chase ink business unlimited card from chase for business. car accident berg wins. i'm not sure i can afford a lawawyer. bg wins. what if the insurance company offers this? but my medical bills are this. berg wins. i need somebody to deal with the insurance company. berg wins. i'm william berg. when the insurance company tries to pay you less, we fight to win you more. and with our no fee guarantee, if you don't win, you pay nothing. my wife and i called. my cousin called. my mom called. all right, i'm ready to call. are you? call one 800 400. berg. harlem has everything. but i couldn't find pilates anywhere. so i started my own studio. and with the right help, i can make this place i love even better. earn up to 5% cash back on business essentials with the chase ink business cash card from chase for business. nbc bay area's microclimate weather certified most accurate this week a closer look at the success of blue sky amid growing dissatisfaction with elon musk's version of twitter. how ai can

help you deal with health insurance companies, and our annual chat with christmas tree maker mac harmon. that's this week on press here. good morning everyone. i'm scott mcgrew. two of my favorite new phrases in the news are first buddy, a nickname for elon musk. now that he's donald trump's closest adviser, and exodus, meaning the sudden abandonment of musk's social media platform x. those two are probably related. also related is the sudden rise in the popularity of blue sky. if you've been hearing something about blue sky lately but don't know what it is, it is a twitter clone gaining millions of users per week. tech analyst ed citron was on blue sky before it was cool. he's already made like 10,000 posts, and i asked ed to give us a primer on blue sky first. ed, i think people who

are familiar with the old twitter will will say what they're seeing on the screen looks exactly like it. yes. and the app protocol, which blue sky is based on, is something related to jack dorsey. there was a lot of former twitter people there. and fundamentally, these people understand how a normal social network should work. so it very has the good vibes of 2013 through 2019. twitter. do you still post on what is now x, what used to be twitter? i do, and i am a malcontent that loved that place, but even i am waning on it. the engagement is a ton. it's tons of bots or just people i never want to speak to in my life. and the experience is just horrible. it feels broken. it feels like being in a dying mall, but it's full of people in those shops. you know, somebody did i read in an article said that, you know, i have fewer followers on blue sky, much more on x twitter, but i get much more interaction on blue sky. it seems like those people that are

following me on blue sky are actually real, and i think that twitter has had a bleed problem for years, that no one's really been able to quantify. where i have 90 odd thousand on twitter, but even as it grew, i wasn't getting that much engagement with blue sky. when i had five, i had like 60 something thousand. now, even when i had 5000 people, it was more lively because the anti bot stuff is stronger, but also people are more engaged. people want to be there. twitter, like many social networks and i think blue sky will become this one day as well, is a place they feel they have to be. but blue sky feels more fun, at least for now. speaking of more people joining, you know everyone is describing blue sky right now is the kinder, gentler social network. but isn't it reasonable to think that when the trolls figure out nobody's listening to them over on x, that all the bad guys will come over to blue sky? so nicer? i don't know about that. people have some real arguments on there. jamelle bouie of the new york times, you should just see his mentions. they're a minefield and they have been for

months. that being said, blue sky has a feature that i think every social network needs, which is the hell block. if you block someoneyou remove them from existence. they don't see you. you stop existing to them. you cannot see them on there. but also you can disconnect quotes. so if you quote someone and if someone quotes you even and they start going off, you can remove their ability to actually quote you. it's to use the old terminology. they can't retweet you exactly, but even better is common thing on twitter especially would be like the quote dogpile. you quote someone and say, look at this idiot and all of your followers attack them with blue sky. you can click a button and it removes that specific quote. it doesn't even block the person, it just removes that quote so that they can't interact with it anymore. their followers can't see it, and there's no workaround either. it's not like they can look at it in a web browser. there are lots of little intentional features within this social network that do things like this to cut trolls down, but what it is very funny is the right wing people

