The Home Economics of Family and Fertility: Men’s Financial Views on Their Fertility Journeys (My Progyny Post #2)
Cost is a leading reason why people say they could not obtain the fertility care they need. But the costs of IVF and other forms of fertility care lie within a larger home economics framework of family-building and -raising. The context and costs of raising a child in America. Consider the layers of a household budget starting with the home’s “macro”-economics of income. Then within that circle, especially in the U.S., the factor of whether that household is covered by employer-sponsored health insurance. The next layer of more health micro-economics in the family is the
Feeling Under-Served and Overlooked: Men’s Views on Their Fertility Journeys (My Progyny Post #1)
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
As SNAP Benefits Were Threatened to be Cut in the U.S., Eli Lilly’s Obesity Drugs Rose to the World’s Best-Selling Drug
Today, 1 November, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) was to be shuttered and unfunded in at least 25 states until the U.S. Congress agreed to re-open the Federal government and fund this safety net for food security that covers 42 million people in America. Those 42 million people included 16 million children, about 39% of SNAP program beneficiaries. Then last night, a Federal judge intervened to order President Trump’s administration to reinstate funding for food assistance just-in-time. At this moment, I cannot tell you what the exact timing nor the amounts beneficiaries will receive will be.
The Shorter-Term Future of Healthtech is AI for Administration – Silicon Valley Bank Reads the Tea Leaves
Too much money is going into too many untested AI applications in health care, we learn in The Future of Healthtech 2025 from Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). While “the new healthtech is here” in the form of AI-everything, SVB points out that it’s “Provider Ops” and the back office that’s driving the sector. “Healthtech is now definitively an administrative sector, not a clinical one,” SVB asserts in the first of three key themes plot-lining the report. What sets the stage for context are these four important
Paging Dr. Verily – What Consumers Want from Health Tech: Personalization, Control, Privacy, and Ease
“What do consumers want from their health technology?” wondered a poll conducted among smartphone-owning health care decision makers. Greater control and engagement in health care, assurance of privacy and security for their health data. and greater personalization of advice coming out of the analysis of that shared personal health information. Welcome to the Consumer Survey on Personal Health Technology, market research conducted by Verily with The Harris Poll among 2,000 U.S. adults 18 and older in July 2025. The screening criteria used to include a survey respondent were two-fold: whether they owned a smartphone, and made the majority of their
Most MAGA Supporters Support Extending the Expiring ACA Tax Credits – Will That Move Negotiations to Re-Open the Government?
A couple of days into the U.S. Federal government shutdown, there’s one message the Congressional Democrats are tending to voice: that is that health care is on the line, and that’s the issue on which they’re betting will bring negotiators back to Capitol Hill — expecting a few Republicans to join in that dialogue. Most U.S. adults across political parties would want to see Congress extend the enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits that are set to expire next year we see in a poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation published October 3. And that includes most Republicans and MAGA
The Emotional Drivers of Healthcare Discontent – Press Ganey Points to Access and Affordability Worries Driving Anxiety and Anger
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
The Least-Positively Viewed Industries in America are the Federal Government, Pharma, and Advertising – The 2025 Gallup Poll on Industry-Love in America
In 2025, most Americans feel positive about farming and agriculture, the computer industry, and restaurants. At the opposite end of industry-love are the Federal Government, pharmaceutical companies, and advertising and PR, we learn in Gallup’s annual ratings of 25 key U.S. business sectors survey, fielded in August 2025. Here’s the eye-straining table of those 25 sectors, calling out health care which has a net majority negative rating by 51% of U.S. adults: that is, 27% feeling somewhat negative about healthcare, and 24% feeling “very negative” about
In 10 Years, Health Care Will Happen Where Life Happens – PwC’s Tea Leaves into 2035
The costs of medical care are breaking the system, PwC asserts at the start of its new report on the $1 trillion opportunity to reinvent healthcare. The past 3 years of 8+% U.S. national health expenditure increases are “untenable,” PwC says, with 90% of that spending going toward patients with chronic and mental health conditions. What will transform the system and move us from “breaking point to breakthrough?” Biology and technology, PwC explains, with technology moving exponentially and simplifying care at scale, and biology decoding the “human operating system” enabling precision at scale. This
Trust Is Eroding for Vaccines Among U.S. Parents — New Insights from KFF and the Washington Post
By the summer of 2025, 1 in 6 U.S. parents had skipped or delayed childhood vaccinations, discovered in the 37th annual edition of the KFF/The Washington Survey of Parents. The study was conducted among 2,716 parents or legal guardians of children, via interviews online in English and Spanish between July 18 and August 4, 2025. In detail by demographic, 83% of all U.S. parents had kept children up-to-date with recommended childhood vaccines (16% not doing so) 74% of self-described MAGA Republicans kept kids up to date with the recommended vaccines (25% not doing so),
Expect Double-Digit Prescription Drug Trend Increases in 2026 – The Update from HUB International
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
On Labor Day 2025: From Health Care “Revenue Bounty Hunters,” Medical Bills Back into FICO Scores, the Rise of “Cute Debt,” and Tariffs — U.S. Consumers’ Face Eroding Financial Health
On this U.S. Labor Day 2025, the physical and the fiscal, with the mental, converge as I ponder what working Americans are facing….packing kids up for school, sorting out college payments and loans, dealing with rising costs of daily living, and feeling a growing pinch of what President Trump’s tariffs have had in store now that they’re hitting SKUs around the household. This post will cover most days this week as my own workflows will be heavy as clients return to face returns-to-work and updating scenario plans. We start this post with a headline: “Why Hospitals Are Hiring ‘Revenue Bounty
Prescription Drug Pricing in America – a 3-Part Update, From the Over- the-Counter OPill and “Half-Price” Ozempic to Most-Favored-Nation Rx (Part 3)
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.
