insurance programs. Kamala Harris disagrees with that. She would require employers to pay for contraception.

Donald Trump also says that if you're going to allow abortion, it shouldn't be paid for by the taxpayer. Kamala Harris feels that taxpayer funding should be provided because without taxpayer funding, the fact that abortion is legal will be irrelevant because too many low-income women won't be able to afford or gain access to clinics where abortions are available.

And then finally, euthanasia. I wrote in my very first book, The Truth About Money, which was published in 1997, oh my goodness gracious, almost 30 years ago. I wrote then, way back then, that in the 21st century, the abortion issue would fall away as the most divisive political issue in America, and it would be replaced by euthanasia.

It's not killing babies that's going to be the issue I said, it's going to be killing elderly people. Euthanasia is indeed becoming a big issue, as Americans are living longer than ever, but often in debilitating circumstances. Donald Trump has said that terminally ill patients should be allowed to end their lives via medically-assisted suicide, but only after a psychological examination has shown that they fully understand the choice that they're making.

Kamala Harris has said, flatly, no. We should keep people alive.

So let me share with you my views on this. First on abortion. And as it is with everybody, it's a very personal topic. I have grown up with a particular attitude about abortion. And I have to tell you that it was an academic attitude, meaning I never had any personal experience with abortion. I never knew anybody who had an abortion. I never encountered it in my family. I certainly never encountered it personally, between myself and the women I had been dating. It was just something that I read about, heard about, but I never really knew anybody who was personally affected or involved in the issue.

And my views were pretty strong, the way I think everybody has strong views on abortion. My attitude had always been if a woman wants to have an abortion, that's her choice, let her do it. And then one day, in college, I talked to a good friend of mine, a college classmate, we had gotten to know each other pretty well.

We were in a lot of classes together, worked on class projects together, and hung out together a lot as a result. One day she confided in me, and I really don't recall how it ever came up, but somehow in the natural part of conversation, she confided in me that several years earlier she had had an abortion.  

And what I was so astonished about was my reaction to her admission to me. I was amazed that I was unhappy that she'd had an abortion, that she didn't have to have had one in my thinking. That she could have delivered the baby and put it up for adoption. And I was just so surprised that I was having that reaction because I had always said to myself and others that I believe in choice.

And yet my reaction was just very different. I remember talking with a psychologist, about how difficult it is for us to make intellectual arguments over emotional issues. And the argument that he gave me was very simple. He said to me, have you ever been mugged? And I said, no, I never had, I've never been personally assaulted or attacked. And he said, how do you suppose you would react if you were mugged? I said, I don't know. I assume I'd be scared. I might be angry. And he said, sure, those are two very common responses, but you know what else he said? He said a very common response when someone is mugged is laughter. Laughter? How could that possibly be a typical reaction when you're being assaulted?

He said there's a lot of research on this, that people react and respond in different ways. Sometimes it is the shock. Sometimes it is the mind's attempt to compensate and respond and adjust and protect emotionally and psychologically. You're, dealing with a trauma. His point was simply this, until you personally experience an emotional event, you cannot intellectually predict how you're going to respond to it. And that's kind of what this meant for me until I met somebody who was a good friend of mine who had had this experience and shared with me her deeply personal story. I had no way to predict that I would have my own emotional response the way that I did.

It didn't affect our friendship in the least. We remained close. And I didn't even share with her, it would have been totally inappropriate for me to share with her, how I was responding. Because that has nothing to do with it.

My point is that ever since then, I've had a change of opinion about abortion. My opinion now is, and has been ever since that experience, personally, if I were faced with the abortion issue, for example, if I got a girl pregnant, I would encourage her to have the baby.

I would, figure it out with her. But at the same time, my fundamental view is, my view doesn't really matter. This is, in the end, her choice. The fact that I, if I were a woman, got pregnant and were faced with the opportunity or perhaps circumstance of considering an abortion that I wouldn't have one.