are popping up and they're trying to like, i want to start an anti-trans thing. people just block them immediately. they just disappear. it's lovely to see x. i keep wanting to call it twitter, but i really should be never changing, never calling it i know, i know is actually trying to dilute the block, and the theory is that elon musk just really likes it when you see his messages. and that's one way of getting through to other people. yes. now, if you block someone on twitter, you can still see all their posts. they can see all your posts, they just can't interact with you. it's just it's a classic musk move where you're like, you're doing this because people blocked you and you didn't really think of the ramifications. and also all the people in your ear are these kind of fashy types who are like, well, now i can't harass someone. what features can this social network give me to allow me to harass more? it's quite weird watching the product strategy of blue sky and twitter go in those directions, and it sucks. and you can kind of even

when the twitter files came out, the whole supposed controversy that came out via matt taibbi being fed it, you could even see the original twitter moderation side. they were extremely hesitant to do stuff like this. they didn't want to make these unilateral changes for fear that, i don't know, it created bad effects, which it has. and now x feels awful what about threads? is th going to be a competitor? so there was a report in techcrunch this morning where threads daily active users and blue sky daily active users, despite being much smaller, are actually beginning to converge. and the thing is with threads is it's basically a network of instagram comments, for better or for worse. and also the algorithm is deranged. it's just an insane algorithm. to paraphrase a friend of mine, felix, it was. you see, three of the most heart rending things people's families dying. someons linked to an article, 20 pictures of a dog, and then 15 pieces of eye slop. just that's the staccato, because i

don't think that meta can make social networks. i don't think they know how. and threads is the exact kind of lazy, hodgepodge nonsense that adam mosseri, who turned facebook's news feed and instagram into hellscapes themselves. that's the guy in charge, and he doesn't know what he's doing. none of them do mayor thao have had that same feeling of threads. i'm not a big instagram user, and it felt very, very instagram to me and i so the tech press, you know, i think had fun documenting the various ways that elon musk had been screwing up x or twitter. and then you remember he actually famously told advertisers not to advertise. in the end, though, this may have been a good investment because it got him into the white house. yeah, but my theory with that is that's not going to last forever. there are already stories coming out of elon musk hanging around trump constantly and trump getting a little annoyed with it. he he said trump said to gop donors that he won't go home.

and it kind of reminds me of the latter. arrested development series with job with getaway. he's just this weird hanger on. this man is so rich he could do anything. but he's like, no, i must, i must hang around the white, the mar-a-lago. i must sit in this kind of hallway of leathery gargoyle people and talk racist things. at some point he's going to get rejected. anything. it is that there is one star of the show, and my favorite theory is that he will eventually push elon out and elon will split the gop the republican vote. i would love that. i do, however, think it's inevitable that elon is kicicked to the curb just because he's very annoying. he's just an annoying guy. he's a joyless oaf with so much money. nothing really to add, and just seems angry at the world and trying to pretend he's happy. well, to be fair, we have. we have invited elon on many times and elon, this is your next opportunity. come on elon. and that will be a

conversation for another time. i'll tune back in or we'll connect. when elon musk finds himself on over on the sidewalk at pennsylvania avenue. and i appreciate you being with us this morning. editor zittrain has a column in business insider. he has an email newsletter. that's very, very good. i recommend it. a podcast and an upcoming book. we'll be back in just a moment. selena in a smart and final, she is like a well-oiled machine. she grabs everything in one fell swoop. you see that? that is a pro move. ice cream. last smart and final. where else? hi, i'm scott mcgilvray. i use bath fitter in my investment properties because i know it will be worth every penny and then some. after 40 years and over 2 million baths, they're accountable for everything from design to manufacturing to installation, all backed by a lifetime

