A blog covering the health/care ecosystem and people.

In his latest book, Notes on Being a Man, Scott Galloway discusses his personal fertility journey in the larger social context of what it means to be a man in modern America. Galloway’s infertility challenges shared with his wife inform his views on men’s health across all dimensions — physical, mental health, social health, financial well-being — and how, of course, men’s overall health is also a women’s and children’s issue. Men can feel “left out” of infertility discussions, based on results from the first and largest multi-national study into men’s feelings about their infertility revealed. “How men feel about

In the current era of U.S. health citizen grievance with the health care system, people feel anxious, confused, and angry — especially when it comes to access and affordability of health care. We learn more about these emotional drivers of health/care grievance in Understanding Health Plan Member Discontent, an assessment of health consumers’ views of satisfaction across health insurance plan types (commercial, Medicaid, Medicare, and marketplace plans) and age of member, from the health consumer experience team at Press Ganey.           Those three underlying factors driving discontent translate to different generations differently. Overall, anxiety relates to

Prescription drug price trend for 2026 will be between 10% and 12% according to the 2026 Trend Study from HUB International, a global insurance and financial services firm.           Here’s HUB’s line chart of the combined medical and Rx trend, illustrating nearly double trend growth since 2022 following the peak of 10.1% (combined) in 201 as patients returned to health care services and encounters when feeling safe in the fading out of the COVID-19 pandemic. That precipitous low-point in 2022 of 3.4% was the peak of the coronavirus stay-at-home period, representing the “medical distancing” felt across

Welcome to Part 2 of 3 in my consideration of Prescription Drug Pricing in America. You can catch up with yesterday’s Part 1 post here, and Part 2 here. The macro-context for these 3 posts are the forecasts for health care spending for the coming year. Health care cost increases forecasted for 2026 will, in significant part, be driven by prescription drug trend. This graphic from this week’s release of the Business Group on Health’s employer survey on healthcare cost growth to 2026 illustrates a key finding that’s echoed in other similar studies recently released and covered here in Health Populi.

Health care costs will increase, overall, as much as 10% in 2026, the consensus of several health benefit analysts inform us. And, “workers to bear brunt of health cost increases in 2026,” reads today’s Axios headline on the topic, weaving together several studies from the Business Group on Health, Mercer, and the  International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans.           A kay cost-contributor cited in all of these health cost forecasts is the prescription drug line item: specialty drug prices, and specifically the costs of GLP-1 medicines and cancer therapies. One strategy gaining fast-traction on both the

Financial stress and anxiety have an ‘outsized’ negative impact on the well-being of women in America, compared to male counterparts, we learn in Health. Wealth, and Happiness – Helping to overcome roadblocks to women’s well-being, a report from the Guardian Life Insurance Company.                 This report is part of Guardian’s annual research program called Mind, Body, Wallet, which the company launched 14 years ago. The goal of Mind, Body. Wallet is to assess how health citizens define “well-being” in daily living, making the crucial connections between mental health (“Mind”), physical health (“Body”), and money

At least one-half of employers will likely raise employee cost-sharing amounts in 2026, according to the Survey on health & benefit strategies for 2026 from Mercer.                 Mercer surveyed 711 organizations for this study, fielded in April 2025, to assess employers’ views on and strategies for health benefits in 2026. There are three challenging pillars underlying employers’ 2026 approaches to workers’ benefits: How to disrupt cost growth with what Mercer coins as “bolder” strategies How to consider and address all dimensions of affordability, and, How to design and implement inclusive benefits that build workforce

With consumers the world over feeling greater financial stress and social chasms in 2025, people are trusting brands more than institutions to help them both feel good and expecting them to “do” good, we learn in Brand Trust, From We to Me, a special report from the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer.                 The overall theme of this year’s Trust Barometer was “Trust and the Crisis of Grievance.” One artifact of peoples’ grievance is their shift from “we” to “me;”  in this new report with a lens on brands, Edelman finds that consumers expect

“Can people afford to pay for health care?” a report from the World Health Organization asked and answered, with a focus on European health citizens. The same question underpins a new research paper published in Health Affairs Scholar, Insights from crowdfunding campaigns for medical hardship, Here, crowdfunding is a proxy for “can’t afford to pay for health care” in America. Here in blazing colors we have a snapshot of the study’s data in the form of a “heatmap.”  FYI, a heatmap is a data visualization format that represents the magnitude of values of a dataset as a color — generally

