As media attention focused on Minneapolis, Greenland and Venezuela last week, the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) released its 2024 Health Expenditures report Thursday: the headline was “Health care spending in the US reached $5.3 trillion and increased 7.2% in 2024, similar to growth of 7.4% in 2023, as increased demand for health care influenced this two-year trend. “
Less media attention was given two Labor Department reports released the Tuesday before:
- Prices: The consumer-price index (CPI) for December came in somewhat higher than expected with an increase of 0.3% and 2.7% over the past 12 months. Overall inflation isn’t rising, but it also isn’t coming down.
- Wages: The Labor Department reported average hourly earnings after inflation in the last year rose 0.7% during the first five months of this year, but real hourly earnings have declined 0.2% since May. They’re stuck.
Prices are increasing but wages for most hourly workers aren’t keeping pace. That’s why affordability is the top concern for voters.
Meanwhile, the health economy continues to grow—no surprise. It’s a concern to voters only to the extent it’s impacting their ability to pay their household bills. They don’t care or comprehend a health economy that’s complex and global; they care about their out-of-pocket obligations and surprise bills that could wipe them out.
As Michael Chernow, MedPAC chair and respected Harvard Health Policy professor wrote:
“The headline number, 7.2% growth in 2024, is concerning but hardly a surprise. It follows 7.4% growth in 2023. This rate of NHE growth is not sustainable. It exceeds general inflation and growth in the gross domestic product (GDP), pushing the share if GDP devoted to health care spending to 18% in 2024; the share of GDP devoted to health care is projected to rise to 20.3% by 2033. In fact, these figures may be an underestimate of the fiscal burden of the health care system because spending on some things, such as employer administrative costs, are not captured… Given all the attention to prices and insurer profits, it is important to note that those factors are not the main drivers of spending growth—this time, it’s not the prices, stupid. There was virtually no excess medical inflation (medical inflation above general inflation) for 2023 or 2024. In fact, prices for retail drugs (net of rebates) rose at a rate below inflation. There will certainly be cases of rising prices driving spending, but on average, price growth is not the problem. This does not mean high-priced products and services are not an important component of spending growth, but instead it implies that their contribution to spending growth on average stems from their greater use, not rising prices. The main driver of spending growth is greater volume and intensity of care…”
My take:
Since 2000 to 2024, total healthcare spending in the U.S. has been volatile:
- 2000–2007: High growth, typically 6–8% per year (driven by rising utilization and prices).
- 2008–2013: Growth slowed to 3–4% during and after the Great Recession.
- 2014–2016: Growth ticked up to 4.5–5.8% with ACA coverage expansion.
- 2017–2019: Moderation around 4.5%.
- 2020: COVID‑19 shock—growth slowed to ~2% due to deferred care.
- 2021: Rebound to ~4%.
- 2022: 4.8%, close to pre‑pandemic norms.
- 2023: 7.4%, fastest since 1991–92.
- 2024: 7.2%, reaching $5.3 trillion (18% of GDP)
Between 2000 and 2024, total health spending in the U.S. increased $3.9 trillion (279%) while the U.S. population grew by 58 million (20.4%). 2025 spending is expected to follow suit. The underlying reason for the disconnect between health spending and population growth is more complicated than placing blame on any one sector or trend: it’s true in the U.S. and every other developed system in the world. Healthcare is expensive and it’s costing more.
This is good news if you’ve made smart bets as an investor in the health industry but it’s problematic for just about everyone else including many in the industry who’ve benefited from its aversion to spending controls and cost cutting.
The current environment for the healthcare economy is increasingly hostile to the status quo. Voters think the system is wasteful, needlessly complicated and profitable. Lawmakers think it’s no man’s land for substantive change, defaulting to price transparency, increased competition and state regulation in response. Private employers, who’ve bear the brunt of the system’s ineffectiveness, are timid and reformers are impractical about the role of private capital in the health economy’s financing.