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press here. there's been a lot of talk lately about ai in medicine, and some of it hasn't been very good. senate democrats accused united health care of using ai to find patients they can deny health care to, and openai scribe software has been accused of simply making things up. ankit jain is kind enough to join us this morning to defend ai use, and at least one use case of hisompany. ankit is the ceo of infinitus systems. it uses ai to automate health care phone calls. latest valuation around $600 million. well, good morning to you. let me start with this. and that is i you know, i get medical phone calls from kaiser. they're seem to be automated. but what you're doing is way more complex, right? well scott, thanks for having me. and absolutely, there's so many phone calls that happen in healthca every single year. the last estimate i heard was something over 10 billion phone calls that happen in the us alone, on an annual basis to

keep our healthcare chains moving. so what are you specifically doing? what are your phone calls trying to accomplish? well, we started infinitus in 2019 to solve the labor shortage problem that's there in healthcare. there's over 250,000 open roles that cannot be filled today in both administrative and clinical work. and it's estimated that's going to be over a million in just the nex 3 to 4 years. so we automate phone calls on the administrative side, things like prior authorization status checking or how much copay assistance a member can get, but also on the clinical side to help our clinical workers be able to do more clinical work rather than routine, tedious phone call work. so you might be calling the patient and checking in on them, but oftentimes you are calling on behalf of the doctor's office, the provider into the insurance company and asking questions. but it's but it's the ai that's asking the questions. absolutely. so it's our ai agents that are making the phone calls and talking to the human on the other side. you

know, a fun statistic is our average phone call is over 30 minutes long. wow. okay. so you actually provided us with an example of this sort of phone call. and i should point out to the viewer, we have bleeped out the patient's name and important medical information ahead of time. so it's this is ai talking, but it's not swearing. we just blocked out the patient's name. take a listen. thank you for calling provider services. my name is tracy. how can i help you today? hi, tracee, this is eva calling on behalf of on a recorded line. i'm looking for some benefit information for patient. i'm eva. what's the first letter of your last name? you know, i would think that some people who get that phone call would might be confused. i mean, not everyone wants to talk to an ai or is prepared to. well, five and a half years ago, that was absolutely the case. and we were we were worried as we started the company what the acceptance of ai phone calls will be. the

reality is, after you have that first conversation with the ai, you realize how much more patient it is. because because of the workforce shortage in healthcare, most healthcare workers are trying to get to all the tasks they need to do. so the fact that the ai can become can be collected. be patient with you, give you all the answers you need, actually gives an experience that is significantly better than the average phone call that they're getting to experience today in the world of healthcare. you had send us an example of a rather funny one where you can you can nurse or whoever it is on the other end realizing it's ai and being very impressed. i'll play that one towards the end of this segment. but you've already made. did i get this right? 3 million phone calls. we're actually closing in on 5 million phone calls, over 100,000,000 minutes of phone calling that our ai has done talking to humans on the other side. so how soon until they have ai to? and it's just two ai people calling each other on the phone. well, i think that's a future that we

very much expect and are excited about in the back office, so that when a doctor's office says this patient needs a medication, the doctor's office doesn't have to tell the patient that they need to wait for a day, a week, a month before there's approvals in place, and we can move from a wasteful healthcareystem to a wait list healthcare system. we want those apis to connect data to each other. on the other hand, in the front office, we want ai to be there talking to people to make that knowledge accessible. at any given point, we want the patient who at 9:00 pm, has a question about their diagnosis, to be able to call in to an ai or have that ai on their phone to answer the questions when they want them and how they want them. and obviously, this is very important information in all cases because this is somebody's health. i mentioned at the top, you know, some of the medical transcription software has been blamed for actually making up conversations that nobody had. i mean, how do you guardrail against that? well, i think the trifecta here is to have security compliance and guardrails. you have all three of those and it gives people a

lot of trust in the system. some of these are technology guardrails. some of these are human guardrails which we need to put into the system and build that trust over time. ai is still new. but what we need to remember is the problem of chronic conditions in america is even bigger every single year. over 50 to 60% of people aren't adherent to their medicines and their regimens that have chronic diseases. and this is causing over 125,000 deaths and over $500 billion in avoidable healthcare costs in the country. yeah, healthcare obviously very expensive. and that's a topic that everybody talks about. and this would save save money. we have health care shortages, worker shortages. this would save money, at least for the front office. if somebody isn't physically making these phone calls, absolutely. it's going to save us money, but it's going to make sure that patients come more prepared. patients feel comfortable with what their providers are telling them. and, you know, i always tell folks that when a patient is given a

