Vera Acquires Castlight | Covid Job Growth | $45M For Medicaid Startup

Plus: Food shortages and other challenges in China’s big lockdown

Are we in a healthtech bubble? As SoftBank and Tiger Global continue to stoke stratospheric valuations, let us consider the fate of Castlight Health as a warning of what happens when a company IPOs at 107 times its $13 million revenue. On its first day of trading in 2014,  the healthcare navigation platform reached nearly $40 a share and a market cap of $1.4 billion only to very quickly crash and burn, reaching a low of $0.65 in 2020 as it struggled to scale. Today primary care company Vera Whole Health announced it would take Castlight private in a deal valuing the company at $370 million, which is around 2.6 times its expected 2021 revenue of $140 million. 

So who’s the big winner here? Ryan Russell and Kevin O'Leary, the duo behind Health Tech Nerds, say it’s Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, Vera's majority equity shareholder. “In a market where employers are having a hard time distinguishing various digital health solutions and every vendor is competing to be the employer’s trusted partner, combining Vera and Castlight creates a broader solution to sell to employers,” say Russell and O'Leary. “It’s not hard to imagine CDR rolling-up additional assets into this entity at the right price” with the possibility of ultimately trying to become a health plan for employers, they add. Other investors include Anthem and Morgan Health, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co’s second attempt to rein in healthcare costs after Haven imploded. 

With Waymark, cofounders Rajaie Batniji and Sanjay Basu are banking that a combination of software and community-based care can help revolutionize the $600 billion Medicaid market and improve patients’ health. Key to this vision is training and hiring community health workers, a crucial yet largely uncompensated liaison connecting people to health services, especially in underserved neighborhoods. There are dozens of studies that have shown how certain interventions – peer support programs, texting to increase engagement, prenatal home visits, online specialty consultations, telepsychiatry visits – can help improve health outcomes among Medicaid patients, but there remains a major gap translating grant-funded research into practice due to time, money and an industry wide obsession with pilots.

Noteworthy

HCA Healthcare’s purchase of MD Now Urgent Care’s network of outpatient centers intensifies the hot market for doctor-staffed primary care.

The “No Surprises” Act took effect on January 1. Here’s what it means for your medical bills. 

Medicines Company CEO Clive Meanwell hoped the company’s drug could treat cholesterol for the masses with a low price tag. Then the company was acquired by Novartis. 

Here’s how Next Billion Dollar Startup Viz.Ai helps hospitals treat stroke patients earlier. 

Coronavirus Updates

Today, payroll processor ADP said that U.S. employers posted the strongest job growth seen in seven months. That’s encouraging news for an economy that’s been hammered by the Covid-19 pandemic for nearly two years now. Employment increased by 807,000 jobs from November to December, a large increase over November’s 505,000 new jobs. But experts are cautioning against too much optimism. Those job numbers represent a period that ended about a week before the latest surge in cases caused by the omicron variant. 

That surge, Moody’s Analytics Mark Zandi said in a research note published over the weekend, will likely cause increased economic risks. He cited decreased restaurant bookings and widespread flight cancellations as a cause for concern. "The pandemic continues to call the shots for the economy," Zandi says. 

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In other coronavirus news:

Utah-based startup Entrata, valued in 2021 at more than $1 billion, has abruptly cut ties with its cofounder and former CEO Dave Bateman after he sent an email to multiple tech CEOs and public officials in which he shared an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory about Covid vaccines.

With both the flu and Covid-19 circulating at high rates right now, it’s inevitable that some people will get both diseases at once. 

The federal government does not intend to change its definition of “fully vaccinated” to include booster shots, health officials said Wednesday, though some schools and businesses are requiring the additional shots anyway.

Norwegian Cruise Line canceled sailings on eight cruise ships, including trips as late as April, as the rapid spread of the omicron coronavirus variant brings a slew of outbreaks and new troubles for cruise travel.

The World Health Organization urged the public not to worry prematurely about the IHU variant, also known as B.1.640.2, a highly mutated strain of the coronavirus first identified in France.

Unvaccinated Americans’ concern about the new omicron variant plunged at the end of December despite rising Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations that leave them most at risk, according to a Morning Consult poll. 

Across Forbes

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What Else We Are Reading

• Robert Califf is a fervent believer in data. At the FDA, will that be enough? (Stat)

• Elizabeth Holmes verdict: researchers share lessons learned for science (Nature)

• Omicron cases are exploding. Scientists still don’t know how bad the wave will be (Science)