HealthTech Tea ☕ | June 25, 2025
Rebirth, Rebellion & Injectables: The Wild Side of HealthTech
This week’s roundup is a full buffet of chaos. Founders are buying their startups back from Big Retail. PrEP is going twice-a-year, but only if payers feel generous. GLP-1 deals are imploding. DPC startups are getting hitched. Meanwhile, insurers are promising to fix prior auth (lol), AI is now calling your insurance company for you, and measles is back like it never left. Tech, turmoil, and a side of hold music.
Let’s get into it.
🧠 Current Health rebought by founder, going rogue again
Best Buy paid $400M for Current Health in 2021 in a move that screamed "we want a piece of the at-home care pie." Now, founder Chris McGhee has bought it back, aiming to bring the startup back to its scrappy roots in hospital-at-home and oncology.
🍵 Sometimes the acquisition is just a very expensive sabbatical. Founder energy: reactivated.
📎 ModernHealthcare
🧠 FDA approves Yeztugo, twice-yearly PrEP that blocks 99.9% of HIV
Gilead’s Yeztugo (lenacapavir) just got the green light as the first twice-a-year injectable PrEP and early results are jaw-dropping. In trials, ZERO new infections were recorded among young women in South Africa and Uganda, and 99.9% prevention in a broader group. But at $28K per year, the big question is whether payers will swallow that price tag.
🍵 Feels like we’re one needle away from ending HIV transmission and one denial letter away from blowing it.
📎 FDA Announcement
🧠 Rhode Island eliminates prior auth for PCPs, commercial plans only
Rhode Island lawmakers just passed a pilot that bans prior auth for PCP-ordered services (not meds) on commercial plans. Meanwhile, Medicaid reforms stalled, but the state is boosting Medicaid primary care pay by 25 percent and pressuring insurers to raise rates.
🍵 The Ocean State just became the no-wait zone for commercial patients at least. Medicaid, as usual, gets the short straw.
📎 Providence Journal
🧠 Major insurers pledge to smooth prior auth headaches
UnitedHealth, Elevance, Cigna, Aetna, and Blue Cross NC just signed a joint commitment to streamline prior authorization and cut red tape. Their “Better Way to Health” plan includes faster approvals, AI-enabled decisions, and a reduction in volume.
🍵 The same crowd that made you fax your MRI request just promised to fix the system. Trust level: somewhere between used car dealer and crypto DAO.
📎 Fierce Healthcare
🧠 Superdial raises $15M to replace your insurance call hold music with AI
Superdial, a voice AI startup, just raised $15M to automate insurance-related calls. The platform dials into payer hotlines, navigates menus, holds, and captures answers with a human-style voice agent. Gradient Ventures led the round.
🍵 Finally, a robot that listens to hold music so we don’t have to. Call center disruption never sounded so sweet.
📎 Fierce Healthcare
🧠 Direct Primary Care M&A: Nice merges with Decent
DPC darling Nice (think tech-enabled concierge vibes) is merging with Decent (the startup insurer for small businesses). The play? Pair a clinical care layer with a novel self-funded insurance platform, priced at $30–$36 PEPM. The two have been flirting with this model shift for a while, and now it’s official.
🍵 This is DPC’s version of a power couple elopement. No chapel, just capitated contracts.
📎 Decent Blog
🧠 Novo Nordisk cuts ties with Hims & Hers over copycat GLP‑1s
Novo Nordisk just slammed the brakes on its deal with Hims & Hers, accusing the telehealth giant of selling compounded Wegovy knockoffs under shady “personalization” claims. Stock tanked 28%. Meanwhile, the GLP-1 hype train rolls on, now with a little legal whiplash.
🍵 If you come for Big Pharma’s bag with a telehealth side hustle and cute branding, expect legal fire and brimstone in return.
📎 CNBC
🧠 Measles is back in North Carolina
In a plot twist from the 1800s, North Carolina confirmed its first measles case of the year in a child who had traveled abroad. Just a casual reminder that preventable outbreaks are still a thing.
🍵 It’s giving 1912 wagon trail vibes in the year of generative AI. Vaccinate your kids before your family trip to Paris, please.
📎 NC DHHS
Final Sip:
Founders are reclaiming startups, insurers are suddenly talking about prior auth reform, GLP-1 giants are canceling partnerships, and HIV prevention might have just entered its golden era. But while we race ahead with biotech breakthroughs and hospital-at-home dreams, a measles outbreak and fax-based prior auth remind us this system still drags its feet. Healthtech is only as powerful as the plumbing underneath it.
Stay sharp, stay vaccinated, and never trust a press release without receipts.