Consumers around the world feel more invested than ever in what makes people feel both well and prosperous, we learn in the NielsenIQ Global State of Health & Wellness 2025 survey report. But there’s a trust deficit that must be healed in order for a health consumer to invest in services and products that feed health and well-being. NIQ fielded the survey research online in January and February 2025 among nearly 19,000 adults living in 19 countries: Brazil, Canada, China, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Indonesia Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Turkiye, UAE, United Kingdom, and

Facing uncertainties across everyday life flows, U.S. consumers look to economic and health security — and welcome businesses to support these, we learn in an analysis from The Conference Board.              The Conference Board (TCB) polled 3,000 U.S. consumers gauging their perspectives on uncertainties emerging out of the new Trump administration’s policy changes introduced in the first quarter of 2025. The chart details people’s financial/fiscal responses in blue, and the health (mental, social, and physical aspects) in yellow: Consumers’ fiscal strategies for coping with uncertainty are to seek out more affordable brands and retailers, adjusting

In the past year, most consumers in the U.S. have used virtual care, tracked at least one health metric digitally, and own a wearable or connected health device. Digital health has certainly gone mainstream across U.S. consumers, with varying utilization and motivation by generation, we learn in the report,   Screenagers to Silver Surfers: How each generation clicks with care from Rock Health.               To segment health consumers by age/generation, the RH team mined the firm’s 10th Consumer Adoption of Digital Health Survey which polled over 8,000 U.S. adults in 2024 on peoples’ perspectives

Americans’ financial health was already stressing consumers out leading up to Liberation Day, April 2nd, when President Trump announced tariffs on dozens of countries with whom the U.S. buys and sells goods. A new report from MoneyLion and Mastercard called Health is Wealth is well-timed for today’s Health Populi blog. The study was fielded by The Harris Poll online among 2,092 U.S. adults 18 and older between February 28 and March 4, 2025, so it was completed a month before the tariffs came to hit peoples’ 401(k) savings and employers’ company stock market caps.              

Most people in the U.S. use at least one medical device at home — likely a blood pressure monitor. used by nearly one-half of people based on a survey of 2,000 consumers conducted for Propel Software.                    The Propel study’s insights build on what we know is a growing ethos among health consumers seeking to take more control over their health care and the rising costs of medical bills and out-of-pocket expenses. That includes oral health and dental bills: 2 in 5 U.S. consumers use electric toothbrushes (a growing smart-device category at the

As HIMSS 2025, the largest annual conference on health information and innovation meets up in Las Vegas this week, we can peek into what’s on the organization’s CEO’s mind leading up to the meeting in this conversation between Hal Wolf, CEO of HIMSS, and Gil Bashe, Managing Director of FINN Partners. If you are unfamiliar with HIMSS, Hal explains in the discussion that HIMSS’s four focuses are digital health transformation, the deployment and utilization of AI as a tool, cybersecurity to protect peoples’ personal information and its use, and, workforce development. I have my own research agenda(s) underneath these themes

In the wake of the always-creative ads for Super Bowl and last Sunday’s LIX bout, game-watchers got to see a plethora of commercials dedicated to the annual event’s major features: food and game-day eating. Oh, and what’s turned out to be the most controversial commercial, the one on GLP-1s from Hims & Hers. In that vein, and converging with many news and policy events, I’m trend-weaving the latest insights into that most consumer-facing of the social determinants of health: food, and in particular, health consumers viewing and adopting food as part of their health and well-being moves. First, to the

Two polls from one poll source paint at once a bipartisan and bipolar picture of U.S. health citizens when it comes to health care issues versus health care institutions in America. The Kaiser Family Foundation has hit the 2025 health policy ground running in publishing the January 2025 Health Tracking Poll last week and a poll on health care trust and mis-information yesterday.                        First, the health tracking poll which finds some concurrence between Democrats and Republicans on several big issues facing Americans and various aspects of their health care. As

At this year-end time each year, my gift to Health Populi readers is an annual “TrendCast,” weaving together key data and stories at the convergence of people, health care, and technology with a look into the next 1-3 years. If you don’t know my work and “me,” my lens is through health economics broadly defined: I use a slash mark between “health” and “care” because of this orientation, which goes well beyond traditional measurement of how health care spending is included in a nation’s gross domestic product (GDP); I consider health across the many dimensions important to people, addressing physical,

“It’s the economy stupid,” Jennifer Tescher, CEO of the Financial Health Network, titles her latest column in Forbes. Published two weeks after the 2024 U.S. elections, Jennifer’s assertion sums up what, ex post facto, we know about what most inspired American voters at the polls in November 2024: the economy, economics, inflation, the costs of daily living….pick your noun, but it’s all about those Benjamins right now for mainstream American consumers across many demographic cuts. With that realization, we must remind ourselves as we enter a new year under a second-term President Trump that health care spending for everyday people