It doesn't mean that I should prevent anyone else from having one, because they may have a very different point of view than mine. That's the whole point of America's freedom and American liberty, is not having the government tell us what to do. And I guess this means I'm a libertarian at heart.

I don't want others to tell me what to do, and therefore I'm not going to tell them what to do. Yes, I think the government can impose rules when we're talking about safety and security. I can certainly demand that you get a driver's license, that you operate a car that is safe and sound on the road by getting it inspected annually, that you adhere to driving laws. Because it's not just you you're going to kill, it's people around you that you might be threatening.

So, sure, we need laws in our country to protect us from each other, but if you're going to engage in something that is for you and your life, what the hell does my opinion have to do with it? So, my particular viewpoint on abortion is that my view should not be imposed on your view. I think I should have the opportunity to influence you, to persuade you, to motivate you, but at the end of the day I ultimately must respect you.

I also feel, however, that because this is a very personal choice, and an extraordinarily difficult one, I can't imagine any woman being happy that she's having or even contemplating an abortion. This can only be a result of hand wringing, deep emotional conflict due to the circumstances surrounding the pregnancy in the first place that are leading to the thought of abortion.

I can't begin to guess the emotional toll on her. Despite all of that, at the end of the day, if her choice is to have an abortion, I'm not sure that I should have to pay for it as a taxpayer. And because there are so many people who do support the right to choose, I am convinced that if the government were to eliminate its taxpayer funded support of abortion, that non-profit organizations would emerge with ample donation from those supporting the women's right to choose, That the availability of abortion services would be there. In fact, I would probably be happy to donate to such organizations as a voluntary charitable contribution, as opposed to a mandated, taxpayer supported activity.

So, that's my view. I'm not a fan of abortion, I don't endorse it, but I more strongly do endorse your right if that's what you choose to do. I just don't want you to make me pay for it.

Now let's talk about contraception. I do support contraception, but I haven't decided about how I feel about it being made available to kids in schools. This is not something I've given a whole lot of thought about. It is not something I have seen either Trump or Harris spend a lot of time talking about, and if it is going to be taught to kids in schools, then you are talking about taxpayer funding of that education in terms of kids and schools and education.

But other than that, yes, I believe that access to contraception and education about contraception is important. Whether that education occurs in the classroom or not is another issue.

The final issue is euthanasia. I have very strong feelings about this. Jean and I have been for many, many years, active supporters and contributors to an organization called Compassion and Choice, which is an organization that tries to pass laws around the country, to permit medically-assisted suicide. We have had a number of clients in our practice, we have had a number of friends, go through horrific, debilitating diseases that had no favorable outcome. And to watch these folks suffer in agony to an inevitability, strikes me as cruel and inhumane. We would never put our dogs through this and yet we put people through it.

Donald Trump, thoroughly disagrees with Kamala this one. And I, agree with Donald Trump. I think Kamala is dead wrong on this. Quite frankly, her saying that abortion is okay, but medically assisted suicide is not, doesn't make any sense to me.

I mean, let me get this straight. It's okay to kill a baby, but it's not okay to let a competent adult who's suffering from a debilitating, excruciatingly painful disease where death is certain within a matter of months not be allowed to end their own life peacefully, surrounded by loved ones? That is so hypocritical. It shows to me that Kamala Harris has not given this any serious thought, or that she has clearly never had to face this issue personally with a loved one.

I have, numerous times, including just a few weeks ago. A very, very dear friend of mine passed away, frankly, a horrible death. He chose not to go the route of medically assisted suicide. I love Robin to death, and he said to me, Ric, I just enjoy living too much. He made a conscious decision, but he was so comforted by knowing that the option was available to him.

But here's the thing, it really doesn't matter that I prefer Kamala Harris on the abortion issue. And the reason is that Roe v. Wade has been overturned. This is now a state issue and there is nothing that a President Harris would be able to do about it. She will not be able to get Congress to pass any new law about this. She sure as hell isn't going to get a constitutional amendment approved to overturn Roe v. Wade.

