A blog covering the health/care ecosystem and people.

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 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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

There are many ways to measure the dysfunction of health care in the U.S.: we can point to relatively poor incomes relative to the rest of the developed world, given how much money is allocated to health care in America. The maternal mortality rate in the U.S. is unconscionably high, akin to some middle- and lower-income nations in the world. And medical debt is a uniquely American form of financial toxicity compared with other OECD nations where the concept is, well, foreign. Even with these many failures, though, it’s important to put U.S. health care in a larger context: the

With women’s health and femtech investing in the spotlight in 2025, most of the focus has been on either women’s access to health care services (e.g., for abortion and prenatal/primary care) to start-ups focusing on fertility technology and benefits, along with growing awareness of the long-overlooked menopause market opportunity. Contraception? Not so visible. Of course, we welcomed the Opill to the over-the-counter medicines market last year with FDA approval of the switch to retail pharmacy and vending machine access.                     Now let me point you to a newfangled marketing campaign for

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

As Weight Watchers prepares to initiate bankruptcy proceedings, I file the news event under “thinking the unthinkable.”                     “Thinking about the unthinkable” is what Herman Kahn, a father of scenario planning, asked us to do when he pioneered the process. In this book, for Kahn, “the unthinkable” was thermonuclear war, and the year was 1962. The book was tag-lined as “must reading for an informed public” and in it, Kahn             I’ve been drawn back to this book lately because of a more intense workflow using

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

Art reflects life — or in this case, bumps into life and health care — once again when the pop culture facet of my own media consumption converges with a news announcement where the timing of these events is just too uncanny. It never occurred to me I’d ever write about the Hallmark Channel in the Health Populi blog. But reading the news that President Trump’s administration plans to cut funding for the ongoing 30-year study into diabetes and pre-diabetes — the landmark National Diabetes Prevention Program (NDPP) — dovetailed (or perhaps more honestly stated, collided) with the plotline of

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

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

                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

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,

December 1 2024 was World AIDS Day, which was observed by the Biden White House with the display of the entire AIDS Memorial Quilt on the South Lawn — all 54 tons of it. The Biden-Harris Administration announced efforts, in advance of World AIDS Day, to continue to fight HIV/AIDS “at home and abroad.” The press release for the effort noted that, ”We remember those who have died from AIDS-related illnesses—honoring their courage and contributions as essential to the progress made thus far. We also stand in solidarity with the more than 39 million people with HIV around the world.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks to Progressive Grocer’s 91st annual report and research therein, we have fresh insights into where wellness and nutrition fit into food retailers’ — and pharmacies’ and Big Box stores’ — strategies. That priority ranks high in grocers’ plans for in-store services in 2024 and beyond.               Far above all other strategies for food retailers’ in-store services, we see that on-site butchers rank high — among 3 in 4 retailers. Why this might be the case: cost- and value-focused consumers often have questions about how to cook different (lower-priced) costs of meat, or desire

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.           

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

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

How financially vulnerable are people with medical debt in the U.S.? Significantly more, statistically speaking, we learn from the latest survey data revealed by the National Financial Capabilities Study (NFCS) from the FINRA Foundation. The Kaiser Family Foundation and Peterson Center on Healthcare analyzed the NFCS data through a consumer health care financial lens with a focus on medical debt.          Financial distress takes many forms, the first chart inventories. People with medical debt were most likely lack saving for a “rainy day” fund, feel they’re “just getting by” financially, feel their finances control their life, and

The cost of living ranks top in U.S. voters’ minds among many issues Americans are feeling and following in late 2023. A close second in line is affordability of health care, as consumers’ household budgets must make room for paying medical bills — with prescription drug costs also very important as a discussion topic for 2024 Presidential candidates, we learn from the latest KFF Health Tracking Poll published 1 December. The monthly study focused on U.S. voters’ top issues and perspectives on the health system and care approaching the new year of 2024. KFF fielded the study among 1,301 U.S.

“Do personal health trackers belong in the doctor’s office?” Software Advice wondered. “Yes,” the company’s latest consumer survey found, details of which are discussed in a report published on their website. Unique to this study is the patient sample polled: Software Advice surveyed 876 patients in September 2023 to gauge their perspectives on wearable tech and health. Note that the patient sample was limited to consumers who had seen a health care provider in the past two years and who also owned and used a personal wearable health device such as an Apple Watch or Fitbit. Thus, the responses shared

In the nation’s search for spending smarter on health care, the U.S. could save at least $13 billion a year through deploying medically-tailored meals for people enrolled in Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance programs, according to the True Cost of Food, research published by the Tufts School of Nutrition Science and Policy collaborating with The Rockefeller Foundation.       It’s been one year since the White House convened the Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health, kicking off the Biden Administration’s national strategy to improve health citizens’ access to healthy food as a matter of public health and economic security.