Prescription Drug Pricing in America – a 3-Part Update, From the Over- the-Counter OPill and “Half-Price” Ozempic to Most-Favored-Nation Rx (Part 2)
“Big Pharma has a new vision for selling drugs. It’s going to the mattresses,” writes Josh Nathan-Kazis in MSN earlier this week. That is, going direct-to-consumer (DTC) the way the mattress industry has done in the past decade, cutting out brick-and-mortar sleep shops at retail. In the case of “Make(ing” like a mattress company,” Josh explains, the pharma manufacturers “sell shots and pills straight to the consumer.” In this case, that’s cutting out the pharmacy benefits managers and other intermediaries that have taken dollars in the transactions of drug benefit claims which have added costs to payers (health plan sponsors
Prescription Drug Pricing in America – a 3-Part Update, From the Over- the-Counter OPill and “Half-Price” Ozempic to Most-Favored-Nation Rx (Part 1)
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
What U.S. Consumers Are Thinking About Tariffs’ Impacts on Health Care: Looking to Ipsos, QCentrix and Goldman Sachs
Most Americans, thinking as health consumers, believe that tariffs could impact peoples’ ability to pay for costly prescription drugs and be priced out of paying for check-ups and medical supplies, based on results from two studies on consumers’ views on tariffs and their health care from Ipsos and Q-Centrix. Ipsos’s consumer survey found that younger consumers, people earning lower incomes, and folks living in the suburbs feel even more stressed about tariffs’ impact on medical care — along with more people identifying as Democrats or Independent voters. With
To Garner Patient Loyalty, Focus on Convenience, Availability, and Affordability. Consumers Trust AI to Help the Journey.
U.S. health consumers are roughly split 40/40 when it comes to AI analyzing personal health data to provide personalized advice, with 21% feeling neutral about that. But using AI for regular health updates and guiding us through a pre- or post-care medical journey would be welcome by one in two people, we learn in how to Unlock patient loyalty: New healthcare consumer insights, Huron Consulting Group’s consumer research report polling 1,500 U.S. healthcare consumers. Start with peoples’ top reasons for switching health care providers, along with main barriers preventing consumers from
Women Walk a Financial Tightrope: What That Means for Women’s Health, Mind, Body, & Wallet
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
Why a Grocery Store Signed On to “Make Health Tech Great Again”
Joining the ranks of technology heavyweights Amazon, Anthropic, Apple, Google, and OpenAI, as well as digital health innovators Noom, Oura, Virta Health and Welldoc, who have pledged to “Make Health Tech Great Again,” Albertsons, one of the largest grocery chains in the U.S., put its name on the list with these and other early adopter collaborators. The Albertsons’ company blog published on 31 July discussed the background and rationale for this decision. “Specifically, we pledge to explore how our Sincerely Health platform can connect to The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Aligned
The Patient as Consumer – Updates from Fidelity on Retiree Health Care Costs ($172,500), Delaying Care, Tariff Impacts on Spending, and Roche Going DTPatient for Rx’s?
As of August 2025, U.S. patients of all demographics and geographies face many uncertainties with respect to their care. Issues such as health plan coverage, prescription drug costs, and access to services, among other challenges, continue to re-shape patients-as-health-consumers seeking transparency, clinical choices, and trust-worthy relationships with touchpoints in their personal health ecosystems. Four just-breaking stories across the health/care ecosystem illustrate several of these uncertainties and forces in U.S. health care — some adding friction and angst in a patient’s life, others perhaps providing some relief for certain health consumers. These news items address health care costs in retirement, the
Medicare at 60: Prior Authorizations Are a Problem for People in the U.S., Regardless of One’s Political Party, Income, or Insurance Type
Happy 60th Anniversary Medicare, today marking six decades since the passage of this law which was a landmark milestone for The Great Society, U.S. style. Since its inception and implementation, Medicare quite often leads in adoption of new medicines, new processes, new technologies in health care. But as I track the phenomenon of health citizenship in the U.S., I observe growing consensus among American patients — cross health plan type — increasingly impatient for health care access. We can now add Americans’ growing dissatisfaction with the prior authorization process, an opinion that now spans majorities of consumers regardless of their
Most People Would Choose Food Over Meds to Get Healthy. But Barriers to Consumers Doing So Will Require Collaborative Approaches That Get Closer and Personal
The pandemic era re-shaped consumers’ views on food as an input for health across all dimensions. We look back with affection for our local grocery stores and pharmacies which played leading roles as first responders f0r our health and, quite literally, the basic needs at the base of our personal hierarchies the way Maslow conceived them. As I tracked home-bound consumers’ behaviors from the start of COVID-19 in March 2020, I hunted-and-gathered data from Nielsen, Acosta, Circana, Gallup, Harris, and other sources of consumers @ retail. The DIY food-health concept, coined by Nielsen, was the build-up of our “pandemic pantries.”