The healthcare economy will be an issue in Campaign 2026 not because aggregate spending increased 7-8% in 2025 per CMS, but because it’s no longer justifiable to a majority of Americans for whom it’s simply not affordable. Regrettably, as noted in Corporate Board Member’s director surveys, only one in five healthcare Boards is doing scenario planning with this possibility in mind.
Paul
P.S. The President released his Great Healthcare Plan last Thursday featuring his familiar themes—price transparency for hospitals and insurers, most favored pricing and elimination of PBMs to reduce prescription drug costs—along with health savings accounts for consumers in lieu of insurance subsidies. The 2-page White House release provided no additional details.
Resources
National Health Care Spending Increased 7.2 Percent In 2024 As Utilization Remained Elevatedhttps://www.healthaffairs.org January 14, 2026
Growth In National Health Expenditures: It’s Not The Prices, Stupid January 15, 2026 https://www.healthaffairs.org/content/forefront/growth-national-health-expenditures-s-not-prices-stupid?utm_medium=podcast&utm_source=this+week&utm_campaign=forefront
The Great Healthcare Plan President Donald J. Trump January 15, 2026 chrome-extension://hbgjioklmpbdmemlmbkfckopochbgjpl/https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/The-Great-Healthcare-Plan.pdf
Quotables
Chernow on NHE: “Government policies that shield employers, their workers, those seeking individual coverage and participants in public insurance programs from the financial burden of the health care system can mitigate access and affordability problems from the perspective of those groups. But shifting the financing burden from employers and individuals to taxpayers broadly does not solve the affordability problem and will exacerbate already challenging federal and state fiscal situations. Long term fiscal stability of the system requires addressing the underlying growth in spending, not simply who pays.”
As in 2023, the use and intensity of health care goods and services continued to grow rapidly in 2024, particularly for hospital care, physician and clinical services, and retail prescription drugs. The insured share of the population remained relatively high in 2024, at 91.8%, after its peak in 2023 of 92.5%. Health care spending growth continued to outpace overall economic growth in 2024, and as a result, the health care share of the economy increased from 17.7% in 2023 to 18.0% in 2024.”
Growth In National Health Expenditures: It’s Not The Prices, Stupid January 15, 2026 https://www.healthaffairs.org/content/forefront/growth-national-health-expenditures-s-not-prices-stupid?utm_medium=podcast&utm_source=this+week&utm_campaign=forefront
NEJM on related party transactions: “A key barrier to effective government oversight and optimal allocation of scarce health care resources, however, is the increasing use of “related-party transactions” between health care organizations and affiliated entities, such as real estate or management companies, owned by the same parent company. Corporate owners can manipulate these transactions by setting terms that advantage a related party at the health care entity’s expense, “tunneling” profits and assets from the health care entity to the related party.2 These practices can impoverish health care entities while enriching owners by means of inflated related-party earnings. Profit tunneling obfuscates facilities’ true financial health and makes it difficult for regulators to target resources to organizations facing genuine financial distress. Even fabricated financial distress associated with profit tunneling can lead to bankruptcy or closure, which can disrupt or undermine patient care.
Tunneling and related-party transactions aren’t unique to nursing homes. Accusations of similar practices have been made for entities throughout the health care sector, including hospitals, home health care and hospice organizations, dialysis facilities, and insurers. As consolidation leads to bigger, more complex health care organizations, it becomes easier for owners to shift profits and assets away from entities caring for patients. Greater transparency is a needed first step in the movement toward increased oversight of and accountability among health care entities, whose financial sustainability is critical to the well-being of patients and communities.”