Statin therapy has been used for decades to lower cholesterol with the goal of reducing mortality and preventing cardiovascular problems such as heart attacks and strokes. Hims & Hers announced a new service offering for health consumers and clinicians concerned about heart health called Heart Health by Hims.               This is Hims & Hers’ first foray into cardiovascular health, working in collaboration with the American College of Cardiology (ACC). ACC clinical guidelines will inform the Hims’ provider platform for the program. “Prevention is the ideal mechanism to decrease cardiovascular events and ensure optimal heart

“Brick-and-mortar pharmacies forge meaningful connections with customers” through conversations between pharmacists and patients, “on a first-name basis.” This quote comes from Christopher Lis, managing director of global healthcare intelligence at J.D. Power who released the company’s annual 2023 U.S. Pharmacy Study today, the 15th year the research has been conducted.                           Each year, J.D. Power gauges U.S. consumers’ views on retail pharmacies in four channels: brick and mortar chain drug stores, brick and mortar mass merchandisers, brick and mortar supermarkets, and mail order. Across all four channels, the

The retail health landscape continues to grow, now with GNC Health offering a new program featuring telehealth and  “curated set” of 40+ generic prescription drugs commonly used in urgent care settings.             The services are available to members of GNC’s new-and-improved loyalty program, GNC PRO Access, which is priced at a fixed fee of $39.99 for one year’s membership. This is available to consumers 18 years of age and older. “As a trusted brand in the health and wellness space, we are thrilled to expand our efforts in helping our customers Live Well by offering

You may not be able to get that ear-worm jingle that goes “O O O Ozempic” out of your musical mind, but I’m happy to tell you there’s a new “O” in town: the Opill. Welcome to the first OTC contraceptive for sale in the USA.                     I wrote about Perrigo’s Opill here in Health Populi in May 2023 as a “signpost on the road to retail health.” It’s official: “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Opill®, a progestin-only daily oral contraceptive, for over-the-counter (OTC) use for all ages.

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.                  

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%

The COVID-19 pandemic re-shaped European Union leaders to reimagine healthcare, public health, and health citizenship in the EU. Welcome to #HealthUnion, the hashtag that the European Commission has adopted with the vision of assuring access to medicines for all people living in the 27-nation EU area — regardless of socioeconomic status.             On 26th April 2023, the EC unveiled the most significant reforms for the region’s pharmaceutical industry in twenty years. It’s really a package or “toolkit” in the words of EC Health and Food Safety Commissioner Stella Kyriakides for addressing several strategic health pillars

Over one in three U.S. consumers use a health app or wearable technology device to track some aspect of their health. “The public’s use of health apps and wearables has increased in recent years but digital health still has room to grow,” a new poll from Morning Consult asserts, published today.                   Among digital health tech users, most check into them at least once every day in the past month. One in four use these tech’s multiple times a day, the first pie chart illustrates. Eighteen percent of people use their digital

People are sick of being sick, the New York Times tells us. “Which virus is it?” the title of the article updating the winter 2022-23 sick-season asked. Entering 2023, U.S. health citizens face physical, financial, and mental health challenges of a syndemic, inflation, and stress – all of which will shape peoples’ demand side for health care and digital technology, and a supply side of providers challenged by tech-enabled organizations with design and data chops. Start with pandemic ennui The universal state of well-being among us mere humans is pandemic ennui: call it languishing (as opposed to flourishing), burnout, or

While consumers’ satisfaction with inpatient care experiences improved a few points over the past year, health insurance and hospitals still fall in the bottom-third of all industries with which people interact, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) Insurance and Health Care Study 2021-2022.               “With visitor restrictions relaxing and more elective procedures going forward, hospitals are slowly coming out of a COVID-induced satisfaction slump,” the study press released quoted Forrest Morgeson, Assistant Professor of Marketing at Michigan State University. This year’s ACSI Insurance and Health Care Index was developed through 12,840 consumer interviews

What is a “pharmacy” these days? You might have recently walked into a brick-and-mortar retail pharmacy. Or, you might have refilled a prescription to help you manage a chronic condition, online. Or, perhaps, you asked the pharmacist staffing your favorite grocery store Rx counter to give you the latest vaccine to keep COVID-19 variants at-bay. The pharmacy is all these things, and increasingly digital-first, we learn in The Rx Report: A new day in retail pharmacy, a consumer survey from CVS Health.         CVS Health, one of the two largest pharmacies operating in the U.S. in 2021

On Tuesday November 8, 2022, health and medical issues will be on many U.S. voters’ minds as they enter voting booths to select representatives for the House and the Senate, along with some states’ ballots addressing specific healthcare issues. Health policy experts from Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, AARP, and the United States of Care recently shared perspectives on the health care issues on voters’ and policy makers’ minds for the 2022 midterm elections. This post synthesizes their analyses as we lead up to what will be a pivotal election for Americans’ public health, individual well-being, and access to care.