U.S. Workers Who Get Health Insurance From Work Can Expect Greater Cost-Sharing and New Networks in 2026
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
Medical Cost Trend at 8.5% in 2026? PwC Sees “No End in Sight” for Increased Healthcare Spending
For the third year in a row, medical cost trend — the expected increase of health care costs by health plans — will be 8.5% for group health insurance. This contrasts with a low of 5.5% in 2022 when cost trend dipped coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic….then shot up to 8.0% the following year in patients’ healthcare catch-up mode. Welcome to Behind the Numbers 2026, the annual medical trend report from PwC. What’s continuing to drive up health care costs? PwC identifies 4 medical cost inflators, and 2 “deflators” (these being
Consumers Look to Brands to Both “Do Good” and Help Me “Feel Good” – Another Riff on the Edelman Trust Barometer and What This Means for Health Care
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
National Health Spending in the U.S. in 2033: What 20.3% of the GDP Will Be Spent On
By 2033, national health spending will comprise 20.3% of the U.S. GDP, based on the latest national health expenditure projections developed by researchers from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). This growth will be happening as CMS projects coverage of insured people to decline over the period. Earlier today, I attended a media briefing hosted by Health Affairs to receive the CMS team’s top-line forecast of NHE from 2024 to 2033 discussing these findings. Fuller details on the projections will be released in the July issue of Health Affairs on 7
Consumers’ Favorite Brands for 2025 Look a Lot Like Pandemic Times: All About Hygiene, Safety, Personal Care, and Packages
Shades of the year 2020; it’s déjà vu all over again when it comes to consumers’ most trusted brands in 2025 featured in Morning Consult’s Most Reputable Brands report. Here’s the list of the top 25 most trusted brands across all consumer touch-points and industries for all adults, ages 18 and older. A quick calculation reveals that consumers most trust brands covering, Home keeping and hygiene – Dawn, Clorox, Lysol, Mr. Clean, Home Depot Self- and personal care – Dove, Oral-B, Kleenex, Colgate Health – BAND-AID, Tylenol Packages
That Big Beautiful Bill’s Healthcare Proposals Aren’t So Pretty in the Views of Most People in the U.S. – Including Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) – Listening to the Kaiser Family Foundation June Health Tracking Poll
Across all U.S. voters, the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” Act (BBB) is seen unfavorably by nearly a 2:1 margin. Underneath that top-line, Democrats, Independents, and non-MAGA Republicans oppose it, while MAGA supporters favor it. But favorability erodes when people hear about possible health impacts, we learn in the June 2025 Health Tracking Poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation. The details on views of the BBB Act are shown in the first bar chart, with overwhelming disfavor among Democrats and Independents, and majority unfavorability among non-MAGA GOP supporters. Next check into partisans’ lenses
Americans Hear More Frequently About GLP-1 Drugs Than About Menopause, Sleep, or Bird Flu
Yu In a sign of our health communications times, GLP-1s are a much more frequently health topic Americans hear about than autism and ADHD, cosmetic treatments like Botox, Bird flu, sleep issues, or menopause. The Pew Research Center polled 5,123 U.S. consumers in February and March 2025 to gauge peoples’ perspectives on health information and communications trends in America. In the study summary titled, From weight-loss drugs to raw milk, Americans hear more often about some health topics than others, the Pew Research team. The finding that
What GoFundMe and Crowdfunding Campaigns Tell Us About Healthcare in America
“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
The Spirit for Eating Healthier Is Willing, But the Cost of Doing So “Outweighs” the Will – Listening to Escoffier
It’s been a full week’s coverage on food-as-medicine and food as a driver of health in America this week on the Health Populi blog. Today we turn to the chefs at Escoffier who know food, teach food, and now offer programs in holistic nutrition and wellness through the lens of culinary arts. With that lens, Escoffier recently published a report on the future of healthy eating, which will round out this week’s Health Populi landscape on food and health. In the paper, the Escoffier team curated data points from many studies — via Gallup, Mintel, Innova,
Consumers’ Spending on Wellness and Retail Health is “Inelastic” — Think Food (and Food-As-Medicine)
Self-care is a growing thing as people face increasing health care costs, declining access for services and certain products (think: drug shortages and wait times for specialist physician consults), and increasing consumer competence in sourcing information on health care — whether through AI-assisted on-ramps or greater digital literacy in seeking and finding help online. McKinsey has tracked the expanding landscape and value of the global wellness market — and evolving consumer segments — in The $2 trillion global wellness market gets a millennial and Gen Z glow-up. I covered wellness
Consumers Are Keen to Invest in Health and Well-Being – But Show Them the Evidence
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
A Toyota RAV4 Hybrid, a Playground Set, or Healthcare for a Family of 4: What $35,119 Can Buy in 2025 According to Milliman
If you went shopping for something that cost $35,119 in 2025, which would you most value? A new 2025 Toyota RAV4 Hybrid with some extras on board? A Canyon BYO playground set for your yard, school, or social-athletic club? Or, Healthcare coverage for a family of 4 in the form of a PPO? Welcome to this year’s 20th anniversary edition of the Milliman Medical Index (MMI), which I’ve looked forward to reviewing for most of its two-decade history. [You can read my annual takes on the MMI here in Health Populi by searching “MMI” and the year of publication in
In Health Care, Consumers Are Seeking Kindness Coupled with Efficiency
Kindness + efficiency + listening + personalization: together, these are the most important experiences consumers seek from health care touchpoints, we learn in Humanizing Brand Experience: Healthcare Edition from Monigle. In this 8th volume of the company’s Humanizing series, Monigle tracks a different pattern of patient engagement — to be sure, built on trust, yet not just as a health consumer dealing with a diagnosed condition — but more holistically for getting me and keeping me healthy and well. The implication and recommendation here is to deliver even more personalized care
The Next Version of Medical Tourism: Medical Immigration?
