Hi everyone. What follows is a hallway style discussion featuring a six and

co-founder and author of the now nearly decade-old thesis of software eating the

world, Mark Andresen, in conversation with a6 and Z Biogeneral partner Vijay Ponte, all about the topic of

Baumel's cost disease in health care.

If software is eating the world and more specifically bringing costs down and increasing productivity

through entire industries, why have some industries like health care

been so resistant and what could the future look like once technology really

gets in? This episode originally ran on our show

BioEats World, but we're sharing it here in the new year as it's very relevant for

anyone interested in, well, the future of software eating the world.

Hi, I'm Lauren, and I'm Hannah, and this is our show BioEats World, where we talk about all the

ways our ability to engineer biology and re-engineer health care are transforming our future.

So Hannah, this episode is called the cost disease in health care.

What disease are we talking about?

It's actually a reference to what's called Bamall's cost disease or the Bowmall effect, which is a phenomenon first described by an economist named William Bowmall in the 1960s. In short, the Bowmall effect is when there's a rise in wages and jobs and industries that then haven't had the same rise in productivity.

Okay, but what does that really mean and what does it have to do with health care?

That's exactly what this episode is about.

A16Z founder and internet pioneer Mark Andresen and general partner, Vijay Pandey,

discuss the economic forces that make some things like health care, education, and housing

get more and more expensive, but things like socks, shoes, and electronics all get cheaper and

cheaper. In this wide-ranging conversation about how society and different industries work

and what that means for consumers,

...