The CEO of General Catalyst thinks that health insurance needs to cover more.
Hemant Taneja, CEO and managing director of the global venture capitalist firm, told the “TPBN” podcast on Friday that he thinks investments in personal health and longevity should be reimbursable and covered by insurance.
“There’s a ton more that needs to be done so that the system moves toward incentives that keep us healthy and out of the hospital, versus a high-performance but really expensive, unaffordable care if we go into the hospital,” Taneja told show host John Coogan and Jordi Hays.
“There’s no model that’ll show what’s the ROI on this where insurance companies pay for it,” Taneja added of longevity care. “The insurers don’t know if they make an investment in longevity, they’re going to be able to capture the value on the other side.”
General Catalyst has made many moves in the healthcare space. In 2017, the VC cofounded healthcare startup Commure and has raised over $1 billion since then. The startup has cycled through four different CEOs as of 2024. In October, General Catalyst, through its Health Assurance Transformation business, closed a deal to acquire the Summa Health system for $485 million, which will convert the Ohio-based nonprofit hospital system into a for-profit entity.
At the moment, only some preventative care measures are covered by health insurance, mostly limited to the screening of diseases like cancer and HIV. Supplement medications or therapies that target aging cells are not included in health insurance plans.
Longevity has become one of Silicon Valley’s most alluring obsessions. America’s tech elite are already treating death as a problem that could be solved with enough money, data, and willpower.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman founded Retro Biosciences, which aims to extend human life by a decade, while Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have funneled billions into Calico Labs and Verily Life Sciences, which seek pharmaceutical and genetic solutions to aging and diseases. Other like Bryan Johnson are subjecting themselves to biohacking experiments with extreme regimens of supplements, fitness training, and data tracking.
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