One in three Americans could imagine leaving America for good as expatriates — with access to affordable and reliable health insurance the top consideration, according to research conducted by the Harris Poll on behalf of GeoBlue and International Citizens Insurance (ICI). “Thirty-one percent of potential expats cite concerns about healthcare coverage abroad being the reason they haven’t yet taken the leap to move abroad. This trumped concerns about their work and social life abroad,” the survey found. Earlier this year, The Harris Poll’s American Expats Survey, published in February 2025, found that health care accessibility
Health, Wealth, and How Business Can Support Consumers in an Era of “Uncertainty on Steroids”
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
If Food Is Medicine, Some Might Feel It’s a Luxury Good Like a Specialty Drug
Most people in the U.S. say it’s harder to eat healthy given the cost of “healthy food,” we learn in the report on Americans on Healthy Food and Eating from the Pew Research Center, published 7 May 2025. With a view that healthy food is “too expensive,” it may feel like aspiring for it feels like luxury-good shopping, or being a patient prescribed a specialty (high-cost) drug. The Pew team polled 5,123 U.S. adults’ perspectives on eating, fielded between 24 February and 2 March 2025. This report is timely as Secretary of Health and
How Consumers’ Economic Sentiments Are Shaping Peoples’ Financial and Emotional Well-Being (Spoiler: Not So Good): Learning from CivicScience
When it comes to health, the words “fiscal” and “physical” are morphing as peoples’ economic feelings (the “fiscal”) are shaping physical and emotional health, we find in U.S. consumer data presented by John Dick, Founder and CEO of CivicScience. The Consumer Technology Association convened a special session with John, who painted a portrait of the U.S. consumer at a point in time — late April 2025 — reminding us more than once during the hourlong session that, “Everything is constantly changing.” One certainty that we can be sure of, in the dismal-scientist way
A Profile of Health Consumer-Generations’ Use of Digital Health – Rock Health Takes Us Through the Ages
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
Health Insurance Coverage Among Smaller U.S. Businesses Is Eroding: A Signal From JPMorganChase
Working-age people in the U.S. depend on their employers to provide health insurance; just over one-half of people in America receive employer-sponsored health insurance. But a concerning signal has emerged that calls into question how sustainable the uniquely American employer-sponsored health plan model is: that is that one in 3 small businesses in the U.S. stopped covering health insurance after the worst of the pandemic health effects in 2023 as the companies payroll expenses continued to increase, a statistic raised in The consistency of health insurance coverage in small business: industry challenges and insights, a report from the JPMorganChase Institute
Most Americans Don’t Want to Cut Medicaid (Including Republicans)
With potential down-sizing of Medicaid on the short-term U.S. political horizon, a fascinating poll found that most people identifying as Republican would not favor cuts to Medicaid. What fascinates me about this survey, published earlier this week, is that it was conducted by FabrizioWard, a polling firm that has often been used by President Trump. The firm’s Bob Ward told POLITICO that, “There’s really not a political appetite out there to go after Medicaid to pay for tax cuts. Medicaid has touched so many families that people have made up their minds about what
Are We Liberated Yet? Tariffs Can Impact Financial Health (Riffing on MoneyLion’s Health Is Wealth Report)
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.
How BioPharma Can Improve Consumers’ Experience and Health
Patients as health consumers now know what “good” looks like in their digital experiences. People have tasted the convenience and respect they feel from well-designed, streamlined omnichannel retail experiences, and they now expect this from health care — specifically supported by the pharmaceutical companies who manufacture the medicines they use in managing chronic conditions, we learn in ixlayer ixInsights 2025: Pharma’s Role in Improving the Health Experience from ixlayer and Ipaos. The patient-focused report gets specific about people dealing with asthma, COPD, Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, psoriasis, and atopic dermatitis with a lens on
What is a Consumer Health Company? Riffing Off of Deloitte’s Report on CHCs/A 2Q2025 Look at Self-Care Futures
The health care landscape in 2030 will feature an expanded consumer health industry that will become, “an established branch of the health ecosystem focused on promoting health, preventing, disease, treating symptoms and extending healthy longevity,” according to a report published by Deloitte in September 2024, Accelerating the future: The rise of a dynamic consumer health market. While this report hit the virtual bookshelf about six months ago, I am revisiting it on this first day of the second quarter of 2025 because of its salience in this moment of uncertainties across our professional and personal lives — particularly related to
Still Life in Need: Art, Food Justice, and Health
As Thomas Jefferson reminded us, travel makes us wiser…but less happy. And so it is when you confront a piece of art that makes you stop in your tracks, swim in it, and know what it’s saying in terms of what you know you know. Such was the case yesterday during a walking meeting through the Frist Art Museum in Nashville when I passed by this quilt, a multimedia work titled “Still Life in Need” by Lee Colvin, a local artist. This work was part of a
Health Care Nation – How to Inspire a Rosa Parks Moment for Healthcare in America?
Tom Lawry may be best-known as a leading voice on AI in health care; after all, he’s written two very well-selling books on the topic, speaks all over the world on the subject, and in his most recent company-based gig helped lead Microsoft’s efforts in AI in health care and life sciences. When his publisher asked him to write a third book on AI in health care – still a hot topic in publishing – Tom said he’d rather turn to a subject long on his mind: the state of health care in America and how to change the conversation
The Growth of DIY Digital Health – What’s Behind the Zeitgeist of Self-Reliance?
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
The Top Patient Safety Risks in 2025 Are Mostly About the “Human OS” – Reading ECRI’s Annual Report
Each year, ECRI (the ECRI Institute) publishes an annual report on the Top 10 Patient Safety Concerns for the year. The 2025 list was published today. My read of it is that most of these risks have to do with what I’ve been referring to as the Human OS, the Human Operating System, in my talks and teachings. In this post, I’ll focus on 2 of the 10 most top-of-mind in my current workflow with clients and speaking: #1 and #3. Here’s the list of 10, calling out: Risks of dismissing
Consumers Are Financially Stressed – What This Means for Health/Care in 2025
People define health across many life-flows: physical health, mental health, social health, appearance (“how I look impacts how I feel”) and, to be sure, financial well-being. In tracking this last health factor for U.S. consumers, several pollsters are painting a picture of financially-stressed Americans as President Trump tallies his first six weeks into the job. The top-line of the studies is that the percent of people in America feeling financially wobbly has increased since the fourth quarter of 2024. I’ll review these studies in this post, and discuss several potential impacts we should keep in mind for peoples’ health and
Think Quintuple Aim This Week at #HIMSS25
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
Improve Sleep, Improve the World and Health: ResMed’s Look at Global Sleep Trends
The world would be a better place if we had more, and better quality sleep. That’s the hopeful conclusion from the fifth annual Global Sleep Survey from ResMed. ResMed’s global reach with the sleeping public enabled the company to access the perspectives of over 30,000 respondents in 13 markets, finding that one in 3 people have trouble falling or staying asleep 3 or more times a week. We now live in “a world struggling with poor sleep” — “a world without rest,” ResMed coins our sleepless situation. The irony is that most people believe
Health/Care at Super Bowl LIX, GLP-1s, Kaiser and Tufts on Food-As-Medicine, and the RFK, Jr. Factor: A Health Consumer Check-In
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
Measuring Progress for Life Sciences: Trust, Patient Access, and Prevention at a Fork in the Road of Public Health
How will we know if the life sciences sector is advancing in 2025? This is the question asked at the start of the report, a Research Brief: 2025 Indicators of Progress for the Life Sciences Sector, from the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science (IQVIA). To answer that question, IQVIA identified ten indicators for this 2025 profile on the life sciences sector. I selected four key data points for this discussion which provide particularly informative insights for my advisory work right now at the intersection of health, people/consumers, and technology: Trust for/with/in life science
Some Bipartisan Concurrence on Health Care Issues in the U.S. – But Trust in Health Care Isn’t Bipartisan – KFF’s January 2025 Polls
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
How Tariffs Could Wreak Havoc on Health Care Costs and Supply Chains in the U.S.