So, whether we like it or not, and I don't like it, the abortion issue is no longer a presidential election issue. It is now an issue for voting in your state governor's race and the state legislature because that's where these laws are now being considered and passed.

It's the same for euthanasia. It's a state issue. In fact, there are 10 states that have already passed laws allowing medically assisted suicide. So, I support Kamala Harris on abortion and contraception. And I support Donald Trump on euthanasia. But none of that really matters. Because it's a state issue.

Except for one thing, federal judges. There are going to be more federal lawsuits on the abortion issue. And there are going to be more Supreme Court justices named over the next several years, and they're going to have an impact on the abortion issue. But we're going to tackle the judiciary in an upcoming podcast, not here today.

So here on this narrow topic of abortion, and euthanasia, for me, It's a draw. I don't like either of their positions enough on this topic to say I'm going to vote for one of them or the other. I encourage you to follow along with your own decision making if you, like me, are in the undecided camp. I created my Excel spreadsheet, which is available to you, just click the link in the show notes to access it, to help you quantify your decision making and thought process, to help you reach a conclusion in this complex decision.

Who is your favorite, or perhaps your least objectionable candidate.  I hope your Excel spreadsheet exercise helps you out. I'd be curious what your experience is with it. Do send me a note. Tell me what you think about my Excel spreadsheet and whether or not it's proving helpful to you.

Ric Edelman: You're listening to The Truth About Your Future. One of the most important topics we cover on this program is longevity, medicine, and health. And I'm really happy to bring onto the program. I should say back onto the podcast, my good friend, Dr. Daniel Kraft, who has been with us here in the past. Daniel, welcome back to the podcast.

Daniel Kraft: Great to be with you.

Ric Edelman: Daniel was founder and chair of NextMed Health and Digital Health. He was trained at Stanford and Harvard. He's a physician, scientist, an inventor, an entrepreneur, an innovator. He's been in the medical field for 25 years in clinical practice, biomedical research, healthcare innovation. He's the faculty chair for medicine at Singularity University and has been since its inception in 2008. That's where we met back in 2012. So, Daniel, the big hot buzzword these days is AI. So, talk about how artificial intelligence is impacting health and medicine, both right now and what you see coming.

Daniel Kraft: Sure. Well, AI or like augmented intelligence is really starting to hit where the rubber hits the road in health and medicine. Back in 2011we had IBM Watson and the first Jeopardy champions being beaten. And we thought we're going to have Dr. Watson in a couple of years, a little bit of hype.

But now a decade later, we have hundreds of FDA-cleared medical apps, mostly in radiology that are using AI to read your x-rays of skilled clinicians. And we're in the early innings of being able to provide help to clinicians, not right now to always make the diagnosis and do the therapy or be a robotic surgeon, but to help let them be more human, let them write their notes, get rid of some of the scut work, and then ultimately start to integrate all these new massive forms of data from your wearables, your genome, your metabolome, your sociome, to really guide prevention and wellness and longevity, pick up diseases early. And then with therapy, make things much more tuned and personalized.

Ric Edelman: You mentioned the phrase wearables. We are becoming, I think, was it in Star Trek? They talked about the Borg and how these humans are becoming machines. And that was a rather dystopian scenario, but we're kind of becoming that. I mean, it's hard to imagine leaving your house without your smartphone. It's in people's hands more often than it's not. Our wristwatches. Now I wear an Apple watch and that's a wearable technology. We're starting to see manufactured clothing that have sensors built in that produce biometric data that is uploaded automatically to our doctors. So, I want you to elaborate a little bit on wearables and what that does for us. But you also had the phrase when you and I were chatting prior to coming on air. Otherables. I want you to talk about all of that.

Daniel Kraft:   Sure. Well, we're sort of in this age of internet of medical things with our digital data being able to be collected 24/7. You don't actually need to have a wearable on, for example, we carry our smartphones with us where they go, clearly they can track our steps and even our sleep. But the camera now on a smartphone or your laptop can look at your face and with some AI magic, pick up your heart rate, your blood pressure, your oxygen saturation, might even measure your hemoglobin A1C and other elements or see changes in your face, kind of the medical selfie.