Pleading Poverty — Related-Party Payments and Health Care Entities’ Financial Health January 17, 2026 NEJM https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2512845?query=WB
Blake Madden on the pace of change: “Your sense of urgency needed to have started yesterday. You don’t have as much time as you think. The AI adoption timeline is compressed from past industrial revolutions as society quickens the pace of innovation. The vinyl-to streaming transition took 15 years. The shift from CDs to Spotify took five. Tik Tok took a mere four years to overtake Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube in downloads, and it recently surpassed YouTube in total user minutes per session. Child screen time addiction nightmares aside, the pace of change is alarming. And, I think, healthcare is finally waking up to the technological reality around it. We as an industry are not immune to capitalism and consumerism. But look at how far we’ve tried to defer its effects. What once required a decade of organizational change now demands 24 months of decisive action. So, it’s time to lead. Even in an industry where everyone is safe to follow and collect their rent.”
Autonomous Healthcare is Here – the 2026 Health System Paradigm Shift – 1.7.25
Corporate Board Member on Long-Range Planning Retreat: “The five-year plan is under siege in corporate America. In a stark sign of how dramatically strategic thinking has contracted, only 19 percent of public company board members say their boards conduct scenario planning exercises based on five-year assumptions, according to a recent survey by Chief Executive Group and the Long-Term Stock Exchange.
The forces strangling long-term planning are familiar: artificial intelligence’s breakneck evolution, regulatory whiplash and shareholders’ insatiable appetite for quarterly gains. Together, they’ve created what one director described as an environment where leadership teams chase “near-term wins” that often “compromise future positioning.”
Most companies abandoned traditional 10-year planning long ago, retreating to three-to-five-year horizons. Now, even those modest timelines are under siege.”
Shareholder Pressure, AI And Economic Volatility Erode Long-Term Planning, Survey Finds Corporate Board Member January 16, 2026 https://boardmember.com/shareholder-pressure-ai-and-economic-volatility-erode-long-term-planning-survey-finds
Corporate Healthcare
Lilly-Nvidia team for AI-driven drug discovery lab: Eli Lilly and Nvidia will invest up to $1 billion over five years to set up a Bay Area lab that will unite Nvidia AI experts with Lilly scientists in the name of teaching machines to discover medicines. The co-innovation lab infrastructure will be built on the NVIDIA BioNeMo platform and the NVIDIA Vera Rubin architecture. NVIDIA and Lilly will pioneer robotics and physical AI to accelerate and scale medicine discovery and production.
NVIDIA and Lilly Announce Co-Innovation AI Lab to Reinvent Drug Discovery in the Age of AI | NVIDIA Newsroom January 12, 2026
Grassley investigation of UHG MA Upcoding: “After a review of the records, this report provides evidence that shows UHG has turned risk adjustment into a major profit centered strategy, which was not the original intent of the program…. Staff discovered that UHG uses aggressive strategies to maximize these risk adjustment scores and that UHG appears to be able to leverage its size, degree of vertical integration, and data analytic capabilities to stay ahead of CMS’s efforts to counteract unnecessary spending related to coding intensity. Unnecessary federal spending negatively impacts the MA program and the American taxpayer.”
How United Health Groups puts the Risk in Medicare Advantage Risk Adjustment Senate Judiciary Committee January 12, 2026 chromeextension://hbgjioklmpbdmemlmbkfckopochbgjpl/https://www.grassley.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/uhg_report_-_final.pdf
UHG launches Rural pilot program: UnitedHealthcare’s Rural Payment Acceleration Pilot aims to shorten Medicare Advantage payment timelines from less than 30 days to less than 15 days. The pilot will run for the next six months at rural hospitals in Oklahoma, Idaho, Minnesota and Missouri.
AbbVie Strikes $100 Billion Investment Deal with Trump, Will Lower Medicaid Prices – WSJ
Economy
Quartz on K economy: “While, early in the pandemic, the poorest American households saw significant financial gains through a combination of federal government programs aimed at securing ordinary Americans against the economic hardship posed by the pandemic, now, years out, that phenomenon has long since lapsed. The rich are getting richer—and the downward-pointing line of the “K-shaped economy” only continues to point down.”