Non-clinical goods and services can comprise $1 in $5 of net patient revenue in the U.S. health care economy, research from LogicSource gauges. The possible tariffs proposed by the next U.S. President could drive those costs up, eroding financial margins in many parts of American health care — from hospitals to drug companies and med-tech innovators. Simply put, “President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to enact across-the-board tariffs isn’t going over well in the health care industry,” POLITICO reported. Why worry about tariffs’ impacts on health care? Ask the CFO of Reckitt, Shannon Eisenhardt, who spoke
Connecting for Health at Home: A Unified Field Theory from #CES2025 (On Samsung, Withings, and Panasonic)
There were over 4,500 exhibitors on the show floor of the 2025 CES in Las Vegas last week, addressing every imaginable aspect of consumers’ daily lives as we increasingly coexist with technology to support life, liberty, and our personal pursuits of happiness….. ….and health. My focus is always on health, and in the past decade and a half, health/care, everywhere. So my lens on #CES2025 looked out for specific point solutions for health, medical care, fitness and well-being, along with adjacencies for mobility/auto, environmental health (think: clean air, clean water), kitchen appliances and food-tech, and home care (not the medical
How Disrupting the Generic ED Meds Sales Model Marries to Our Digital Coexistences – Mark Cuban at the Shelly Palmer Innovation Series Breakfast #CES2025
What was Mark Cuban doing “gate-crashing” Shelly Palmer’s Innovation Breakfast? My worlds of content and health care collided in a serendipitous way this morning when, at the conclusion of my annual beloved experience attending and learning at the Shelly Palmer Innovation Series breakfast which focuses on content, media, entertainment, and now AI mashing up everywhere, all at once, Mark Cuban appeared as a late-breaking guest in fireside chat with Shelly. Here’s my photo to prove it, circa 903 am this morning. Before even chatting about AI, X, and his
Seeing Health/Care Everywhere at CES 2025: My Preview for #CES2025
Health/care is everywhere is the mantra on the back of my business card. And at #CES2025, that will indeed be the situation. The 2025 convening of CES (once known as the Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas officially kicks off on 7 January 2025. But I’ll be there beginning 3rd January, scheduling pre-show meetings with innovators, analysts, and my own clients who will be attending the meeting. This will be my 15th year participating in CES, and marking over a decade as a member of the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). As someone who has tracked
The Rough Guide to Health/Care Consumers in 2025: The 2025 Health Populi TrendCast
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,
National Healthcare Spending in the U.S. Was Nearly $5 Trillion (with a “T”) in 2023 – New Data from CMS
What would $5 trillion be valued around the world or on the stock market? The economy of Germany was gauged around $5 trillion in 2024. India could be the world’s 3rd largest economy by 2026 valued at $5 trillion. Nvidia could be a $5 trillion company in 2025, as could Amazon. But today we report out the latest data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) that national health spending in America reached $4.9 trillion in 2023. The full report on national health expenditures (NHE) in the U.S. was published today in Health Affairs, which came off embargo
Americans’ Views on the Quality of Healthcare Fell to a Record Low — with Costs Ranking as the Most Urgent Problem for Health in the U.S.