diagnosis, they go through three journeys. firsts that acceptance journey of this is what my life is about to be, especially for chronic conditions. and in that moment, they don't have all the questions to ask. but when they go home and over time when they have those questions, having ai be side by side to them and be able to answer those questions will help them get on therapy, stay on therapy, and live healthier lives. now your dad is a startup entrepreneur as well. what advice did he give you that that worked for you? well, the one thing i've always learned from my dad is it's important to surround yourself with incredible people, to give yourself time to solve large, hairy problems. it's not something that happens overnigh, and that that advice couldn't be more true in in an ecosystem like healthcare, where it takes time to effect change. well, it's fascinating to listen to. in fact, ankit jain, thanks ever so much. we'll leave you and we'll we'll show the viewer one more clip of ai calling an insurance company. take a listen. is step therapy required? i don't even know what

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manufactures high quality artificial trees. if you see a christmas tree in a movie or a television show, or in a fashion photo spread, chances are you are looking at a balsam hill. mark joins me now and i understand it's from kansas city. i'm going to take a wild guess here. i know that hallmark is in kansas city. are you doing a hallmark movie? i well, i'm not doing a movie, but i am here with a whole bunch of the hallmark stars. scott. it's the hallmark christmas experience, which is a new thing that the hallmark channel is doing. and balsam hill's a sponsor, and they've got this whole area downtown decked out. there's a skating rink in front of me, all sorts of christmas market stalls, and then all these interactions that you can have with the stars from the hallmark christmas movies. so we're my girlfriend is going to be so jealous. it's super fun. i'd never take her. i've seen the lumberjack who has the puppy, and i'm not letting my girlfriend anywhere near her. so, hey, listen, you know, each each each year we talk about more than christmas trees. although i want to talk about

that, too, you know, kind of talk about business lessons. in the past, we've talked about distribution. we've certainly talked about supply chain in this situation. i want to talk about tariffs. you know, incoming. as you well know, incoming president trump has proposed tariffs on mexico and canada and china. is that going to affect you. it absolutely is going to affect us scott. it's really going to depend on what actually happens versus what's being said. we've heard so many different things that are being said, and each of those countries can can impact us. we do produce a lot of our goods in china. so obviously if there is a 10% or greater tariff on goods in china, unfortunately we're going to have no choice but to raise our priceces. in the past, when there have been tariffs, we actually invested in mexico to produce trees. and we do produce some of our trees. in mexico, we have a 25% tariff from mexico. then we've made this investment and we don't get to leverage it. and we in fact potentially lose the investment. so it's a chlenging environment out there to know exactly what's coming. and at the end of the day, we will have to raise our

prices if there are tariffs. and so, you know, you look at all this christmas joy around me, behind me, all these things are made overseas. and so we hope that that's not the case. and we're going to have to figure out how to navigate it. and when you made that investment about manufacturing some of your producuct in mexo, that was what, maybe six, six years ago or so that and we had the new usmca, which donald trump had negotiated. and you as an american manufacturer said, all right, well, let's let's do this. do you feel a little burned about that? well, i mean, i understand that that things change. and i think we also made a cautious investment in mexico because we had noticed that, you know, like this country was okay and then it wasn't. and things were changing. and so i actually think that many of us who wanted to diversify our supply chains were slow to make investments back then, just because we were concerned about the risk of you place a bet on black over here, and then red's okay and black's not. and of course, i'm making a roulette analogy here. it's just it's hard to know where to where

