Aduhelm and Alzheimer’s Disease: A Potential Medicare Budget-Buster Puts A Blazing Light on Health Care Costs and Innovation
The FDA’s approval of the first therapy to treat Alzheimer’s Disease in over twenty years brought attention to a not-yet-convened debate of U.S. health care costs and spending, innovation, and return-on-the-investment (as well as “for whom” do the returns accrue). In my latest post for Medecision, I explore different angles on the Aduhelm and Alzheimer’s discussion, covering: The macro- and micro-economics of Alzheimer’s and the $56,000 list price for the drug The FDA regulatory process and aftermath U.S. consumers’ bipartisan support for drug price regulation through Medicare negotiation and private/commercial sector adoption Congressional legislation addressing the price of medicines in
The Healthiest Communities in the U.S. After the Pandemic – U.S. News & Aetna Foundation’s Post-COVID Lists
Some of America’s least-healthy communities are also those that index greater for vaccine hesitancy and other risks for well-being, found in U.S. News & World Report’s 2021 Healthiest Communities Rankings. U.S. News collaborated with the Aetna Foundation, CVS Health’s philanthropic arm, in this fourth annual list of the top geographies for well-being in the U.S. Six of the top ten healthiest towns in America are located in the state of Colorado. But #1 belongs to Los Alamos County, New Mexico, which also ranked first in ___. Beyond Colorado and New Mexico, we find that Virginia fared well for health in
Reimagining Life After the Pandemic – Seeking Health, Safety, Sustainability, and Trust
COVID-19 reshaped people around the world, one-half of whom are re-defining their personal purpose and life-goals. This sense of purpose extends to peoples’ willingness to buy or patronize companies who do not meet their needs for health, safety, sustainability and trust. For example, two in three of these people would switch travel brands if they felt health and safety weren’t up to par, discovered in Life Reimagined – Mapping the motivations that matter for today’s consumers, from Accenture’s Voices of Change series. In May 2021, Accenture polled over 25,000 consumers globally, in 22 countries, and found that one-half of people
Color Me Healthy – Pantone’s Forecast on Post-Pandemic Well-Being and Design
Post-pandemic, the consumer’s priority purchases are grocery, nesting, and health, according to David Shah, a leading thinker about social and design trends. David presented the latest Pantone forecast on color and society in NewTopia – A Balance of Color Opposites – Color for a Post-COVID World this week. I had the opportunity to attend the session, and want to share the health and wellness-related insights David shared in his fast-paced view on the role of color in bolstering wellbeing and community looking out to 2022/23. For context, Pantone plays a role in your life you might not realize. In health
The Healthcare and Macro-Economic Impacts of Living with Endemic COVID – Listening to Fitch
Getting totally rid of the coronavirus isn’t likely, so we humans must accept the fact that SARS-CoV-2 will be endemic. The economic and healthcare system impacts of this were explored in the Post-Covid Healthcare Landscape, delivered by Fitch Solutions’ Jamie Davies and Beau Noafshar, leaders in the Pharmaceuticals, Healthcare, and Medical Devices groups. I welcomed the opportunity to learn from this team’s approach in weaving together the dynamic issues that help us to plan for the long-tail of COVID-19 and its impact on the economy and prospects for the health care industry and health citizens. The first graph illustrates the
5.5 Million Years of Life Will Be Lost Due to COVID-19 in the U.S. in 2020
In 2020 in the U.S., 380,000 people are expected to die due to COVID-19. These people lost due to the coronavirus would, collectively, have lived another 5.5 million life-years would they not have succumbed to the virus. COVID-19 has cut lives short relative to their life expectancy, calculated in an analysis by the Pew Research Center based on CDC data from 2019 and 2020, coupled with additional statistics on life expectancy by age and gender. The bottom-line from the Pew Research Center’s analysis, simply stated, is that, “The pandemic…has killed many Americans who otherwise might have expected to live for
One in Two Americans with Work-Based Insurance Worries That Healthcare Costs Could Lead to Bankruptcy
One in two people in the U.S. with employer-sponsored health insurance worry that a major health event in their household could lead to bankruptcy, according to research gathered by West Health and Gallup in Business Speaks: The Future of Employer-Sponsored Insurance. Gallup and West Health presented their study in a webinar earlier this week; in today’s post, I feature a few key data points that particularly resonate as I celebrate/appreciate yesterday’s U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on the Affordable Care Act (i.e., California v. Texas) combined with a new study published in JAMA Network Open, discussed below the digital fold in
The Stress of the Caregiver: The Most Over-Utilized, Unpaid Stakeholder in U.S. Healthcare
We’ve long know that “the patient” has been an under-utilized resource in the U.S. healthcare system since Dr. Charles Safran testified with that statement to Congress way back in 2004…an era where bipartisanship for health IT was a real thing. Today, with the insights of Alexandra Drane (Founder of ARCHANGELS) and Dr. Nirav Shah (of Stanford University), we know that caregivers are among the most over-utilized resources in the U.S. healthcare system — overused, over-stressed, under-paid, detailed n How Health Systems Can Care for Caregivers, published in the NEJM Catalyst July 2021 issue. In this study, Drane and Shah analyze
The Digital Home: A Platform for Health, via Deloitte and the COVID-19 “Stress Test”
