When You Can't Go See the Doctor

trillion dollar bill last Friday. White House officials have compiled requests from government agencies totaling roughly six hundred billion dollars, according to people familiar with the matter. The proposals include more state aid, as well as financial assistance for mortgage markets and travel industries. Trump said in a tweet on Tuesday that timing is good for a massive infrastructure bill

because interest rates are close to zero. Nancy Pelosi had said last week infrastructure should be part of the next stimulus bill. The economy is going to be hit even harder by this outbreak than expected, says Goldman Sachs. The firm came out with a report today saying GDP will shrink by over a third in the second quarter they had previously estimated and already staggering twent contraction. Goldman said unemployment would hit fift percent by the middle of the year.

The good news. They also think the economy will come back faster than expected in the third quarter, predicting growth of Anthony Fauci, the US government's top infectious disease x said on CNN that he's starting to see glimmers that social distancing might be slowing the spread of the pathogen, but he warned that the situation is still very dangerous. You're starting to see that the daily increases are not in that steep incline. They're starting to be able to

possibly flatten out. I mean again, you you look at it carefully, hope it's going in the right direction. But that's what we really are trying to attain. Despite that careful optimism, the numbers still look bad, both in the US and around the world. In Europe, most places are still seeing alarming numbers of cases and deaths. Spain suffered its deadliest day of the pandemic, and European governments doubled down on efforts to maintain rigid lockdowns amid tentative signs

that the infection rate was slowing. Italy and the Netherlands are discussing prolonging measures to limit personal contact, and German officials warned that it's too soon to ease restrictions because things could still get worse. And now today's main story the doctors we can't see around the country and the world. More and more people are locked in their homes, but people still need to see the doctor. That has made telehealth companies businesses that let doctors treat patients remotely, the

new stars of the COVID nineteen economy. And I'm not just talking about companies that offer an alternative to an urgent care clinic if you've got the flu. Companies that until now have mainly offered prescriptions for birth control or hair loss pills are pivoting to provide services related to the pandemic. Telehealth has been trying to become a mainstream alternative to brick and mortar doctor's offices for years. Bloomberg Health reporter Kristen V. Brown words that these companies hope

this moment will be their chance. About two weeks ago, an email that struck me as really kind of funny landed in my inbox. Ne Rex, the San Francisco startup best known for selling birth control online, was launching their own coronavirus test. Ne Rex is one of a bunch of Silicon Valley funded healthcare startups that promised really fast, really cheap healthcare online. You basically text with a doctor and then a few days later your prescription shows up.

Suffice it to say, addressing a global pandemic seemed like kind of a big leap from the pill. But with so many people encouraged to stay home, it seems like telehealth is finally poised to have its moment everybody wants in. Charles Jones is chairman and CEO of MPD Live. He says business has nearly doubled in re and weeks. People who were going to see their physician for regular medical needs are now coming to us. People who want to the emergency room are now coming to us. People who

want to urgent care are now coming to us. It's not the virus itself, the quantities that we're seeing increases. It's people who I would judge want to avoid the contagion environments for for the virus. Telehealth is a young field that originally caught on is a way to bring healthcare to remote areas, but it's increasingly viewed as a

way to also relieve pressure on the American healthcare system. Now, with the coronavirus straining every part of that system, companies like Ners think this might be telehealth moment to prove its worth. The argument for telehealth is that it allows people who say just have the flu, to not crowd urgent care centers and potentially get other people sick. It also lets doctors easily see hundreds of patients in a week.