A new report from the OECD asks the question, “How’s Life?” with the tagline letting us know the plotline focuses on “well-being and resilience in times of crisis.”       The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has tracked the well-being of member nations for the past six years, taking a broad view on the definition of holistic health — including physical, mental, financial, and social aspects of people living in OECD countries. The first “How’s Life?” report was published at the height of the global financial crisis; the authors of this report introduce it saying that, “the

As the annual HLTH conference convenes this week in Las Vegas, numerous reports have been published to coincide with the meeting updating various aspects of technology, health care, providers and patients. In this post, I’m weaving together several of the papers that speak to the intersection of health care, consumers, and technology – the sweet spot here on Health Populi. I hope to provide attendees of HLTH 2024 along with my readers who aren’t in Vegas useful context for assessing the new ideas and business model announcements as well as a practical summary for those of you in planning mode for

Women in the U.S. are more likely to avoid care than men in America, Deloitte found in the consulting firm’s latest survey on consumers and health care.             Deloitte coins this phenomenon as a “triple-threat” that women face in the U.S. health care environment, the 3 “threats” being, Affordability, Access, and, Prior experience — that is the health disparity among women who have seen personal mis-diagnosis, bias, or treatment that hasn’t been consistent with current protocols and practices. The data come out of Deloitte’s fielding of the U.S. consumer survey in February and March, 2024.

Women in the U.S. have lower life expectancy, greater risks of heart disease, and more likely to face medical bills and self-rationing due to costs, we learn in the latest look into Health Care for Women: How the U.S. Compares Internationally from The Commonwealth Fund.              The Fund identified four key conclusions in this global study: Mortality, shown in the first chart which illustrates women in the U.S. having the lowest life expectancy of 80 years versus women in other high-income countries; Health status, with women in the U.S. more likely to consume multiple prescription

The most common food-eating styles practiced by U.S. consumers are low sugar/diabetic diets, low-calorie, dairy-free, anti-inflammatory, and gluten-free, ccording to the Midyear Trends update from Datassential.             In their update on the food trends entering the second half of 2024, Datassential offered several insights on consumers and food-as-medicine in a section called the Health Check-Up. These trends are shaping consumers’ food demands in both their grocery shopping preferences (for food consumed in the home) as well as their eating-out ordering strategies — where 35% of consumers want to see menu offerings with foods that are

Patients’ experience with health care in the U.S. dropped to its lowest point over the past year, explained in the 15th release of The Beryl Institute – Ipsos PX Pulse survey.         The study into U.S. adult consumers’ perspectives defined “patient experience” (PX) as, “The sum of all interactions, shaped by an organization’s culture, that influence patient perceptions across the continuum of care.” The survey was fielded by Ipsos among 1,018 U.S. adults in March 2024.         Health care providers (and other industry stakeholders that go B2B or B2B2C (or P) are all thinking

Most Americans follow some kind of eating regime, seeking energy, more protein, and healthy aging, according to the annual 2024 Food & Health Survey published this week by the International Food Information Council (IFIC). But a person’s household finances play a direct role in their ability to balance healthful food purchases and healthy eating, IFIC learned.              In this 19th annual fielding of this research, IFIC explored 3,000 U.S. consumers’ perspectives on diet and nutrition, trusted sources for food information, and new insights into peoples’ views on the GLP-1 weight-loss drugs and the growing sense

From bandages to home hygiene, OTC pain meds and DIY home projects, Morning Consult’s look into the most-trusted brands of 2024 give us insights into health consumers. I’ve been tracking this study since before the public health crisis of the coronavirus, and it always offers us a practical snapshot of the U.S. consumer’s current ethos on trusted companies helping people risk-manage daily living — and of course, find joy and satisfaction as well. In the top 15, we find self-care for health and well-being in many brands and products: we can call out Band-Aid, Dove, Colgate, Kleenex, and Tylenol. For

Health insurance plans make mainstream media news every week, whether coverage deals with the cost of a plan, the cost of out-of-network care, prior authorizations, or cybersecurity and ransomware attacks, among other front-page issues. This week, AHIP (the acronym for the industry association of America’s Health Insurance Plans) is convening in Las Vegas for its largest annual 2024 meeting. We expect at least 2,400 attendees registered for the meeting, and they’ll not just be representing the health insurance industry itself; folks will attend #AHIP2024 from other industry segments including pharmaceuticals, technology, hospitals and health systems, and the investment and financial services

Among Americans 50 years of age and over, the top health-related concerns are Cost, Cost, and Cost — for medical services, for long-term and home care, and for prescription medications. Quality of care ranks lower as a concern versus the financial aspects of health care in America among people 50 years of age and older, as we learn what’s On Their Minds: Older Adults’ Top Health-Related Concerns from the University of Michigan Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation. AARP sponsors this study, which is published nearly every month of the year on the Michigan Medicine portal.           