Goldman Sachs earnings show 2025 was a great year for the rich Quartz January 16, 2026
WSJ on Consumer Prices: “High prices remain a top concern for Americans, many of whom thought life would be more affordable by now but instead have had to stomach five years of persistent inflation….
People paid more for rent, airline fares and visits to the doctor’s office in December compared with the prior month, according to the Labor Department. On the flip side, gasoline costs and used car and truck prices declined.
What’s more, a slowing labor market has left workers anxious. Outside of the two most recent recessions, 2025 saw the lowest pace of average monthly job growth since 2003…
The current U.S. economy represents something of a split screen, with a cooling labor market but still-solid economic growth..”
Pace of Inflation Held Steady in December; Consumer Prices Up 2.7% on Year – WSJ
WSJ on housing market slowdown: “Home sales finished 2025 with surprisingly strong momentum, rising 5.1% in December for the biggest gain in nearly two years. But even with last month’s boost, the year as a whole still ranks as one of the worst sales slumps in decades.
The increase in sales, which was more than double what economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had expected, reflected easing mortgage rates and slower growth in home prices…
The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate has hovered around 6.2% in recent weeks, down from the start of last year when rates were close to 7%.
Home-price growth is also slowing. The national median existing-home price in December was $405,400, a 0.4% increase from December 2024, NAR said.
Existing-home sales of 4.06 million last year held at their lowest level since 1995, NAR said.
But the U.S. population is now more than 70 million larger than it was 30 years ago, and last year’s sales pace looks worse when measured as a share of total households.
There were about three sales for every 100 U.S. households last year. That marks the lowest ratio since 1982, according to an analysis by First American Financial, a title insurance and real-estate services company. In 1982, the U.S. economy was mired in recession and mortgage rates were around 16%.
Now, three years of high home prices have caused millions of Americans to postpone or give up on the dream of homeownership.
But the biggest problem in the housing market, a shortage of supply that renters and buyers can afford, could take years to fix. Economists say the most likely resolution of the current home-buying affordability crisis is a slow and steady improvement as buyers’ incomes rise, home-price growth remains slow and mortgage rates fall slightly from current levels.”
Home-buying affordability has improved somewhat in recent months as mortgage rates have slid to around 6.2% and home-price growth has held at low levels.
The typical monthly payment for a buyer purchasing a median-priced home with a 20% down payment was $2,365 in the four weeks ended Jan. 4, the lowest level since early 2024, according to the real-estate brokerage Redfin.”
Home Sales in December Jump 5.1%, Biggest Gain in Nearly 2 Years January 14, 2026 https://www.wsj.com/economy/housing/home-sales-in-december-jump-5-1-biggest-gain-in-nearly-2-years-cbdfef5d?mod=itp_wsj,djemITP_h
Study: Housing stability and medical debt: “Among 1515 adults (mean [SD] age, 52.2 [16.2] years; 739 [49.7%] female; 138 [11.5%] Black, 203 [15.1%] Latine, and 1082 [65.0%] non-Hispanic White), 240 (16.4%) reported medical debt in 2024. The unadjusted prevalence of subsequent housing instability was markedly higher among adults with medical debt, compared with those without medical debt. Using doubly robust estimation to adjust for confounders, medical debt was associated with an increase of 7.0 percentage points in the probability of housing instability in the subsequent year.”
Housing Instability Following Medical Debt Exposure Among US Adults, 2023 to 2025 January 12, 2026 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen
Pitchbook on PE recovery in 2025: “After a rocky start in early 2025, US private equity made a striking comeback, fueled by renewed market confidence, improved financing conditions, and a clearer macroeconomic outlook. Dealmakers quickly shook off a volatile Q2, driving full-year PE deal value to $1.2 trillion—the second-highest total on record after 2021. Mega-sized deals stole the spotlight, with 150 transactions exceeding $1 billion and contributing a record-breaking $567.8 billion.