The microphone on your phone can pick up your voice as a biomarker, which can indicate signs of early neurologic disease, mental health issues. The sound of your cough can tell you if it's crude COVID or tuberculosis or just a cold. And more recently, voice can detect if your blood sugar is high. So, it can even be a device for blood sugar.

And other otherables include Wi-Fi around your house that can start to pick up vital signs and measure sleep. This whole sort of idea now that you don't need to be wearing and charging. I've got actually my Oura ring on, my Apple watch, my Fitbit. What's most interesting about these wearables and otherables is they can start to measure almost every element of behavior and physiology.

And most of us, like you and I, are kind of quantified selfers. We have that data buried on our phone, but it's going to start to shift dramatically to our clinicians when we opt in to really help be quantified health, not just quantified self. And that's going to really unlock a whole new era of self-care and much more data and proactive personalized prevention, diagnostics, and therapy.

Ric Edelman: This is a huge amount of data, it's hard to fathom. So, you have the biproduct of data centers and big data becoming a thing, just managing, accumulating, distributing, analyzing the data. But when I do upload all that data to my doctor, the doctor has got to be inundated because it's me times every patient that he or she has. So, what are we doing with all the data that all of this tech is creating?

Daniel Kraft: Yeah. Data may be the new oil, but it's not going to run the engine by itself. There's this cartoon from my NextMed health conference where the patient shows up and the doctor says: “just as I thought, you're generating too much data, we're already overwhelmed with your basic data”.

But let's say you're my patient.I've got your wearable data and your genome and your metabolome and your sociome and, and your FICO score for your health. I actually kind of need a more of an integrated FICO score for your health because one piece of data by itself isn't so interesting. And we're entering what I think, not, not the generative AI age, but sort of the multimodal health age, where ideally as a clinician, I'll be able to sift through your continuous data, understand Ric's baseline, that your resting heart rate went up 20 points the last month, that we need to check your cardiopulmonary situation.

Seeing changes from your individual baseline is what's most important, and we're ending this age of what's often called the digital twin. We'll all have the Ric twin, or the Daniel twin, or a population twin, and instead of kind of doing the average care for the average patient, and no one's really average, we'll start to really, like a simulator, predict what's really appropriate for you to optimize your healthspan, pick out that disease at state zero, or manage an acute or chronic condition in a much more, almost Waze or Google Maps crowdsourced manner, where we're kind of gleaning knowledge from the entire population about what's best for you.

Ric Edelman: So, what we're talking about here pretty clearly is digital health. How has this evolved? Is it simply in pace with the advent of the computer chip? And aside from the health question, the health issue, or the health opportunities this is creating, what about the investment opportunities of all this?

Daniel Kraft: Well, we'll still actually in the early innings of AI and digital health, but I like to frame it big picture today. We really practice sick care, intermittent data collected in the four walls of a clinic or hospital or God forbid the ICU or the emergency room leads to a reactive mindset. We tend to wait for the patient to show up in the ER with a heart attack or stroke or a late-stage cancer. And I'm an oncologist. Most patients show up late-stage.

The future is much more continuous. Our data collected anywhere, right? That could be made not just data, but actionable insights and knowledge that we can use at the bedside, at the website or for self-care. This whole movement that each of us can now take better care of our own selves than just waiting to go to the clinician when we're sick.

And this digital layer, it's not just wearables, it's integrating in your genomic information, the ability to do now and pay for remote patient monitoring. It might be a wearable patch, which allows you to be admitted to your home instead of the hospital. So, from hospital to phone to home, to hospital to “homespital.”

We're in the era now of enabling clinicians to be upskilled sometimes with AI machine learning to integrate your genomic information, the workflow, to pick the right statin, for example. So, it's early days, but there's already thousands of solutions out there that most clinicians and patients don't know about it.