Americans’ perception of the quality of health care in the U.S. fell to the lowest level since 2001, Gallup found in a poll of U.S. health citizens’ views on health care quality, published December 6, 2024. In 2024, only 44% of Americans said that the quality of health care int he U.S. was excellent or good — conversely, 56% of Americans though health care quality was only fair or poor. By political party, that included 50% of Democrats evaluating the quality of care highly compared with 42% of Republicans. Only 28% of people in
Workers Feel “Stuck,” Under-Insured, Financially Stressed, and Neglecting Mental Health
“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
3 in 4 U.S. Patients Say the Healthcare System is Broken — But Technology Can Help
Patients “yearn” for personalized services and relationships in health care — optimistic that technology can help deliver on that hope — we learn in Healthcare’s Future: Balancing Progress and Perception, a health consumer survey report from Lavidge. Lavidge, a communications/PR/marketing consultancy, polled U.S. patients’ attitudes about health care and technology in June 2024, publishing the report earlier this month. Start with over-arching finding that, “Three out of four patients believe the U.S. healthcare system is broken and there is a strong sense of distrust,” Lavidge asserts right at the top of
What Stays True for U.S. Health Care Post #Election2024 (1) – Consumers’ Dissatisfaction with Drug Prices
For health care, there are many uncertainties as we reflect, one week after the 2024 U.S. elections, on probably policy and market impacts that we can expect in 2025 and beyond. In today’s Health Populi post, I’ll reflect on the first of several certainties we-know-we-know about U.S. health citizens and key factors shaping the American health ecosystem. In this first of several posts on “What Stays True for U.S. Health Care Post #Election2024,” I’ll focus on U.S. consumer dissatisfaction with drug prices — across political party identification. Let’s set the context with data from a recently-published
Health Care Costs and Access On U.S. Voters’ Minds – Even If “Not on the Ballot” – Ipsos/PhRMA
Today marks eight days before #Election2024 in the U.S. While many political pundits assert that “health care is not on the ballot,” I contend it is on voters’ minds in many ways — related to the economy (the top issue in America), social equity, and even immigration (in terms of the health care workforce). In today’s Health Populi blog, I’m digging into Access Denied: patients speak out on insurance barriers and the need for policy change, a study conducted by Ipsos on behalf of PhRMA, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America — the pharma industry’s advocacy organization (i.e., lobby
Closing the Chasm Between Patients and Clinicians With Digital Health Tools – Some Health Consumer Context for #HLTHUSA
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
The Health Insurance Premium for a Family Averages $25,572 in 2024 – KFF’s Annual Update on Employer-Sponsored Benefits
The premium for employer-sponsored health plans grew by 6-7% between 2023 and 2024, according to the report on Employer Health Benefits 2024 Annual Survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation, KFF’s 26th annual study into U.S. companies’ spending on workers’ health care. In 2024 the average annual health insurance premium for family coverage is $25,572, split by 75% covered by the employer (just over $19,000) and 25% borne by the employee ($6,296), shown in the first chart from the report. The nearly $26K family premium is the average across all plan types in the
Growing Investments in Digital Health Are Driven by Consumer Demand, Clinical Outcomes, and Cost-Savings
The marketing for purchasing digital health technologies is expecting to grow, driven by increased consumer demands for tech-based solutions, improved outcomes enabled through the innovations, and cost savings derived from deploying the technologies. That’s the top-line finding in the 2024 State of Digital Health Purchasing from the Peterson Health Technology Institute (PHTI). PHTI surveyed 322 digital health decision makers working in employers, health plans, and health systems, fielding the study in July and August 2024. 3 in 4 purchasers grew spending on digital health technologies in the past two years,
Americans Want More Health Care Issues Baked into the 2024 Elections – Gallup
Beyond women’s health and abortion politics, most Americans are looking for more health care baked into the 2024 Elections, based on a new poll from Gallup in collaboration with West Health. Two in three U.S. adults thought health care was not receiving enough attention during the 2024 Presidential campaign as of September 2024. This is a majority shared opinion for voters across the three party IDs in the U.S., shown in the first bar graph. The research polled 3,660 U.S. adults in September, about two-thirds before the presidential debate held September 10, and about one-third
Americans’ Perspectives on Pharma and Healthcare Industries Are Low and Low-Ish Compared with Most Other Sectors
Only 20% of U.S. adults have a positive view of the pharmaceutical industry, garnering the lowest positive vibes among Americans in Gallup’s latest survey on peoples’ opinions of industries in America. About 1 in 3 Americans feel positively about health care in the U.S., on par with publishing and the electric/gas industries — on the lower end of these findings. By far, the top-perceived industry in the U.S. is agriculture and farming, taking the first spot with 64% of Americans’ positive views. Restaurants and the computer sector get 52% positives, although Gallup points out
1 in 2 U.S. Women (“The Bedrock of Society”) Self-Ration Care – the Latest Deloitte Findings
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.
Obesity is a Public Health Epidemic in the U.S. — The Case for GLP-1 Coverage, Affordability and Equity
“If the U.S. were sensible, weight management would be treated as a public health issue,” David Cutler writes in the JAMA Health Forum dated August 15, 2024. Dr. Cutler, distinguished economics professor at Harvard, talks about “the pathology of U.S. health care” citing the example of weight loss medications — in short, the uptake of GLP-1 drugs to address Type 2 diabetes first, and subsequently obesity. Dr. Cutler notes that the price of these drugs in the U.S. “far exceeds” that of other countries: specifically, 9 times that of the prices in Germany and the Netherlands
The New DTC Channel Is…A Vending Machine (From Advil to Plan B)
I’m off to Florence, Italy, soon, where about 10 years ago I happened upon a vending machine sited outside of a pharmacy just a few blocks from the Duomo — the Farmacia Della Condotta. And in that vending machine, accessible at all hours (especially overnight when the pharmacy was closed), were all manners of direct-to-consumer self-care goods….including condoms. What distinguished this from other vending machines that might have channeled condoms at the time was that those tended to be located in men’s rooms in, say, bars — not openly on a city street. You can see the Italian vending machine
Where Democrats and Republicans Agree on Health Care Policies – From Medicare and Prescription Drugs to Gun Safety
In a super-divided electorate like the U.S. with about 60 days leading up to the 2024 Elections, we might assume there are no “purple” areas of agreement between the Red (Republicans) and the Blue (Democrats) thinking in PANTONE color politics. Surprisingly, there are many health policies on which Democrats and Republicans concur, as found in a series of YouGov polls conducted in May 2024. YouGov fielded the health policies poll in five waves online, each among roughly 1,100 U.S. adults in May 2004. This bar chart summarizes health
The Impacts of Heat on Health Across All Dimensions – from Death to “Heat-Flation” on the Pocketbook
Rising energy bills are confronting U.S. households (and indeed, health citizens in many parts of the world) due to extreme heat, PBS reported on 1st September. But the record heat waves in so much of the world is impacting both peoples’ fiscal and financial well-being along with physical health impacts, ranging from exacerbating chronic respiratory conditions to, literally, risks to lives. A recent letter to JAMA, published August 26, 2024, quantifies Trends of Heat-Related Deaths in the U.S., 1999-2023. The authors examined studies finding exposure to extreme heat associated with mortality,