Exit activity also rebounded impressively, notching double-digit YoY growth in exit count for the first time in four years. Mega-exits more than doubled their contribution from 2024, and IPO-ready firms are expected to capitalize on improved market sentiment in early 2026. The only drag on the industry? Fundraising, which saw the weakest levels since 2020. Still, PE dry powder reached a record $1.1 trillion, setting the stage for another active year ahead….
Healthcare PE deal activity finished Q4 on a strong note, with a small number of mega-transactions driving aggregate value meaningfully higher. Deal value increased 46.3% YoY
in the quarter, reflecting sponsors’ renewed willingness to underwrite scale transactions despite a still-selective financing environment. For the full year, total PE-backed healthcare deal
value rose 43.4%, even as deal count increased modestly by 2.6%, underscoring a continued bifurcation between large, high-conviction investments and more muted activity in the lower and middle markets. In total, the market recorded 22 healthcare transactions valued at $1 billion or more in 2025
Healthcare devices & supplies was the primary driver of value growth, posting an annual increase of more than 270% YoY, supported by Hologic’s $18.3 billion leveraged buyout
announced in Q4. The category continues to benefit from durable demand, pricing power, and operational scalability that remain attractive to large-cap sponsors. Healthcare technology systems maintained momentum throughout 2025, with deal value up 43.5%. Activity was led by ModMed’s $5.3 billion LBO in Q1 and HealthEdge’s $2.6 billion buyout in Q2, highlighting sustained investor interest in mission-critical software platforms with recurring revenue and embedded provider workflows. Conversely, healthcare services were flat in 2025, despite several large-scale deals, including the $6.4 billion LBO of Press Ganey in Q4 and Premier’s $2.6 billion Q3 transaction, which closed in Q4.”
2025 Annual US PE Breakdown Pitchbook January 14, 2026 https://pitchbook.com/news/reports/2025-annual-us-pe-breakdown?
Hospitals
STAT on state directed payments: “STAT has been tracking these supplemental Medicaid funds, known as state directed payment programs, previously reporting that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services approved tranches of state applications totaling $9 billion and $4 billion last year. In September, CMS projected state directed payment programs would cost $124 billion in 2025 and $145 billion this year.
The explosion of these arrangements was fueled in 2024, when the Biden administration allowed states to apply for funds that would make Medicaid’s payments similar to what commercial insurers pay. But a provision of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed by President Trump in July, will soon phase out those increases.
Starting Jan. 1, 2028, that law will cut state directed payments by 10 percentage points per year until they get down to 100% of Medicare rates for providers in the 40 states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Those payments will be lowered to a more generous 110% of Medicare prices for providers in the 10 Republican-led states that didn’t expand Medicaid — which includes Texas, Florida, Tennessee, and Georgia. “
Medicaid approves extra payments for hospitals, doctors ahead of cuts | STAT
Kaufman Hall’ National Hospital Flash Report for November 2025:“While all three rating agencies (Moody’s, Fitch and S&P) had issued stable or neutral outlooks for not-for-profit hospitals and health systems in 2025 (and have maintained those outlooks for 2026), financial distress continued to be a persistent driver of transaction activity throughout the year, with the percentage of transactions involving a financially distressed party hitting a new record high of 43.5%.
A new challenge to M&A activity for 2025 emerged with the arrival of the current administration in Washington, DC. A range of legislative and policy actions—including the implementation of wide-ranging tariffs and passage of H.R.1 (also known as the One Big Beautiful Bill) on July 4, 2025—introduced new uncertainty on expense costs, reimbursement rates and insurance coverage (both in the ACA exchange markets and the Medicaid program). Uncertainty led to a significant cooling of M&A activity in the first half of 2025, with the number of announced transactions in Q1 and Q2 reaching record lows. While still relatively low by historical standards, activity began to rebound in Q3 and Q4.
- “Performance this month declined compared to last month. On a year-to-date basis, revenue, volume, and margins are still strong compared to prior years.
- Volumes decreased across all services. Some of the dip in volume could be attributed to November holidays, with fewer elective surgeries and procedures.