So, I've recently launched a platform called Digital.Health. Digital.Health is the website and the link if you go there. You don't need to be a doctor. You can search for a problem you might have. It might be atrial fibrillation, or diabetes, or heart disease, and you can find hundreds sometimes of solutions that you can start to match to you.

And hopefully your clinician will start to use these, like a connected blood pressure cuff, or a next generation watch, which will do blood pressure and blood sugar to be part of your care. So, it's connecting those data dots, but not just making them data, but useful information that can move the needle for your health and the population at large.

Ric Edelman: Traditionally, healthcare companies were in a silo, they were in a narrow sleeve of vertical drug companies, for example, diagnostics companies. We now, though, recognize that the biggest companies in the world, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, they're consumer companies. Are they moving into healthcare themselves?

Daniel Kraft: 100%. I think you've heard the quote from the Apple CEO that their biggest impact will be in health. And they're really in a meta sense, a health company. Meta with their Quest headsets are great platforms for augmented virtual and mixed reality, which is playing a role in everything from training surgeons and physicians to doing mental health, to doing your physical therapy or your workouts. We're seeing of course, Amazon heavily in the space. Amazon pharmacy and Amazon care where they're masters of the consumer model and that easy button, right?

So much in healthcare has traditionally been highly friction full, still using the fax machine in many cases. We all kind of want that easy button, that uberization of healthcare, and that's what's starting to integrate in now. The user interfaces that can be more personalized based on age, culture, language, personality type. And the consumer companies, Microsoft included, which now is heavily into with their data platforms and their AI platforms are all starting to integrate into both consumer care, but also the medical side as well.

Ric Edelman: So does that mean that people, if they're looking at this sector from an investment strategy, that you don't need to invest specifically in health stocks or health companies that you can simply invest in the big tech stocks and that's going to give you sufficient exposure to the space, or should you continue to focus in this sector?

Daniel Kraft:   I think it depends what kind of investor you are. I mean it's really an opportune time to invest in health tech and health span and digital health. I have a seed stage fund called Continuum Health Ventures. We're seeing really exciting startups come from often folks outside of traditional health care.

Sometimes they're coming from big tech and they see a clinical problem or medical problem than their own selves or family. And they're solving them with their friends in the traditional tech industry. And they can move faster. We sometimes don't realize that healthcare is hard. We do have challenges with regulation, reimbursement, culture of change in healthcare.

So, things aren't as easy as just building and launching an app in health as it is in other fields. But I think it's a great time to invest given that there's so much unmet need. And we have a long way to go. The Commonwealth Fund recently produced a report showing that in the United States, we spend the most per capita, but have the least bang for our buck and we're well below other comparable countries.

So, there's areas to invest in the challenge is connecting the dots and particularly enabling clinicians and patients to use these tools, have them paid for and aligning incentives. Because in healthcare systems in the U.S., which are very fragmented, most of the incentives are misaligned to do the sick care side, not the healthcare side.

Ric Edelman: That's the second time you mentioned sick care, and I think that's a really apropos comment. I've seen a couple of dichotomies here, sick care versus health care, and also health span versus lifespan. We have historically been really just trying to live without really paying a whole lot of attention to quality of life.

Now, there's a focus on quality of life, meaning health span, not simply living a long time, but living a healthy long time. And that long time is becoming longer than ever, the notion of longevity. So, talk about all of this and the explosion of the focus on longevity.

Daniel Kraft:  Well, I'm here in Silicon Valley. A lot of folks here want to live forever, which is a very long time. I like to think more about healthspan, not just the quality of life, but the many years that you could have where you don't have significant morbidity and pain and suffering.

No one wants to be 120 and feel 120. We want to make 100 the new 50 or 40. And so I think there's a lot of opportunity to not take magic bullets or gene therapy, but to do the things that, particularly earlier in life, that will extend your healthy healthspan.