Wherever you live in the world touched by the coronavirus pandemic, you felt (and were) stress-tested. Both you were, and your home was as well. In this year’s 2021 annual report by Deloitte into Connectivity & Mobile Trends, their report details How the pandemic has stress-tested the crowded digital home. This analysis was done, as it is every year, by the Deloitte Center for Technology, Media & Telecommunications. Deloitte’s Center commissioned an online survey among 2,009 U.S. consumers to gauge five generations of peoples’ perspectives on connected life in the context of COVID. The report covers the various life-flows of
Aging Populations of Consumers and Physicians Underpin the Future Doctor Shortage
The U.S. will be short as many as 124,000 physicians in 2034, according to The Complexities of Physician Supply and Demand Projections From 2019 to 2034 from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). Published 11th June 2021, the report was prepared by IHS Markit Ltd. and updates AAMC’s six previous annual reports on physician workforce projections. In this year’s projections, AAMC considers the long-term implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on physician supply, new to this report. Another timely feature in the 2021 study is the Health Care Utilization Equity Scenario which provides a baseline looking at inequities in access
The Pandemic Accelerated Consumers’ Digital Health Tech Ownership As Big Tech Morphs To Big Health
The pandemic ushered in millions of peoples’ first digital health experiences, many of which will persist according to the 23rd Annual U.S. Consumer Technology Ownership & Market Potential Study, published by the Consumer Technology Association. CTA conducted an online survey among 2,409 U.S. adult 18 and over in April 2021 to gather data for this annual report. To ensure a fair sample, CTA drew three datasets for the general population along with an Hispanic oversample and an oversample for people 65 years of age and older. The study looked at 83 consumer technology products and sub-categories, including many directly related
Post-Pandemic, U.S. Healthcare is Entering a “Provide More Care For Less” Era – Pondering PwC’s 2022 Forecast
In the COVID-19 pandemic, health care spending in the U.S. increased by a relatively low 6.0% in 2020. This year, medical cost trend will rise by 7.0%, expected to decline a bit in 2022 according to the annual study from PwC Health Research Institute, Medical Cost Trend: Behind the Numbers 2022. What’s “behind these numbers” are factors that will increase medical spending (the “inflators” in PwC speak) and the “deflators” that lower costs. Looking around the future corner, the inflators are expected to be: A COVID-19 “hangover,” leading to increased health care services utilization Preparations for the next pandemic, and
Telehealth Bolsters Patient Satisfaction (J.D. Power), and Providers Are Working to Catch Up (BDO)
Two studies published in May 2021 illustrate the value and importance of telehealth to patients in 2020, and a disconnect among many C-level executives working in hospitals, academic medical centers, and other care provider organizations. Together, the two reports from J.D. Power and BDO illustrate some mis-alignment between the demand and supply side of telehealth. On the consumer demand side, patients’ growing use of telehealth in the COVID-19 pandemic along with more frequent digital contacts with health plans bolstered member satisfaction, discovered by the J.D. Power 2021 U.S. Commercial Member Health Plan Study. J.D. Power has conducted the U.S. Commercial
What Do Democrats and Republicans Agree On? Allowing Negotiations to Lower Rx Prices
People living in the U.S. have weathered over fifteen months of life-shifts for work, school, prayer, fitness, and social lives. So you might think that the most important public priority for Congress might have something to do with COVID-19, vaccines, or health insurance coverage. But across all priorities, it turns out that prescription drug costs rank higher in Americans’ minds than any other issue in the Kaiser Family Foundation Health Tracking Poll for May 2021. Two-thirds of U.S. adults said that allowing the federal government and private insurance plans to negotiate for lower prices on Rx drugs was their top
The Cost of Health Care for a Family of 4 in America Will Reach $28,256 in 2021
The good news for health care costs for a family of four in America is that they fell, for the first time in like, ever, in 2020. But like a déjà vu all over again, annual health care costs for a family of four enrolled in a PPO will climb to over $28,000 in 2021, based on the latest 2021 Milliman Medical Index (MMI). The first chart shows how health care costs declined in our Year of COVID, 2020, by over $1,000 for that hypothetical U.S. family. But costs rise with a statistical vengeance this year, by nearly $2,200 per family–about
Wearables Are Good For Older People, Too — The Latest From Laurie Orlov
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated a whole lot of digital transformation for people staying home. For digital natives, that wasn’t such an exogenous shock. For older people who are digital immigrants, they will remember their initial Zoom get-together’s with much-missed family, ordering groceries online in the first ecommerce purchase, and using telemedicine for the first time as a digital health front-door. Laurie Orlov, tech industry veteran, writer, speaker and elder care advocate, is the founder of the encyclopedic Aging and Health Technology Watch website. She takes this propitious moment to assess The Future of Wearables and Older Adult in a new report.
I'm in amazing company here with other #digitalhealth innovators, thinkers and doers. Thank you to Cristian Cortez Fernandez and Zallud for this recognition; I'm grateful.
Jane was named as a member of the AHIP 2024 Advisory Board, joining some valued colleagues to prepare for the challenges and opportunities facing health plans, systems, and other industry stakeholders. Looking forward to AHIP 2024 in Las Vegas come June 11-13, 2024.
Join Jane at AHIP's annual meeting in Las Vegas: I'll be speaking, moderating a panel, and providing thought leadership on health consumers and bolstering equity, empowerment, and self-care.