- Expenses rose on a volume-adjusted basis, while revenues did not. This highlights the challenge organizations have when managing fluctuating volumes and adjusting their overall spend in response.”
Kaufman Halll National Hospital Flash Report for November 2025
Insurance
WSJ on insurer turnaround: “For the past few years, as Americans poured back into doctors’ offices and operating rooms, U.S. healthcare split into clear winners and losers.
Hospitals and other providers—businesses that make money on volume—thrived. Insurers, which bear the risk of paying for that care, didn’t.
The stock market reflected this divide with brutal clarity. Since early 2020, shares of hospital operator Tenet Healthcare have quintupled while HCA Healthcare has more than tripled. Shares of the nation’s largest health insurers such as UnitedHealth Group and Centene meanwhile, have languished.
That gap now looks poised to narrow…. After years of favoring providers over payers, the economics of U.S. healthcare may finally be turning. “
Why Healthcare’s Stock-Market Winners and Losers Could Soon Trade Places – WSJ https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/second
Marketplace Insurance subsidies: The state-based Affordable Care Act of 2010 marketplaces in Connecticut, Illinois and Pennsylvania have extended their deadlines to January 31 so far. The final day to sign up remains Jan. 15 in the vast majority of states. A few state exchanges were already scheduled to remain open until later in the month, while enrollments closed on Your Health Idaho Dec. 15.
On Monday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reported the enrollments were off pace from a year ago, although sign-ups were higher across the state-run exchanges. Premiums ballooned this year, largely due to the expiration of the enhanced subsidies in place since 2021.
Health insurance exchange enrollment lags 2025 sign-ups: CMS
Reuters on Subsidies: “Millions of Americans are facing higher healthcare costs in 2026 as open enrollment for most federally subsidized Obamacare plans closes on Thursday and Congress remains divided on whether and how it should reinstate generous COVID-era tax credits.
In 2025, about 24 million people were enrolled in the plans, created by President Barack Obama’s signature Affordable Care Act. Of them, about 22 million received subsidies.
On average, premium costs will increase to $1,904 in 2026 from $888 in 2025, according to KFF, a health policy firm.
Those cost hikes mean some buyers will need to make trade-offs in their household budget, settling for a lower level of coverage, or by dropping coverage altogether, said Cynthia Cox, a senior vice president at KFF.
As of Monday, 22.8 million people had signed up for plans on the Healthcare.gov website and on the sites run by 20 states, most of them led by Democrats. In eight of those states and in Washington, D.C., open enrollment has been extended.
Most Obamacare enrollment closes leaving Americans with higher bills or less health insurance January 15, 2026 https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/most-obamacare-enrollment-closes-leaving-americans-with-higher-bills-or-less-2026-01-15/
Physicians
JAMA Study: Resident burnout: “Resident burnout is influenced by more than just number of hours worked—it depends on what occurs during work hours, life outside of work, an individual’s relationship to work, and the organizational culture and broader systems within which residents work. Furthermore, residency training has evolved alongside shifts in the medical field, including policy, technological, and workforce demographic changes. What current residents do during work hours and how residents relate to work-life experiences often differs from the training experiences of those training them and the leaders shaping graduate medical education policy. Therefore, a more comprehensive approach that targets the multifaceted contributors to burnout given present-day work circumstances is warranted. Further research is necessary to explore the key drivers of resident burnout and well-being in today’s environment and to identify interventions that support both resident well-being and competency development.
This nationwide study of resident physicians in high-burnout specialties highlights the varied relationship between work hours, stress, burnout, and self-perceived competency. While longer work hours were associated with higher stress and more self-perceived competency, work hours were not linked to burnout. These findings suggest that work hours alone may not explain high burnout levels in residency. A more comprehensive approach beyond work hour restrictions is needed to support resident well-being in training.”
