New surgeon general nominee cofounded a16z backed health app with DOGE operative

Earlier than she was chosen as Donald Trump’s newest nominee for Surgeon Basic, Dr. Casey Means got here from the world of healthcare startups – and cofounded one with a tech entrepreneur who’s now a key Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE) operative in command of dismantling the IRS.

In 2019, Means, a holistic drugs physician who rose to prominence within the Trump-adjacent Make America Wholesome Once more motion (additionally referred to as MAHA), launched Ranges, a biowearables and health-tracking firm, with Sam Corcos, who’s now main efforts at DOGE to construct a “mega API” that compiles American taxpayers’ data. The corporate, whose first product was a blood glucose tracker related to a $400-per-month subscription app, obtained tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars} funding over the previous a number of years – notably from Andreessen-Horowitz’s enterprise capital arm a16z, which led its $12 million seed spherical and its Collection A spherical.

“Each the well being of our individuals and the fiscal solvency of our nation are at stake,” Marc Andreessen, now a Trump advisor and a essential participant within the rise of the tech proper, mentioned in a press release announcing its Series A extension again in August 2024. “Ranges is a case research of the appliance of expertise to each.”

Their affiliation is certainly not hidden: Corcos and Means each describe themselves as cofounders and presently energetic workers of Ranges on their LinkedIn pages, with Corcos listed as CEO. In addition they have a joint authors page on the Ranges weblog, frequently co-hosted a company podcast, are talked about in press releases about the company, and sometimes highlighted every others’ works on their social media feeds. “Tremendous proud to share that Levels Co-founder, Casey Means, MD, alongside together with her brother, Calley Means, sat down with Joe Rogan to speak concerning the significance of metabolic well being,” Corcos posted on LinkedIn final October. “It’s superb to see the influence they’re having and the way they’ve introduced this urgent subject into the nationwide discourse.”

Means, now an in depth affiliate of Well being & Human Companies secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was introduced as Trump’s nominee for Surgeon Basic after the president abruptly pulled his authentic decide, Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, the day earlier than she was as a consequence of testify in entrance of the Senate. Dr. Nesheiwat, a former Fox Information contributor, additionally occurs to be the sister-in-law of former Nationwide Safety Advisor Mike Waltz, who had fallen out of favor with the White Home for his function in Sign-gate. (Final week, Trump introduced that he was reassigning Waltz to be his Ambassador to the United Nations, a task extensively seen as punishment for including a journalist to a categorised group chat.)

Corcos, who can also be a particular advisor to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, has turn into a public-facing determine in tales about DOGE, the quasi-governmental company led by Elon Musk to drastically scale back the federal authorities’s workforce. (Disclaimer: This reporter attended faculty with Corcos at Claremont McKenna Faculty.) According to reports from Wired, behind the scenes, Corcos is in command of efforts to consolidate all taxpayer knowledge into one single database, a transfer that has alarmed safety analysts and IRS engineers – each for the velocity at which DOGE is doing it, and since a “mega API” venture would enable any singular entity, together with non-public firms and international governments, to entry and export mentioned knowledge.