to make those investments. so we actually made a relatively modest investmenent there. but we've made bigger investments since then. and so we hope we can work it out. i mean, i think the interesting thing, scott, is this pre-lit christmas trees have never been made in the united states. and i think the reason that balsam hill exists with these pre-lit trees is because as americans, we lov what's going on behind me. we love decorating the tree. we love celebrating in front of the tree. but like, i don't meet a lot of people who like stringing the lights on trees in a painstaking fhion. and so really, pre-lit trees exist because not only do we not want to do it at home, but no one wanted to sit in a factory in america for eight hours a day and string lights on trees. and so that's why it's done other places. so we've just got to find out. that answers my next question, right. i mean, i'm sure you get this all the time. oh, just build them in america. and i know wages are one of the things that if you pay the wage in american wants, then this tree is going to cost a zillion dollars. but that's an interesting thing you bring up. is that the, the work i mean,

similar to work in agricultural, right. nobody wants to go out and pick beans in the hot sun and, and putting those little lights on christmas trees is not something that, that the average american wants to do eight hours a day. yeah. no, i think that is really the challenge. and we have looked at can we produce them with robots somehow, like what can we do. but at the end of the day it's a handcrafted product. it's i mean, it's almost like an artisan made product where we very carefully put the different branch tips together. we then string the lights, we zip tie them, we run them out to the end, we clip them on, we run them back to the next branch. and it's just tedious work and it's really hard to do. we'd love to be able to do it with ai and robots, but that's just not where we are yet. all right, the last thing i want to leave you with, mac, and you did touch on this, but i want to. i want to hammer it home. and that is this very simple question of tariffs. you, as the manufacturer, bring in stuff from overseas. and you, the american manufacturer, pay

that tariff, which you then pass on. logically, to me, the customer, china is not paying that tariff. is that correct? that's correct. if there is a tariff, we get charged that tariff on the price we pay for the goods that come from, say, china. and so as an example, if there is a 10% tariff levied, balsam hill will pay all of that to the us government. i don't know where it goes after we pay it to the us government, but we pay it to the us government. and then we have calculated for us to kind of stay in business and make the same amount of profit we would need to raise our prices. unfortunately to you, the consumer, 9%, that is that is the simple math. and i'll give you another one, which is there's some proposals. oh, we'll cut the corporate tax rate in half or we'll cut it completely or something like that to get rid of it. if we cut our federal tax rate that we pay as a us business by 50%, that would allow us to afford a 2.5%

tariff. so even if we paid a 10% tariff and we had our tax rate cut in half, we would still have to raise prices around 7% just to be as well off as we are to continue creating jobs and growing our business. and of course, the hard thing about that, scott, is that assumes that people keep buying at the same rate. and i don't think that's going to be the case, maybe at 7 to 9%. if everyone's really happy with how the stock market's doing, maybe they'll buy at the same rate. but, you know, especially if there's a greater than 10% tariff. and we have like if it's a 20% tariff we have to raise prices 18%. we're not going to sell as many trees. as much as i wish i could say we were, i think that's just really going to impact consumers. and it's going to be potentially going on not just with trees, but with all sorts of consumer products. and so i think that's where the challenge is. so we're going to see how it all plays out. well, matt carmen, i really enjoy our christmas or holiday talks, and i look forward to seeing where you are next year. thanks for

joining us this morning. great to see you. matt. carmen is the head of balsam brands and press hugo soto-martínez takano. streaming nbc bay area is fast, easy and free. favorite usn all your streaming apps for news that's moving the bay area forward. stream any time, anywhere, on any device 24/7 and at nbcbayarea.com. nbc bay area telemundo cuarenta y junto con schiff. we need your help to nourish our neighbors this holiday season. buscar la hoja para khanna en las cajas registradas. together we can nourish our neighbors and help move the community forward. car accident berg winins. you've ben hurt in a car wreck. you need a law firm that can give you the help you need right now. berg wins. one that stands up to the insurance company for all the money you deserve. berg wins one that takes low insurance offers and turns them into big settlements. berg wins. i'm william berg, my law firm has

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