Work Hours, Stress, and Burnout Among Resident Physicians JAMA January 14, 2026 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen
Bain on PE investments in medical practices: “For success in the next phase of physician group investment, firms will need to build scaled, integrated platforms. To respond to the turbulence caused by staffing shortages and reimbursement challenges, physician groups must evolve from loose confederations into coordinated platforms that provide clinicians with the tools and support to deliver high-quality care. The most successful of these will have a clearly defined role of the center, shared infrastructure, and a compelling value proposition for clinicians.
In addition, physician groups have the opportunity to unlock value by expanding the boundaries of the business via an optimized ancillary suite, exploring vertical or horizontal integration, or investing in the technology infrastructure to reduce administrative burdens on clinicians—though the applicability of each approach depends on the specialty served.”
New Models of Value Creation for Physician Groups | Bain & Company
Population Health
JAMA Study: correlation of state fertility laws (TRAP) and morbidity: Per the study published Friday in JAMA Health Forum that analyzed more than 416,000 births between 2012 and 2021. The researchers found a statistically significant increase — 0.25% — in morbidity in TRAP law states. (All the babies were conceived through fertility treatment.) In states that enact TRAP laws — the targeted regulation of abortion providers — people who use fertility treatments to get pregnant have higher maternal morbidity than those doing fertility treatments in states without such laws.
Study: Public views about severity of opioid abuse: “In this survey study of 1552 US adults, more than 70% of survey respondents viewed opioid overdose as serious and identified people who use opioids and pharmaceutical companies as most responsible for solutions; by ideology, 65% or more of conservatives, moderates, and liberals shared these views. Overall, 38% and 58% were unwilling to have a person with opioid addiction as a neighbor or marry into their family, respectively.
These findings suggest that the US public continues to view opioid overdose as a serious and stigmatized condition.”
Background: “Over the past decade, US adults and the federal government have viewed rising rates of opioid overdose as a public health crisis. However, for the first time in over 2 decades, US opioid overdose deaths meaningfully decreased from 83, 140 deaths in 2023 to 54 743 deaths in 2024.2 This decline coincides with a new federal administration that will shape how the US government prioritizes and responds to opioid overdose in coming years.”
Public Views About Opioid Overdose and People with Opioid Use Disorder JAMA Network Open January 16, 2026 2026;9;(1):e2554314. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.54314
Study: nursing home staffing reimbursement bump and patient health in IL: “To understand the impacts of such policies on patient health, we study a recent Illinois payment reform aimed at increasing staffing at Medicaid-serving facilities. This policy incentivized greater staffing by providing facilities with bonus Medicaid reimbursements up to $38.68 per Medicaid resident-day based on acuity-adjusted staffing levels. In previous work, we found that this reform increased nurse staffing by 12.2% relative to baseline. Herein, we examine the reform’s impact on patient health.
The patterns do not suggest violation of the requisite parallel trends assumption, supporting the validity of both control groups as counterfactuals for Medicaid-focused nursing homes in Illinois.”
Health Impacts of Nursing Home Staffing JAMA Health Forum January 16, 2026 2026;7;(1):e256272. doi:10.1001/jamahealthforum.2025.6272
Business Insider on neuro supplements: “Consumer products that promise sharper thinking, calmer moods, and a cognitive edge are suddenly everywhere.
Meta and Apple are developing, patenting, or acquiring devices we could soon wear around our wrists, on the collars of our shirts, or inside our nostrils to improve our mood — and maybe even “boost” intelligence by providing a kind of IQ-enhancing adrenaline boost for the brain. Much of the new brain tech is being driven by AI, which enables more real-time feedback.
Brain hacking is also becoming a high-end perk at some workplaces.
In 2014, there were just 41 consumer neurotech companies, according to a recent report from the Centre for Future Generations. By 2024, that number had soared to 153, outpacing medical device manufacturing for the brain.”
The great brain hack Business Insider https://www.businessinsider.com/americas-obsession-paying-to-get-smarter-brain-hacking-adhd-alzheimers-2026-January 13, 2026
