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How Truemed Is Incentivizing Americans to Invest in Prevention
10 segments available
a16z general partner Erik Torenberg speaks with Justin Mares, founder and CEO of Truemed. They discuss why American health outcomes are so poor compared to the rest of the developed world, how crop subsidies created a food system that "systematically outputs unhealthy people," and what it would take to treat the chronic disease crisis as a national security issue. Mares explains how Truemed allows people to spend tax-free HSA and FSA dollars on lifestyle interventions like gym memberships, sleep aids, and healthier food—and why he believes this could redirect hundreds of billions of dollars toward prevention. They also explore the case for psychedelics as mental health therapy and why peptides could disrupt the pharmaceutical industry. Timestamps: 00:00 — Introduction 0:44 — The Environment That Makes Us Sick 04:19 — What Went Wrong in the 1970s 6:10 — The Subsidy Problem 8:49 — Universal Ozempic Won't Save Us 12:21 — Building Truemed 15:59 — The Zoo Animal Theory of Human Health 18:33 — The Chronic Disease Crisis as National Security 27:52 — Psychedelics as Mental Health Therapy 35:49 — Why Peptides Will Disrupt Pharma Resources: Follow Justin Mares on X: https://x.com/jwmares Follow Truemed on X: https://x.com/truemed Stay Updated: If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, and share with your friends! Find a16z on X: https://twitter.com/a16z Find a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16z Listen to the a16z Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5bC65RDvs3oxnLyqqvkUYX Listen to the a16z Podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a16z-podcast/id842818711 Follow our host: https://x.com/eriktorenberg Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see http://a16z.com/disclosures.
Segments Timeline
Introduction
"When you look at our food system today, majority of what people are eating is ultrarocessed crap. The average child spends less time outside than like a maximum security prison where people are spendi..."
The Environment That Makes Us Sick
"years to uncover and make a dent in solving our food crisis, our health crisis, our disease crisis. Why don't you trace your journey a little bit into how you became obsessed with this? Um, and then w..."
What Went Wrong in the 1970s
"in the 1970s. Uh you know basically I think my my view is that that is around the time when you started to see childhood obesity tick up. You started to see uh obesity, heart disease, things like this..."
The Subsidy Problem
"that could uh make a dent in in reversing some of these trends as relates to the to the food system? >> Yeah, from a food system standpoint, I think the biggest single lever that we could pull, which ..."
Universal Ozempic Won't Save Us
">> Yeah. Well, so I think there's two things. One, I think that GLP1s are potentially an incredibly interesting technology. Like I I think that we are in the midst of the the worst chronic disease cri..."
Building Truemed
">> Yeah. So let's get to True Med first. first trace the idea maze a little bit in terms of you know you you've been obsessed with with this this problem this kind of meta problem this series of probl..."
The Zoo Animal Theory of Human Health
"the root cause of a lot of issues is this mismatch between our genes and our environment. Why don't you flesh that out a little bit more? >> Yeah. So if you look like think of a an animal in the zoo l..."
The Chronic Disease Crisis as National Security
"should take this health crisis as serious as we take sort of our you know national security crisis like you know we as a country have something of a NRA for health or or something of a you know collec..."
Psychedelics as Mental Health Therapy
"this discourse at all? Does that move outcomes for is that kind of not really not really? I think that if you just look at the data, psychedelics are an incredibly powerful intervention. Like ketamine..."
Why Peptides Will Disrupt Pharma
"any predictions as it relates to Oh man, I think peptides are going to be so disruptive to our current healthare system. You know, I think that if you look at peptides, uh there needs to be way more r..."