And that has big implications because, with all your listeners and your focus, health is wealth. It doesn't matter if you have $10 billion if you don't have the ability to maybe enjoy it or leverage it in right ways. So, I think there's more and more focus on healthspan while at the same time that science and the technology is starting to creep up or we might see in the next decade the ability to maybe stop and even reverse aging.

I've been very involved with XPRIZE for many years as have you. We just launched a $101 million healthspan XPRIZE to incentivize teams to stop and reverse aging in key systems, muscle, cardiovascular, and neurologic and immune. So, the challenge is, how do you measure aging? It's not just your wrinkles or your age, your number or your kidney function. There are still challenges measuring, but huge opportunities to move the needle there on that realm.

On the sick care versus healthcare, you're in the financial world. It's all about incentives. Most of the incentives are for the hospital CEO to keep their beds full and do more bypasses and more surgeries. For the pharma company to sell more drugs that you need to take forever. Not to necessarily do the one time cure, which might be happening with some still expensive gene therapies. Or to do the things that optimize your healthspan by paying for prevention and screening and optimizing your mental health when you're younger and healthier. So, lots of moving parts here, but I think the next generations will really benefit from this convergence of technology and the ability to live longer, healthier lives, which has lots of implications for how you save for retirement, when you retire and beyond.

Ric Edelman: So, give us your future state, what do you see as a reasonable or I'll call average expectation for life expectancy? Right now, it's in the 80s. Some are arguing it'll be higher than that. What do you see in the future once these tech opportunities are fulfilled, how long are humans going to live?

Daniel Kraft: Well, I trained in both internal medicine and pediatrics, and I've got pretty young kids. Hopefully, they'll make it to 100 plus. Some of it is what you really do early in life. Those first three to five years are really important. What kind of food you give, what kind of environment, social stressors, etc.

Ric Edelman: Meaning after age three, it's too late for us?

Daniel Kraft: It's not too late, but for example, if you give your kids white rice cereal at six months when they're starting to eat solid foods instead of the whole grain, the whole grain kids end up with a much better microbiome and epigenetics, and that changes the risk for diabetes and obesity dramatically.

So, things like smarter and better school lunches, for example. So, there's these meta public health things that really are the most important. Vaccines, health education. We've had this infodemic as well after the pandemic of people sort of becoming anti-science. We're going to see the advent of new, speaking of public health vaccines, not just for COVID and infectious diseases, but the development of new vaccines against Alzheimer's and cancer, some of which might be very tuned to you and what your genetic risk factors are.

The future state will be, and it's already basically here, where every kid will be sequenced even before they're born. And as a pediatrician, you'll know what their risk profiles are, and you can sort of optimize their prevention and healthspan by doing smarter screenings and different meals and learning what's going to be good for that individual.

And that can be at any age. All of us now can be sequenced for about $100. It's going to come down to $10 in the next decade? So, each of us, and with the help of our AI health coach and agent and our clinicians, will be able to look at your metadata and kind of build that digital twin and use that to highly tune your proactive prevention. What kind of workouts you do, optimizing your meals when that's relevant. Doing those smart things, social connection, having a sense of purpose, walking more, not high-tech stuff, the social determinants.

But also, figure out when you need to be screened and how you need to be screened. Sometimes it might be the 10-minute full body MRI you get at your corner pharmacy. It's going to be the ability now that smart coach, like that GPT 10, right? That understands what you did last summer, and that you stayed up too late last night, and coaches you in the way that you respond to gamifying some elements of health. And then big picture, hopefully we'll all become sort of data donors and we'll build that kind of Google Maps or Waze for health where we're all sort of sharing in data and information that can each make each of our health journeys much more appropriate and personalized and healthy.

Ric Edelman: So, if the three to five-year olds you're hopeful, many of them will see age 100, what about today's 60 and 70-year-olds?

Daniel Kraft: I think sometimes it comes down to the basics. There's that Blue Zones book that Dan Buettner, you know, has popularized. Some of it is making sure you have a sense of community, because we know social isolation is more dangerous than smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.