How Voting Plays Into Health, Health Equity, and Community Well-Being
“Voter registration in hospitals is the new frontier in health care.” That’s the headline in a WBUR story last week detailing the efforts of health care professionals in “amplifying” their patients’ voices inside and outside of the hospital walls by advocating for their health citizenship — through voter registration and public health policy advocacy. I’m a long-time evangelist for health citizenship and the role that a person’s engagement in the civic commons plays in one’s own health, the health of their communities and of the nation as a whole. I’m not alone
Women’s Health Outcomes in the U.S.: Spending More, Getting (Way) Less – 4 Charts from The Commonwealth Fund
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 Health Care Costs for Someone Retiring in 2024 in the U.S. Will Reach $165,000 – Fidelity’s 23rd Annual Update
The average person in the U.S. retiring in 2024 will need to bank $165,000 to pay for health care costs in retirement — a sum that does not include long-term care, Fidelity Investments advises us in the 23rd annual look at this always-impactful (and sobering) forecast. I’ve covered this study every year since 2011 here in Health Populi, continuing to add to this bar chart; in the interest of space and legibility, I started this year’s version of the chart at 2014, when the cost for a couple was gauged at $220K. Fidelity began
What the “Vibe-Cession” Means for Health Care in the U.S. – Spending is Personal
People living in the U.S. continue to feel a “vibe-cession” malaise, based on the American Mindset July 2024 update from Dentsu’s Consumer Navigator research. Notwithstanding generally good news about the American macroeconomy — in terms of growth, downward ticking inflation, and expected interest rate relief come September from the Federal Reserve — one in two Americans still thinks the country is in a recession. And this context is important for consumer’s personal spending on health care, fitness, and wellness, because, as Dentsu puts it, “consumers think in terms of personal finances.” As
Consumers Demand Foods That Are Healthy AND Delicious – and Some Health Equity Implications
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
Older Americans Mostly Receptive to Apps for Health, but Chronically Ill People Could Use a Nudge (and a Payer)
AARP found that 7 in 10 people ages 50+ are “app-receptive” for health and wellness apps in Unlocking Health and Wellness Apps: Experiences of Adults Age 50-Plus, a summary of research conducted with U.S. consumers 50 and over from AARP. The methodology for this study included only older consumers who were comfortable in downloading apps to smartphones or tablets, and were willing to do so — whom AARP considered the target audience for this research. In addition, the respondents surveyed were also at least interested in trying apps designed for health and wellness, thus dubbed “health
What’s Expected to Drive Up Health Plan Costs in 2025: GLP-1s, Behavioral Health, and Inflationary Pressures for Hospitals and Doctors – PwC’s Behind the Numbers 2025
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics had good news for American consumers long-facing inflation for household spending over the past couple of years, announcing on July 11, 2024, that the general consumer price index (CPI) fell, lowering real prices for people buying airline tickets, used cars and trucks, communication, and petrol to fill auto tanks. That positive economic news did not extend to medical care and personal care, the BLS reported, whose costs increased by 3.3% and 3.2%, respectively. (Motor vehicle insurance costs grew a whopping 19.5% in the report, FYI). Following the
Financial Strain Among Older People in America, and What Project 2025 Could Mean for Their Well-Being
Over one-half of people 50 years of age and older in the U.S. have felt financial strain in the past year, resulting in 1 in 2 folks cutting back on everyday expenses like groceries and gas. We learn that nearly one-half of people 50 and over say they’ve been impacted by inflation “a great deal” in Making Ends Meet: Financial Strain and Well-Being Among Older Adults, the latest report from the Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation’s National Poll on Healthy Aging based at the University of Michigan (my alma mater). The poll was conducted by NORC at the University
“Listen to Me:” Personalization in Health Care Starts With Taking Patients’ Voices Seriously – the 15th Beryl Institute-Ipsos PX Pulse Survey
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
Medical Debt, Aflac on Eroding Health Benefits, the CBO’s Uninsured Forecast & Who Pays for Rising Health Care Prices: A Health Consumer Financial Update
On June 11, Rohit Chopra, the Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced the agency’s vision to ban Americans’ medical debt from credit reports. He called out that, “In recent years, however, medical bills became the most common collection item on credit reports. Research from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2022 showed that medical collections tradelines appeared on 43 million credit reports, and that 58 percent of bills that were in collections and on people’s credit records were medical bills.” Chopra further explained that medical debt on a consumer credit report was quite different than other kinds
Most Americans Follow an Eating Pattern in Search of Energy, Protein, and Well-Being – With Growing Financial Stress: A Food as Medicine Update
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
Most Americans, Both Younger and Older, Worry About the Future of Medicare and Social Security
You would assume that most people over 50 would be worried about the financial future of Medicare to cover health care as those middle-aged Americans age. But a surprising two-thirds of young Americans between 18 and 29, and 7 in 10 between 30 and 39 years of age, are concerned that Medicare’s solvency will worsen leading to their not being able to receive Medicare when eligible to receive it, discovered in the 2024 Healthcare in America Report from West Health and Gallup. This year’s research focused on aging in America, exploring areas of U.S. health care system successes as well
The Most Trusted Brands of 2024 Tell Us A Lot About Health Consumers
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
A 2025 Subaru Forester, a Year at U-New Mexico, or a Health Plan for a Family of Four: the 2024 Milliman Medical Index
Health care costs for an “average” person covered by an employer-sponsored PPO in the U.S. rose 6.7% between 2023 and 2024, according to the 2024 Milliman Medical Index. Milliman also calculated that the largest driver of cost increase in health care, accounting for nearly one-half of medical cost increases, was pharmacy, the cost of prescription drugs, which grew 13% in the year. The big number this year is $32,066, which is the cost of that employer-sponsored PPO for a family of 4 in 2024. I’ve curated the chart of the MMI statistic for many
The Thematic Roadmap for AHIP 2024: What the Health Insurance Conference Will Cover
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
GLP-1s’ direct and indirect impacts on health care and consumer goods – Jane speaks with Bloomberg BNN
Today, I spoke live with Paul Bagnell, news anchor with Bloomberg BNN, on the topic of the GLP-1 agonists and their impact on health care, industries beyond health and medicine, and consumers. In this post, I’ll share with you some of the plotline for our discussion. Gallup polled U.S. adults in March to gauge their experience with injectable weight loss drugs, the results published earlier this week. The first chart tells us that 6% of people have used these drugs, and 3% were doing so in March. Consumers using the meds were more
Prescriptions Are Up, Health Services Utilization Down, and GLP-1s Are a Major Growth Driver: IQVIA’s 2024 Update
In the past year, the growth of prescription drug utilization and spending has much to do with the use of GLP-1 agonists to treat diabetes and obesity, along with immunology therapy, and lipid meds, along with specialty medicines now accounting for over half of spending — up from 49% in 2018. This update comes from The Use of Medicines in the U.S. 2024 from the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science. The annual report details trends in health services utilization, the use of prescription drugs, patient financing of those costs, the drivers underpinning the medicines spending, and an outlook to 2028.
