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),
Dr. Osterholm Explains “The Big One” – A Deja Vu Moment with a True North Public Health Expert
“The truism that no one is completely safe until everyone is safe is a truism because it happens to be true.” So caution Michael Osterholm, epidemiologist, professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, and director of CIDRAP (the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the U-MN) and collaborating writer Mark Olshaker in their new book, The Big One. (In this post, for the sake of brevity, I’ll refer to the two authors as “O&O”). Simply put, the tagline tells us what we are about to read: a
What the Growth of Single-Person-No Children SNAP Beneficiaries Means for Health in America
“SNAP has moved away from primarily serving families with children toward serving households without children, particularly those consisting of just one person,” an analysis from The Institute for Family Studies observes, giving us some food-for-thought on what these changing demographics of SNAP beneficiaries could mean for the health and well-being of people in the U.S. The Institute looked at data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and graphed this top-line trend of households with children declining as a percent of SNAP households compared with growth among households without children. SNAP has significant
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
U.S. Physicians Have to Deal with the Growing Info-Demic of Disinformation Meant to Mislead Patients
Close to 100% of U.S. doctors agree that misinformation and/or disinformation undermines patient care, according to a new survey from the Physicians Foundation. The Foundation polled over 1,000 U.S. physicians in late May 2025 to gauge doctors’ perspectives on information and patients’ health literacy. Furthermore, over one-half of physicians believe that misinformation – and/or disinformation — significantly impacts the ability to deliver quality patient care. The first graphic differentiates between “misinformation” and “disinformation,” where the latter is false or inaccurate information deliberately intended to mislead people. Misinformation is somewhat more benign in
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
Ozempic: A Medicine, and a “Cultural Shorthand” – What The Harris Poll Knows About Gen Z Consumers and Health Care in America
Among the top 20 fastest-growing growth brands beloved by Americans between 18 and 28 years of age — that is, Gen Z consumers — we see brand-equity love for companies channeling athleisure, fashion, new-fangled financial products, and food & beverage brands. And then there’s Ozempic, which gained 10 full percentage points from Q1-2025 to Q2-2025, according to The Harris Poll’s QuestBrand research. What does it mean that a prescription drug has joined these brand-loved rankings? The QuestBrand research found that as of the second quarter of 2025, more than one in 3
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
How Taking Care of Our Pets Could Inspire Us to Care Better for Ourselves (and Each Other)
In a recent study which was part of the American Heart Association’s Healthy Bond for Life initiative, two-thirds of Americans told the AHA that they took better care of their pets than themselves. So with a lens on how to help inspire peoples’ self-care, I was keen to dive into research from Pet Partners Insurance (PPI), a pet health insurance provider, collaborating with the Human Animal Bond Research Institute (HABRI), to learn more about The Power of Pet Perks: How Pet-Inclusive Benefits Drive Employee Engagement, Retention, and Positive Workplace Culture. My interest
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
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.
Jane collaborated on Robin Strongin's Health Dame webcast to discuss Halle Tecco's new book, Massively Better Healthcare, due out in early 2026. We brainstormed with Maven Founder Kate Ryder and the company's Chief Medical Officer Dr. Neel Shah about the state of U.S. healthcare and solutions not just to tweak at the margins but to "massively" improve health care delivery, financing, outcomes, and equity in America. It was a delightful, enlightening conversation -- I hope you'll check it out.