It means moving, like mobility might be the new vital sign. We know all the risks of falls, particularly in 70s, 80s, 90s. Making sure you maybe you do your Tai Chi and optimize your muscle strength. As folks get older, they have some sarcopenia, meaning muscle wasting. I just invested in a company called Immunus, which is developing an already impressive clinical trial, something that might start to reverse and improve muscles and aging and health span.

So, those are some of the basic things you could do. Obviously, watching your diet, not smoking, all those things you can avoid. The small, everyday things that can really make a difference in overall healthspan. Plus, making sure you get your screenings and avoiding the things that will get you. It might be now these full body MRI scans for those who can afford them or heart scans or now these over the counter or sometimes covered blood-based cancer screenings that can pick up things like ovarian cancer and pancreatic cancer early.

So those are a few sort of basic things you can do today. I wouldn't be running to Mexico to get your stem cell therapies. Many of those are still unproven or snake-oilish, but there's lots of basics to do to optimize your healthspan and live long enough to catch up with some of these accelerating technologies.

Ric Edelman: So there are three things you're into these days, Daniel, that are taking a lot of your time. I want to elaborate on them. The first one, you'd already begun to mention Digital.Health, which offers a variety of tech solutions. Elaborate a little bit further on that.

Daniel Kraft: Well, if you go to Digital.Health, it's a bit of a digital health formula that you can put in search for almost any medical issue and find solutions that are out there and putting your shopping cart, prescribe it to a friend or family or to go and purchase it. It might be a meditation app to help you with your mindfulness. It might be a smart drug container to keep you on top of you taking your blood pressure meds. It might be a connective blood pressure cuff for your mother who has hypertension that they can use to share data.

So, it's a place to explore. It's a free platform. I've just been sort of bootstrapping it. We're about to do a seed round on that for those folks who are interested.  And eventually we're going to add a consumer side where you can find the health journals that are appropriate for you, whether you want to start measuring your blood sugar, even if you're not a diabetic to optimize your metabolic health, or if you have a kid with let's say ADHD, you might find a video game to treat their ADHD without a drug. So, it's a bit of a discovery engine, trying to be a place to find, share and care the latest health innovations that are in the digital and tech space.

Ric Edelman: You also referenced your healthcare conference, which you've been running for years now, one of the most popular and influential in the health industry, called NextMed Health. It's coming up in just about two months in early December. Talk about NextMed Health, because this is not just for doctors to attend.

Daniel Kraft:   Not at all. So, I'm an oncologist. I'll go to the oncology meetings. Cardiologists go to cardiology meetings. There's sort of siloed conferences around pharma and digital health and devices. And I found about 10 or 12 years ago, that the most interesting things were bringing people from across those silos, converging, looking at where technology was and where it was heading and how we could leverage that super convergence to reimagine prevention, diagnostics, therapy, global health, public health.

I started one of these programs in 2013 at the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego, where we'll have NextMed Health this December 10th-13th. And it really brings us a magical crowd, right? From the Leroy Hoods of the world has started developing P4 medicine early and the early sequencing machines to folks like Paul Stamets on psychedelics.

We'll have cardiologist Eric Topol this year to folks like Rick Doblin from the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). We'll have Hugh Herr who's doing bionics and Ed Boyden at MIT doing amazing neuroscience and also looking at the heart and connection and the soul of the future of health and medicine. How do we cross collaborate. So, if you go to NextMed.Health, anyone's invited to come. It's really a place to sort of discover the future early. We had Moderna there in 2015, for example, no one knew what Moderna was, and to help shape that future. There's all the information at NextMed.Health, as well as many great talks from some of our prior faculty.

Ric Edelman: You also mentioned that you're running a new venture fund that is focused on early-stage health tech. I mean, yeah, you can invest in Amazon and Google and Microsoft if you want, but this venture fund is targeting young companies that have not yet been financially successful. They're new. They're developing something cool. You call it Continuum Health Ventures. Talk about how your new venture fund operates.