Inflation, Health, and the American Consumer – “The Devil Wears Kirkland”
The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that surging hospital prices are helping to keep inflation high. Hospital costs rose 7.7% last month, the highest increase in 13 years. This chart from WSJ’s reporting illustrates the >2x change in the CPI for hospitals vs the overall rate of price increases. Hospitals are not alone in price cliffs, with health insurance premiums spiking last year at the fastest rate in a decade, the Labor Statistics data showed. “For patients and their employers, the increases have meant higher health-insurance premiums, as well as limiting wage
The Cost of Medical Care, Long-Term Care, and Prescription Drugs Top Older Americans’ Health-Related Concerns – With Social Security and Medicare Top of Mind
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.
Most Americans See Rise of Mental Health Issues, Poorly Treated by the Health System (with a postscript on Walmart Health)
While people in the U.S. perceive a dramatic rise in mental health conditions among fellow health citizens growing over the past five years, people note barriers of cost, insufficient supply of providers, and stigma as barriers to getting care in the latest Gallup and West Health poll on the subject. In West Health’s words, three-quarters of Americans feel that, “mental health takes a back seat to physical health” in the U.S. A key theme of the research found that Americans find that mental health is not treated as well as physical health in
A Tax on Moms’ Financial and Physical Health – The 2024 Women’s Wellness Index
“Motherhood is the exquisite inconvenience of being another person’s everything” is a quote I turn to when I think about my own Mom and the remarkable women in my life raising children. With Mother’s Day soon approaching, the 2024 Women’s Wellness Index reminds us that the act of “being another person’s everything” has its cost. The Index, sponsored by PYMNTS in collaboration with CareCredit, was built on survey responses from 10,045 U.S. consumers fielded in November-December 2023. The study gauged women’s perspectives on finances, family, social life impacts on health and well-being. My key takeaway from
Leveraging Trust, Showing Humility: How Health Care Organizations Can Serve Consumers – A New Read from McKinsey
Three trends underpin health consumers’ evolving demands for service: spending more but getting less satisfaction and innovation; trusting health care with data but underwhelmed by the use of that personal information; and, growing “shopping” behavior seeking quality, availability, proximity, cost, and options across channels for health care. That’s the current read from McKinsey & Company’s team noting that Consumers rule: Driving healthcare growth with a consumer-led strategy. In this health consumer update, McKinsey spoke with three consumer marketing experts from other industries to learn best practices on how best to “be there”
Healthcare 2030: Are We Consumers, CEOs, Health Citizens, or Castaways? 4 Scenarios On the Future of Health Care and Who We Are – Part 2
This post follows up Part 1 of a two-part series I’ve prepared in advance of the AHIP 2024 conference where I’ll be brainstorming these scenarios with a panel of folks who know their stuff in technology, health care and hospital systems, retail health, and pharmacy, among other key issues. Now, let’s dive into the four alternative futures built off of our two driving forces we discussed in Part 1. The stories: 4 future health care worlds for 2030 My goal for this post and for the AHIP panel is to brainstorm what the person’s
Considering Equity and Consumer Impacts of GLP-1 Drugs – A UBS Economist Weighs In
Since the introduction of GLP-1 drugs on the market, their use has split into two categories: for obesity and “recreationally,” according to the Chief Economist with UBS (formerly known as Union Bank of Switzerland). Paul Donovan, said economist, discusses The economics of getting thin in his regularly published comment blog. “These different uses have different economic consequences,” Donovan explains: Obese patients who use GLP-1s should become more productive employees, Donovan expects — less subject to prejudice, and less likely to be absent from work. While so-called recreational GLP-1 consumers may experience these
Hackathons are intense, fast-paced events where interdisciplinary teams come together to solve complex problems. In this SEE YOU NOW Insight from Episode 46: What The Hack? I collaborated with inspiring nurse innovator Rebecca Love to discuss why it's critical to bring nurses into the hackathon mix to address some of the most pressing problems in healthcare.
I'm once again pretty gobsmackingly happy to have been named a judge for the 2026 CES Innovation Awards, focusing on digital health, longevity, and fitness. Preceding every year's global conference, CES receives hundreds of applications from innovators around the world building tech-based solutions to big challenges. So glad to be part of this annual initiative to see what global health-tech pioneers are cooking up to address and scale the health and well-being of fellow health citizens, globally.
You can see the results of the Digital Health Awardees here on the #CES2026 website.
Stay tuned to Health Populi in early January as I'll be attending Media Days and meeting with innovators in digital health, longevity, and the home-for-health during CES 2026 in Las Vegas. I'll be at the conference for an entire week meeting with clients and exhibitors at the biggest-meeting-of-the-year on consumer-facing technology. I'll be reporting daily from Vegas here in the blog, sharing with you insights about the latest breakthroughs, products, and services that enable people to manage health, well-being, and medical issues in their own hands and homes.