In the past few years, what event or innovation has had the metaphorical impact of hitting you upside the head and disrupted your best-laid plans in health care? A few such forces for me have been the COVID-19 pandemic, the emergence of Chat-GPT, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. That’s just three, and to be sure, there are several others that have compelled me to shift my mind-set about what I thought I knew-I-knew for my work with organizations spanning the health care ecosystem. I’m a long-time practitioner of scenario planning, thanks to the early education at the side of Ian

As we start the month of April 2024 in the U.S., it’s tax season in America with Federal (and other) income taxes due on the 15th of the month. This is also the time my research clock alarm goes off for an important annual report that describes the latest profile of the patient-as-payer in the U.S. ‘Tis the season for J.P. Morgan’s InstaMed team to analyze health care payments data, describing the experiences of consumers, providers and payers in the Trends in Healthcare Payments Fourteenth Annual Report.                   The overall takeaway for

There’s a gender-health gap that hits women particularly hard when she is of working age — negatively impacting her own physical and financial health, along with that of the community and nation in which she lives.               March being Women’s History Month, we’ve got a treasure-trove of reports to review — including several focusing on health. I’ll dive into two for this post, to focus in on the women’s health gap that’s especially wide during her working years. The reports cover research from the McKinsey Health Institute collaborating with the World Economic Forum on

Target announced that the retail chain would grow its aisles of wellness-oriented products by at least 1,000 SKUs. The products will span the store’s large footprint, going beyond health and beauty reaching into fashion, food, home hygiene and fitness. The title of the company’s press release about the program also included the fact that many of the products would be priced as low as $1.99. So financial wellness is also baked into the Target strategy. Globally, the wellness market is valued at a whopping $1.8 trillion according to a report published last week by McKinsey. McKinsey points to five trends

One-third of U.S. consumers feel in worse financial shape now than in 2022, with inflation a top concern, discovered in the 2024 New Year’s Financial Resolutions Study from Fidelity Investments.          In this 15th annual update of Fidelity’s research into Americans’ New Year’s resolutions for financial health, we learn the mantra that 2024 will be the year of living practically, opening new chapters for saving and paying down debt. Fidelity conducted an online poll among 3,002 U.S. adults 18 and over in October 2023 to gauge peoples’ perspectives on personal finances, and well-being currently and into 2024. This

Two-thirds of U.S. consumers say they can’t afford to pay their medical bills on-time, based on the 2023 Consumer Survey from Access One, a financial services company focused on healthcare payments.               The report’s title page asks the question, “What options do consumers really want for paying healthcare expenses?” The survey report responds to that question, finding out that nearly one-half of patients have taken some kind of action to reduce their medical expenses. Furthermore, one-third of consumers are not confident they could pay a medical bill of $500 or more. Access One fielded

There is growing evidence on the connection between people’s financial health and their mental health, explored and explained in Understanding the Mental-Financial Health Connection, a study published by the Financial Health Network.             Keep that relationship in mind in the context of a new forecast from Kaiser Family Foundation estimate the 2023 cost for employer-sponsored insurance for a family to reach nearly $24,000 in 2023. That cost is a 7% increase over last year, and is expected to be split with companies covering $17K (about 70%) and employees about $6600 (roughly 30%). KFF heard that

People love being health-insured, but their negative experiences with health plans create serious burdens on patients-as-consumers. And those burdens impact even more people who are unwell than healthier folks. The 2023 Kaiser Family Foundation Survey of Consumer Experiences with Health Insurance updates our understanding of and empathy for insured peoples’ Patient Administrative Burdens (PAB). For this study, KFF polled 3,605 U.S. adults 18 and over in February and March 2023 who had health insurance across different plan types. Over the past several years, I’ve come to appreciate the concept of PAB by listening to and learning from colleagues Dr, Grace

It’s time for the annual ASCO conference, currently convening the American Society for Clinical Oncology in Chicago. Starting 2nd June, there have been dozens of positive announcements updating research and therapies bringing hope to the 2 million new patients who will be diagnosed with cancer in the U.S. in 2023, and millions of more people worldwide. Just in time for #ASCO2023, the IQVIA Institute published their annual report on Global Oncology Trends 2023 – Outlook to 2027, an update featuring pipelines, therapy approvals, research updates, costs of oncology products, and patients.                  

Our pets can be personal and family drivers of health and health care cost savings, according to a new study from  according to a new report from researchers at George Mason University published in their paper, Health Care Cost Savings of Pet Ownership. Reviewing this new paper inspired me to explore the current state of the pet/health market and implications for their human families, my weaving of various stories explored in this Health Populi blog post. Some of the key signposts we’ll cover are: The report on pet ownership driving owners’ health care cost savings A new market analysis of

“It seemed like an odd pairing: shampoo and a throat swab,” observes a new report on the growth of retail health from Definitive Healthcare. But retail clinics are no longer, as the paper explains, “an experiment of a few grocery stores….they’re becoming a major force in the U.S. healthcare system,” asserts the thesis of Retailers in healthcare: A catalyst for provider evolution.                 While the use of emergency departments fell by 1% in the past five years, the use of retail clinics expanded by 70%, Definitive Healthcare calculated. Most retail clinics are owned by

Not all “retail health” sites are created equal, U.S. consumers seem to be saying in a new study from Wolters Kluwer Health, the company’s second Pharmacy Next: Consumer Care and Cost Trends survey. Specifically, consumers have begun to differentiate between health care delivered at a retail pharmacy versus care offered at a retail store — such as Target or Walmart (both named as sites that offer “health clinics in department stores” in the study press release). While 58% of Americans were likely to visit a local pharmacy as a “first step” when faced with a non-emergency medical situation and 79%

People have expanded their definitions of health in 2023, with mental health supplanting physical health for the top-ranked factor in feeling healthy. Welcome to the Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report: Trust and Health, released this week, with striking findings about how the economic, post-pandemic life, pollution and climate change all feed mis-trust among citizens living in 13 countries — and their eroding trust for health care systems.         While these factors vary by country in terms of relative contribution to citizen trust, note that in the U.S., social polarization plays an outsized role in factors that “make us

“The future of love is bound to the institutions that have historically shaped and defined it,” Ipsos’s What the Future: Love report begins. Consider: religion, government, financial institutions….and the health care ecosystem, as well. On this Valentine’s Day 14th February 2023, it is a good time to consider this convergence as health politics, financial well-being, and emerging technologies will be re-shaping institutions and consumers in the coming months and near-term.           The Ipsos researchers have been assessing the future of many aspects of our lives over the past couple of years, such as the future of wellness,

Consumers’ wellness life-flows and demands in 2023 will go well beyond exercise resolutions, eating more greens, and intermittent fasting as a foodstyle. It’s time for us to get the annual update on health consumers from the multi-faceted team who curated the Global Wellness Summit’s annual report on The Future of Wellness 2023 Trends.                   In this year’s look into wellness for the next few years, we see that health-oriented consumers are seeking solutions for dealing with loneliness and mental health, weight and hydration, travel-as-medicine as health destinations, and — not surprisingly —

More people in the U.S. than ever have put off medical care due to cost, according to Gallup’s latest poll of patients in America.             Gallup conducted the annual Health and Healthcare poll U.S. adults in November and December 2022. This was the highest level of self-rationing care due to cost the pollster has found since its inaugural study on the topic in 2001. This was also the most dramatic year-on-year increase of postponing treatment due to cost in the study’s history.             Note the substantial difference in women avoiding

Health is “made” where we live, work, play, pray, learn….and shop. I spend a lot of time these days in the growing health/care ecosystem where retail health is broadening to address social determinants and drivers of health – namely food, transportation, broadband access, education, environment, and financial wellness – all opportunities for self-care and health engagement. For many years, I have followed the activities of CHPA, the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, and have participated in some of their conferences. Their recent announcement of a collaboration with Dollar General speaks to the growing role of self-care for all people.    

Due to gender pay gaps, time away from the workforce for raising children and caring for loved ones, women in the U.S. face a risky retirement outlook according to Emerging from the COVID-19 Pandemic: Women’s Health, Money, and Retirement Preparations from the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies (TCRS).               As Transamerica TCRS sums up the top-line, “Societal headwinds are undermining women’s retirement security.” Simply said, by the time a woman is looking to retire, she has saved less than one-half of the money her male counterpart has put away for aging after work-life. The