Daniel Kraft:   Well, sort of our incentive was my partner and I, Ricky Mehra, are very super connected and see a lot of amazing companies that have the ability to help them nurture and succeed as well as to amplify them in different ways.

So, we started this two years ago, made now eight or nine investments. And it's really exciting to see what's coming up, particularly these companies leveraging AI machine learning and wearables and other data. We're thinking completely out of the box. We invested in a company called DeepWell Digital Therapeutics doing video games for mental health. So, medicinal media that just got FDA cleared to bring mental health to scale for all those folks, kids and adults playing video games. Or folks who are leveraging new ways to do precision metabolic health. You can't just take the same GLP-1 medication.  Or new ways to think about funding the next generation of humanoid robotics, which are going to play a role in your pharmacy and home care.

So, it's an exciting age. We're doing our second close this month, if anyone wants to join us. But it's a really interesting time now to sort of catalyze this next generation of health through this convergence of smart entrepreneurs, technology, and these big unmet needs that we need to solve for.

Ric Edelman: That's Daniel Kraft, founder and chair of NextMed.Health and Digital.Health. You can reach Daniel at Daniel@NextMed.Health. The link is in your show notes. Daniel, always a lot of fun to talk with you. You make the future sound very bright and exciting. We're all looking forward to getting there. Thanks so much for joining us again.

Daniel Kraft: Thanks Ric. And again, the future is coming faster than we think. And it's our opportunity, anyone listening, not wait for that future to arrive, but to do something about it proactively, leveraging the tools that are here and what's coming next, so thanks.

Ric Edelman: On Monday, our next topic, Healthcare, along with Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act.

And if you missed our webinar earlier this week on yield staking, lending and custody for crypto going beyond the Ethereum ETFs, you can watch the webinar for free as a replay. The link to it's in the show notes.

If you like what you're hearing, be sure to follow and subscribe to the show, wherever you get your podcasts, Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and remember leave a review on Apple podcasts. I read them all. Never miss an episode of The Truth About Your Future. Follow and subscribe on your favorite podcast app.

We're taking Monday off in celebration of Columbus Day. See you Tuesday. Have a great weekend.

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Links from today’s show: 

Click here for Ric's worksheet to help you evaluate the candidates

10/7 Monday Election Podcast-The 34 Election Issues and Ric’s worksheet for you: https://www.thetayf.com/blogs/this-weeks-stories/the-2024-election-the-tool-i-ve-created-to-help-me-decide-who-gets-my-vote

10/8 Tuesday Election Podcast-The Economy, Stupid!: https://www.thetayf.com/blogs/this-weeks-stories/ric-chooses-between-harris-and-trump-on-the-big-topic-the-economy-stupid

10/9 Wednesday Election Podcast-Housing and Homeownership: https://www.thetayf.com/blogs/this-weeks-stories/10-9-24-housing-and-homeownership-among-the-34-key-issues-of-election-2024

10/10 Thursday Election Podcast-Education: https://www.thetayf.com/blogs/this-weeks-stories/both-harris-and-trump-need-an-education-on-education

Kamala Harris Official Campaign Website Policy Page: https://www.kamalaharris.com/issues/

Donald Trump Official Campaign Website Policy Page: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform

Digital.Health: https://digital.health/

NextMed Health: Re-imagining the Future of Health and Medicine:   https://www.nextmed.health/

NextMed Health Conference December 10^th-13^th in San Diego: https://www.nextmed.health/

10/9 Webinar Replay- Crypto for RIAs: Yield, Staking, Lending and Custody. What’s beyond the ETFs? https://dacfp.com/events/crypto-for-rias-yield-staking-lending-and-custody-whats-beyond-the-etfs/

10/23 Webinar - How to Factor Longevity into Your Financial Planning: https://www.thetayf.com/pages/october-2024-webinar-how-to-factor-longevity-into-your-financial-planning

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