In many cases, doctors can figure out what's wrong and write a prescription without you ever having to leave your couch. In some cases, telehealth companies have actually even been overwhelmed by the sergeant business. Empty Live has been around for more than a decade, providing things like urgent care services online. A lot of companies, including Bloomberg, offer it as part of their health care plans. Charles says the coronavirus is going to have a long term impact that makes telehealth

popular even after all of this is over. It isn't to say that medicine can't be what it used to be. It's to say medicine needs to be something different. It's just not going to be capable of handling all the demand. We also know that servicing health needs early tends to curtail the total cost of delivery and and speeds a patient to health sooner. So this is this is a perfect storm that will have consequences, but they might actually be really good for the industry. It's patients and for

that matter, it's providers. Charles thinks it could even result in permanent changes to regulations. Already, the Trump administration has relaxed certain ones on an emergency basis to make virtual care more accessible, like expanding Medicare coverage. Some states have also made it easier for doctors to get licensed in order to allow them to see patients remotely. These kinds of regulatory hurdles have definitely been one thing standing in

the way of industry growth. Telehealth is governed by a thicket of regulations. They're different in every state and often not very clear. It seemed like suddenly government and industry were on the same page. With so much more demand pouring in. Ner X wasn't the only venture backed company to think there might be a good opportunity here. Hymns, which is in the generic Viagra game, launched a primary care service to help relieve pressure on urgent care centers

overwhelmed by COVID nineteen. One of its competitors, Roman launched an online symptom assessment tool, and everly Well, a company most well known for its food sensitivity tests, also announced plans for coronavirus tests. Chris Hall, a clinical advisor to direx, says the company's business model made it easy to meet the growing demand for test kits. I think as the initial outcry about the lack of testing became more and more pronounced, we realized that we had a solution for

folks who were increasingly being asked to stay in their homes. So, just prior to the time when the shelter in place announcements in major cities uh AND and other public health announcements about the importance of social distancing, that's when we realize, Hey, if patients are going to be stuck at home, then why not facilitate getting them a test hit right where they are, which is at home. But it turns out that regulators still might not move quite as fast as

Silicon Valley. One day after Nerk's launched its test, they were forced to pull it off the market. Regulators said they were concerned about how effective the tests were. They said that at home consumer test kits didn't get the same emergency exemptions that other ones do. To be honest, I wasn't all that surprised by this. Even as regulators have slowly embraced the idea that patients can receive certain kinds of medical treatment at home, startups like Nerk's have

attracted some criticism. Some in the medical community think they're exploiting regular tory gray areas and making it perhaps too easy for customers to get their hands on prescriptions. Ner X already offers an at home HIV test, but with the home coronavirus test, it does seem like there could

be a lot of things to potentially go wrong. With the disease already spreading at an alarming rate, a false negative test could have devastating consequences, But it seems likely that the FDA will approve and at home coronavirus tests and potentially soon. In the US, there is a huge shortage of tests and a need for people who aren't very sick to seek treatment at home. Chris Hall says

that's a gap that telehealth was designed to fill. So the test will tell you something about the likelihood of your actually being infected with COVID nineteen, but much more is needed after that, And what our platform does is allows us to support people around things like testing and around things like provision of medications. So what's quite unique about our platform is that it's not a one off

consultation with a medical provider. So they might think of a question that they have at three in the morning, they can put it in the platform and get an answer. Chris says that after all of this is over, there could be a real shift in how patients seek medical care. A big part is also just that old habits die hard. When you get sick, your first instinct isn't usually to

try out some cool new website you read about. With the coronavirus, though we're now all forced to consider ways we can stay at home, we already are having dramatically increased access to our other service lines. Um so we're seeing upticks in the numbers of people who are actually seeking our birth control services and other services. I think as this COVID nineteen pandemic changes so many things fundamentally about all of our lives. It's also going to change

the way people experience access to healthcare. So we want to have the opportunity to demonstrate to people that they can do so much of this from home, um that they can access that test from home, that they can have these ongoing connections with clinicians to get their questions answered no matter what they are um from home, and we think that's going to happen. Nor X says is working hard to bring its tests back on the market.

And that's it for the Prognosis Daily Edition. For more on the coronavirus crisis from a hundred and twenty bureaus around the world, visit Bloomberg dot com slash coronavirus. If you appreciate the podcast, please take a moment to rate us and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify to help more listeners find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily Edition is hosted by me Laura Carlson. The show is produced by me Tophor Forheaz, Jordan Gaspore, and

Magnus Henriksen. Reporting by Kristin V. Brown. Original music by Leo Sidrin Our Editors are Francesco Levi and Rick Shine. Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening.