The short answer is yes, but the narrative is changing uncomfortably for some.
I’ve studied healthcare trends and issues at home and abroad for 50 years—literally. A constant has been the foundational assumption that the U.S. system is the world’s best. That’s usually followed by references to best hospitals, best doctors, mortality and morbidity stats, safety report cards, star ratings and more. And what usually follows are stories about life saving heroics by caregivers, breakthrough medicines for difficult to treat populations and innovative treatments outside traditional settings in hospitals and clinics.
The quest for quality in U.S. healthcare was launched by the American College of Surgeons’ Hospital Standardization Program (1917–1919) led by Ernest Codman. In 1951, ACS joined AMA, ACP, AHA, and CMA to form the Joint Commission and in 1986, Congress directed the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to assess and measure quality in the Medicare program. It was IOM’s “To Err is Human” (1999) that turbocharged the quality improvement era in healthcare through its shocking revelation “44,000–98,000 deaths per year in U.S. hospitals are caused by preventable medical errors” –more annual deaths than motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer, AIDS and the entire war in Vietnam.
What’s followed since are substantive efforts to refine methodologies, expand application beyond hospitals into all domains of health services, and formulate policies to standardize care delivery around evidence-based best practices. Names like Deming, Bataldan, Crosby, Juran, Guwande Wachtor, Topol, Adelman, Berwick, Perlin and Mercado, and organizations like JCAHO, AHRQ, NCQH, IOM, IHI, NAM, NCQA, AHQA and others have contributed to notable success.
I spend most weekends with hospital and healthcare system boards. They’re trying to think forward about trends that will impact their future and potholes to avoid. Most have successfully implemented information technologies that enable investigation of root causes when errors are made and professional development pathways to hardwire continuous quality improvement in their workflows.
But most still tiptoe around the most delicate issues involving physician practice patterns and compensation, minimum staffing levels, transparency about outcomes, accuracy in diagnoses, and others. Hospital boards rarely question how root cause analyses are conducted, or how “quality of care” in the organization is measured. They assume certification by JC and others is all they need to know, and the credentialling process is adequate to address clinician issues as they arise.
The same is true in nursing homes medical groups and insurer settings where it’s rare their Boards are equipped to opine to the organization’s quality. Most insurer boards, for instance, have limited understanding of how network adequacy is gauged, coverage and denial decisions are made and member outcomes are captured. But it’s also understandable: Boards see their priorities as setting direction (strategy), securing resources for sustainability (funding) and advising the CEO. An acceptable level of “quality” to most boards is one that allows is accretive to their reputation and avoid harm.
All relish recognition: more than 800 hospitals currently promote themselves as a “Top 100” or “America’s Best “and ditto for “Best of …” recognition in other sources.
In the future, three factors will magnify attention to quality beyond listings and expand its meaning among key stakeholders and outsiders:
- Agentic AI Specificity: Agentic artificial intelligence—the most advanced application of the powerful technology– — will extrapolate all relevant data (including indicators outside Western medicine) to produce definitive and verifiable observed to expected outcomes and costs associated based the processes applied in workflows. It will offer differential diagnoses based on more complete diagnostics and consider a wider range of treatments/interventions. The pendulum for quality improvement will shift from “best practices” and apps to “best results” and bots posing new risks in compliance and workforce development.
- Non-Stakeholder Transparency: Quality improvement to date has been developed, rules designed and digested as SOP inside baseball. Outsider access to “how the sausage is made” has been controlled by insiders via state and federal protections. The combination of AI-enabled data gathering and verification, social media dependence especially in working age populations and demand by lawmakers, employers and consumers will force democratization of each organization’s quality improvement results. The use of “trusted sources” will be a strategic imperative.
- Affordable quality: Polls show the majority of Americans worry about their household finances and almost half are financially insecure. In U.S. healthcare, American’s associate high-quality healthcare with modern facilities, specialized services and use experienced that are not negative (this bar is low). As agentic AI driven insights find their ways into workplaces, schools and communities, the association between quality and prices will be more apparent. With that, dynamic pricing, facility fees, reimbursement rates et al will be public knowledge, and consumers will query relationships between quality and affordability comparing their options. Insurers will promote interrogatories–how much of a price is attributable to admin costs? Executive compensation” supply costs? Et al. Like higher education, legal and consultancy services, et al, a substantial element of the hospital market will contract directly for high value services.
So, is quality in healthcare still relevant? Yes, now more than ever, but not based on old ways of demonstrating it. That’s going to be uncomfortable for some.
Paul
PS: The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act passed Friday night without the President’s signature. It adjusts a plethora of federal rules, with an aim to make it easier and cheaper for developers to break ground and raise walls, and illegal for large investors to snap up single-family homes. That combination could increase the supply of housing and drive down prices for homeowners and renters alike.
It passed on the weekend the AHA Leadership Summit commences in Denver where hospital leaders will hear outgoing AHA CEO Rick Pollack opine to its future. That future will be complicated because Americans are worried about the economy and their household finances. Healthcare is among their worries after food, fuel and housing. And most think hospitals can survive because their child care, food and rent obligations are more important. The ranks of these are increasing and includes a fourth of the hospital workforce who are paid hourly and face household financial insecurity.
AHA’s future along with insurers and employer partners is dependent on its willingness to tackle health and wellbeing problems outside its traditional comfort zone. That discussion should begin by revisiting community benefits and tax exemptions toward a transformed system of health.
Quotables
Thompson on Affordability: “Taken together, these areas reflect a broader point: Affordability is a system-wide challenge that requires shared responsibility. Hospitals and health systems need to do their part by investing in new models of care, improving efficiency and reducing low-value services. But meaningful progress will require action from all stakeholders, including commercial insurers, drug manufacturers, policymakers, employers and individuals.
In addition, efforts to improve affordability cannot come at the expense of essential services. Hospitals must be available to provide around-the-clock care for patients and maintain the capacity to respond to emergencies and complex medical needs. Policies that focus narrowly on reducing one part of spending without accounting for these realities risk undermining the care that communities rely on.”
Affordability Requires Looking at the Whole Healthcare System | AHA News
Brailer on AI in healthcare: “AI will not determine whether American health care becomes more or less affordable. The payment system will determine that, as it always has. What AI changes is the speed and scale at which the payment system’s incentives express themselves.”
Why AI Will Accelerate Health Care Inflation | Health Affairs
Mazer on AI use in hospitals: “Every knowledge-based profession may one day reach the point when AI outperforms the human experts. In medicine, that day appeared to come in April. A group of primarily Harvard and Stanford researchers announced the results of a study that pitted ChatGPT against hundreds of physicians in a diagnostic obstacle course involving written medical mysteries and information from real-world patients. The bot had won, and the humans weren’t entirely happy about it.
In this way, the emergence of today’s AI health products remind me of the rise, in the 2010s, of ride-sharing services such as Uber and Lyft. The taxi industry is heavily regulated, making it difficult for new players to enter the market. Yet by skirting and at times ignoring those rules, ride-sharing companies were able to acquire a critical mass of users in a short period of time. Pretty soon, governments had little choice but to adjust their laws to match what had by then become the status quo. The same pattern could end up playing out in medicine. Will regulations meant to ensure that medical products are safe and effective remain in force? Or will they instead be weakened or removed to clear the path for tools that everyone is already using?”
Doctors Are Worried About AI. They Use It Anyway. – The Atlantic
JAMA: AI use on mental health: It seems that everyone is talking about artificial intelligence (AI) these days. Comedian John Oliver recently examined the mental health risks of AI chatbots on Last Week Tonight, and Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica humanitas, warned that AI should not replace or attempt to “enhance” humanity, highlighting the risks of widening societal power imbalances. Recent calls to action from scientists and health experts have raised similar concerns about equity, including the mental health implications of AI.1,2…
Widespread use of AI to address mental health needs is a public health issue. The US is experiencing an epidemic of loneliness affecting both older adults and young people.8,9 This trend has been partially fueled by the rise of social media during critical developmental stages, with young people spending more time on screens and less time interacting face-to-face.8 AI has become a form of companionship for many people who feel disconnected and lonely—and thus more likely to experience mental health problems10—as they attempt to connect.
Why AI’s Mental Health Risks Demand Regulation Now | JAMA Forum | JAMA Health Forum | JAMA Network
WSJ Editorial on Ethicality in AI Use: “In the case of artificial intelligence, choices made in boardrooms and research labs will have far-reaching consequences. We need to understand that clearly, before the changes become irreversible. Even more, to make serious decisions about our future, we need to state the moral definitions of what it means to be human and the limits on AI’s influence on the social order…
AI development is outpacing ethical deliberation, and people are already being harmed. We’ve seen teens counseled toward suicide, a proliferation of child sex-abuse material and communities strained by sprawling data centers. And that’s only what’s come to light. This technology is permeating our lives in ways beyond our awareness. The risks of AI superintelligence run from economic upheaval to the concentration of power in the hands of whatever corporation or government wins the AI technology race.
At the same time, we have to see clearly the good of AI…”
A Christian Vision for the Future of AI – WSJ
McKinsey on healthcare workforce productivity: “US healthcare faces a paradox. Over the past two decades, labor productivity in clinical-care organizations has declined roughly 1%, while productivity across the broader US services economy has increased more than 55%. In other industries, technology advances over the years have driven meaningful productivity gains by transforming entire operating models and workflows, not just digitizing isolated tasks. By contrast, healthcare organizations have long pursued incremental improvements without achieving comparable productivity gains from technology and automation…
Healthcare tells a different tale. The industry is automating inefficiency faster than it is eliminating it: more technology, more people, yet less output per unit of labor. US clinical-care organizations now invest more than $150 billion annually in IT,4 yet face compounding costs and margin compression. These outcomes reflect not only execution challenges but also the realities of delivering high-stakes care within a fragmented, highly regulated system. Healthcare has also long accepted that productivity improvements are fundamentally limited by the labor-intensive nature of care delivery. For the first time, however, AI creates an opportunity to redesign how care is delivered and how shared services function, overcoming the historical barrier linking labor inputs and output.
The future of work in healthcare, therefore, should not be a technology story alone. It must be a story of operating-model transformation enabled by technology. Improving margins, as well as enhancing patient access, experience, and outcomes, will require substantial labor productivity gains across clinical-care organizations, far beyond what incremental improvements from point solutions or isolated pilots can deliver. Instead, interventions that provide 40 to 50 percent end-to-end improvements in processes and functions are needed, based on our experience.
The real future of work in healthcare | McKinsey
Novant Policy Center on Regulatory Dysfunction in healthcare: “… the term “regulatory false starts” to refer to those circumstances in which clinician, hospital, or health system investments in compliance infrastructure, operational workflow redesign, technology acquisition, or staff education and training are stranded or abandoned after implementation efforts face prolonged delays or halted altogether.
Unfortunately, such circumstances are not isolated or uncommon in health care. Regulatory false starts have created a repeated pattern in recent years—adding significant costs to US health care yet lacking a name in health policy taxonomy for describing forms of health care waste.
Regulatory false starts distinguish themselves from ordinary administrative burden and complexity. Each delay triggers organizational mobilization, de-escalation, and subsequent remobilization. These cycles multiply the direct and indirect costs, as organizations effectively pay multiple times for the same compliance objective.”
Regulatory False Starts: A Unique And Understudied Form Of Health Care Waste | Health Affairs
Economy
CMS Health Spending Projection: “By 2034, national health spending is projected to total nearly $9.0 trillion and to represent 20.6% of the economy, compared with $5.3 trillion and 18.0% in 2024. The rate of national health spending growth during this period is influenced by continued elevated use of medical services and goods through 2026; major legislative changes that affect insurance coverage and spending through 2028; and continued demographic shifts toward public programs, mainly Medicare. The insured share of the population is expected to be 90.5% 2034, compared with 91.8% in 2024.”
Pitchbook on Deal Values: “Deal value fell to its lowest level since Q4 2023, even as transaction flow held firm. Q2 2026 closed with 2,384 announced and estimated transactions—flattish QoQ but up 11.5% YoY—while aggregate value settled at $177.3 billion, a sharp pullback of 37.5% QoQ and 23.9% YoY. YTD, deal value totaled $461 billion through Q2, off 10.6% from H1 2025, With conflict in Iran, energy prices spiking, and inflation back in the conversation, dealmakers turned cautious, and the gap in rate assumptions between buyers and sellers widened from Q1. That divergence, a steep value decline against a stable deal count, is a reversal from previous quarters. Sponsors kept transacting, but at dramatically smaller average sizes, retreating from the large, financing-dependent deals that powered prior quarters.”
Union Healthcare on AI efficiency: “56% of health cost is now labor expense, up from 50% pre-pandemic. 9% year over year cost increase in non- labor expense costs. Where early movers are winning Not clinical AI. Back office?
- Prior auth: 50%+ of requests handled without human review
- Patient messaging: response time cut from 4 days to 2
- Pre-registration: 13 FTEs freed across a 300-person staff
The pattern is consistent — the wins are concentrated in high-volume, repetitive tasks where the human step was procedural, not judgment-based.”
Healthcare’s Next Forced Efficiency Leap Is AI www.unionhealthcareinsight.com
Pitchbook on fundamental change in venture capital market: “SpaceX’s IPO was a formal marker of the VC market’s evolution. Staying private longer and $1 trillion valuations are products of that change, not the cause. After the global financial crisis, US venture was a $40 billion annual market. $412.7 billion was invested in 2026 through just two quarters. SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI may be outsized examples, but any unicorn that is 10-plus years old or has double-digit billion-dollar valuations is a beneficiary nonetheless…
So here we are. Three companies (should OpenAI and Anthropic actually go public) will generate more exit value than all VC-backed exits since 2000. Those companies will be pitched as extreme cases of the power law, used as examples of the benefits of companies staying private longer, and as the basis for why private market valuations shouldn’t mirror the pricing mechanics of the public market. They will also further cement large institutional capital in the venture market.”
VC has changed, but it was never going to stay a cottage industry forever www.pitchbook.com
Economist on corporate debt: “In some ways, the AI bonanza makes the corporate-bond market appear a little safer. The total debts of America’s five “hyperscale” cloud giants—Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Oracle—climbed by $228bn in the six months to March. That is nearly five times more than any such two-quarter increase in the past. The first four of the firms have for years churned out more profit than they know what to do with, so enjoy strong credit ratings. Microsoft’s debt is considered safer than Uncle Sam’s. Only Oracle, the smallest and least profitable of the five, receives a middling “B” grade from big credit-rating agencies (though so do the issuers of about half of American corporate bonds these days).
You might expect a debt-raising boom to raise the spreads on corporate bonds, a measure of their risk relative to safe Treasuries. But thanks to the creditworthiness of the biggest issuers, spreads remain at around 0.8 percentage points on average, close to the lowest in a quarter of a century.”
AI has taken over the stock market. The bond market is next
Economist on long-term health economy: “Two new papers from the National Bureau of Economic Research, a repository of economic thought, suggest that the vision of health care gobbling up tax revenues may not come to pass. In the first, David Cutler and Lev Klarnet, both of Harvard University, observe that in 2024 America spent $1trn less on health care than official forecasts from 2010. The second is by Liran Einav, of Stanford University, and Amy Finkelstein, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Using a survey of users of Medicare, America’s system of health insurance for the old, they find that, whereas expected lifetime spending on Social Security (i.e., pensions) rose by 14% between 1993 and 2017, the expected cost of Medicare increased by only 6%. That is partly because elderly Americans have been collecting their pensions for longer but spending less time seriously ill.
The papers point to improvements on both sides of the equation. Start with the cost of providing health care in hospitals. Messrs Cutler and Klarnet point out that, between 2000 and 2010, it consistently rose by around 2.3 percentage points above inflation—but that later something changed. Between 2011 and 2024 hospital costs rose by only 0.5 percentage points more than overall prices. Technology has played a role. Technological improvements in health care come in two types: some are adopted because economies get richer and can afford to treat new things; others make it cheaper to provide the same outcomes. For much of the past century, the first type dominated the second. Now, it seems the second type has taken over. Baumol’s cost disease turned out to be curable.
On top of that, less health care is needed than was once expected. Health-care systems may have become more efficient at targeting treatments, and insurers better at saying no. The old are also getting healthier. Mr. Einav and MS Finkelstein point out that since 1993 Americans’ life expectancy at age 66 has risen by 2.4 years, which are (on average) entirely healthy. They can expect an extra three years of healthy life. The amount of time spent in the severest mental and physical distress has declined by 0.6 years. That means less spent on extremely pricey residential care or home help for the infirm…
This does not mean all is well. Pensions will remain a pricey problem. Still, they are not an insurmountable one. According to a study by the Congressional Budget Office, a fiscal watchdog, raising the American retirement age by three years, from 67 to 70, would pay a large chunk of the extra costs of Social Security by 2100. Getting that reform, or others to defray the cost, through a polarized American politics will be hard. Yet the economics literature offers hope: demography need not be destiny after all.
An ageing society might not cost too much
WSJ on college selectivity: “A select group of colleges is making it easier to apply—but probably harder to get in.
Top schools including Tulane University, Washington University in St. Louis and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are reducing the number of essays applicants have to submit. Colleges say that they are trying to ease students’ stress, and that artificial intelligence has made it harder to tell whether students are actually doing the writing.
The moves will likely increase applications, potentially making admissions more cutthroat, college counselors say…
Schools are “trying to become more competitive,” said Caroline Koppelman, founder of an admissions firm. For students deciding where to apply, an extra essay “can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back a little bit, or at least the straw that makes you not apply to that school.”
A lower admissions rate improves schools’ rankings and “protects their prestige,” said Christopher Rim, chief executive of admissions firm Command Education. “A lot of that is really artificial.”
Colleges Juice Application Numbers by Letting Students Write Fewer Essays – WSJ
Hospitals
SHRM: Employer Health Benefits 2026 Report: “The categories most commonly rated as important remained the same as last year, topped by healthcare-related benefits (88% of employers rated them as “very important” or “extremely important”), retirement savings and planning, and leave. Retirement and leave were tied for second place for the fifth consecutive year, with 82% of employers rating these categories as “very important” or “extremely important.” The percentage of employers who rated flexible working benefits as “very important” or “extremely important” has been steadily decreasing (down 2 percentage points from last year). Similarly, family care benefits experienced a 2-percentage-point decrease since last year. Leave and retirement have increased slightly
Health-related benefits remain the highest priority for organizations. Currently, 67% of employers offer a fully insured health plan, meaning they pay a fixed amount to an insurer, which is down from 70% last year. Meanwhile, 29% offer a self-insured health plan, where employers operate their own health plan and pay medical claims themselves, often through a third-party administrator, an increase from 27% last.”
2026_employee-benefits_executive-summary.pdf
HHS: Make Hospital Food Healthier initiative: The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) today launched the Make Hospital Food Healthier Pledge last week. A hospital must..
- Limit ultra-processed foods and sugar-sweetened beverages
- Use baked, broiled, roasted, stir-fried, or grilled cooking methods instead of deep frying
- Limit processed meats and foods high in added sugars, sodium, and artificial additives
- Emphasize whole grains over refined grains
- Prioritize minimally processed proteins, including plant-based options
Secretary Kennedy, Administrator Oz Launch ‘Make Hospital Food Healthier’ Pledge July 8, 2026 www.hhs.org
CMS: ACO REACH Results: Last Thursday, CMS released results for the ACO Realizing Equity, Access and Community Health Accountable (ACO REACH) model for 2024:
- $990 million in net savings
- $2.5 billion in gross savings in 2024 compared with model benchmarks–increase of nearly 53% from 2023
- Most ACO REACH participants — 96 out of 115, or 83% — earned net savings in 2024.
- Participating ACOs received $1.5 billion in net payments for shared savings and losses, an average savings rate of 4.2% relative to model benchmarks for 2024.
- New ACOs achieved 8.6% net savings compared with benchmarks, while high-needs ACOs garnered 14%.
Note: ACO REACH will sunset at the end of 2026, with its successor, the Long-term Enhanced Accountable Care Organization Design model, debuting Jan. 1. LEAD includes adjusted elements including high needs population provisions via benchmarks and financial guardrails.
Insurers
Publicly traded healthcare company stock performance: “Healthcare stocks are showing their strongest relative breadth in more than a decade, with 91% of S&P 500 healthcare names outperforming the broader index over the past month, the highest reading in roughly 15 years.
That surge suggests the sector’s strength is broad-based rather than concentrated in only a handful of large-cap names.
Against that backdrop, the largest holdings in the Health Care Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLV) carry mostly neutral Quant profiles, according to Seeking Alpha’s ratings system. UnitedHealth Group and Eli Lilly and Company lead the group with Quant Ratings of 3.48 and 3.47, respectively, narrowly below the 3.5 threshold for a bullish rating. All 10 holdings are currently rated Hold, with scores ranging from 3.48 to 2.83.
Ratings of 3.5 or higher are considered bullish, while scores of 2.5 or below indicates a bearish profile:
- UnitedHealth Group Incorporated (UNH), Quant Rating: 3.48*
- Eli Lilly and Company (LLY), Quant Rating: 3.47
- Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Quant Rating: 3.45
- Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (TMO), Quant Rating: 3.36
- Intuitive Surgical, Inc. (ISRG), Quant Rating: 3.30
- Amgen Inc. (AMGN), Quant Rating: 3.29
- Merck & Co., Inc. (MRK), Quant Rating: 3.26
- AbbVie Inc. (ABBV), Quant Rating: 3.26
- Gilead Sciences, Inc. (GILD), Quant Rating: 3.04
- Abbott Laboratories (ABT), Quant Rating: 2.83”
Peterson-KFF 2027 Marketplace Premiums for individuals: “While less than 10% of Americans get their health coverage through the individual market, many of the factors driving premiums in this market – like growth in hospital or pharmaceutical costs – are similar across all private plans, and the detailed filings available for ACA-compliant coverage provide insight into these cost drivers. There are also issues unique to ACA Marketplace plans, including federal premium assistance for most purchasers and regulations governing how they operate.
For 2027, across 77 insurers participating in the ACA Marketplaces from the 16 states and the District of Columbia with publicly available filings, this analysis shows a median proposed premium increase of 14%. This is the second consecutive year of double-digit premium hikes. Last year’s median nationwide proposed rate change was 18%, and the median finalized rate change was 20%. While this proposed rate change is lower than last year, it represents the second-highest requested rate change since 2018, as premium growth had been relatively flat in this market for several years. If these early indications of median premium increases for 2027 hold, typical premiums for insurers participating in the ACA Marketplaces will have jumped by more than one-third over a two-year period.
Among the 77 ACA Marketplace participating insurers from 16 states and the District of Columbia, premium changes range from 1% to 52%, but most proposed premium changes for 2027 fall between 10% and 20% (the 25th and 75th percentile are 12% and 21%, respectively)..”
How much and why ACA Marketplace premiums are going up in 2027 – Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker
Study: In-network cost-sharing in MA plans: “In this cross-sectional study of MA plans from 2019 to 2025, the proportion of MA enrollees in plans offering $0 cost sharing for in-network PCP visits increased from 46.4% to 78.1%. This benefit was more common in less restrictive primary care networks, higher quality plans, and urbanized and high MA-penetration areas, but less in zero-premium plans and high-poverty counties.
This cross-sectional study demonstrates that $0 cost sharing for PCP visits has expanded rapidly under MA but remains unevenly distributed. Lower availability in zero-premium plans and high-poverty areas suggest strategic trade-offs between premiums and point-of-service costs, raising equity concerns that underscore the need to assess whether market-driven benefit design optimizes and sustains high-value primary care access to counties at greater populational health risk.
Primary Care Cost Sharing in Medicare Advantage | Health Policy | JAMA Health Forum | JAMA Network
KFF Study: MA quality bonus results: Medicare Advantage quality bonus program payments increased to $13.4 billion in 2026, up from $12.7 billion the year before. At the same time, the number of enrollees in plans that qualify for the higher payments fell from 26 million to 24 million year-to-year, and the share in such plans declined from 75% in 2025 to 68% in 2026 — the lowest share since 2018.
“The bonus program boosts payments to Medicare Advantage plans that have a star rating of 4 or above on a 5-star scale. While the star ratings are intended to be a measure of plan quality that can help beneficiaries evaluate and compare Medicare Advantage plans, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) and others have suggested that the star ratings relay on too many measures (about 40) may not be a useful indicator of quality.”
STAT on small business insurance: “ It has never been more difficult for employers to offer health insurance for their workers. That’s especially true for America’s small businesses, the backbones of entire communities. More and more, they’re giving up entirely. America’s employer-based health insurance system — the dominant form of coverage for people younger than 65 — is crumbling. The percentage of working-age adults who get their health coverage from a job has declined from 67% in 1998 to about 60%.
Stat: Why America’s Small Businesses Are Giving Up On Health Insurance https://www.statnews.com/2026/07/07/small-business-health-insurance-costs-out-of-pocket-series-part-1
Polling
Gallup: GLP-1 use: “The percentage of U.S. adults who currently take GLP-1 medications for weight loss purposes has risen to 11% in 2026, up significantly from 3% in 2024. And 15% report having used the medicine for weight loss at some point, an increase of 9 percentage points.”
In U.S., GLP-1 Usage Reaches New High July 7, 2026 https://news.gallup.com/poll/712157/glp-usage-reaches-new-high.
WSJ-NORC poll: American sentiment: “Americans are losing confidence in two main pillars of society: capitalism and democracy.
Just under half of Americans say capitalism is working very well or even somewhat well, down from 60% who said so about a decade ago, according to a new Wall Street Journal-NORC survey. Only 35% are even fairly sure that the nation offers people the ability to get good jobs and achieve the American dream.
Confidence in the nation’s system of government is even lower. Only 12% say democracy is working very well or extremely well, and a mere 16% say average citizens have considerable influence on politics” Highlights:
Do you think the American Dream – that if you work hard, you’ll get ahead – still holds true, never held true, or once held true but does not anymore? (2010-2026) % Holds True
- High: 53% (2012)
- Lo: 31% (2025)
- June 2026: 35%
Do you think America is in a state of decline, or do you feel that this is not the case? (1991-2026) % State of decline
- High:74% (2018)
- Lo: 4% (1993)
- June 2026: 68%
Question: How well do you think capitalism is working? % Very/somewhat well by age:
- 18-34: 42%
- 35-49: 46%
- 50-64: 48%
- 65+: 56%
Exclusive | America’s Support for Capitalism Has Declined Over Last Decade, WSJ Poll Shows – WSJ
Pew: Information sources for breaking news: “When a breaking news event happens, 36% of U.S. adults say they typically turn first to their preferred news organization to get more information… Another 28% look to search engines like Google or Bing, and 19% make social media their first destination. A smaller share (5%) usually asks friends, family, or acquaintances for more information.
In a similar question from 2018, a slim majority of Americans (54%) said they turned to their preferred news organization when they wanted to learn more about a breaking news event. The shares of U.S. adults who said they turned first to search engines (15%) and social media (9%) were both lower than they are today. Similar shares in both survey years said they turn to people in their lives.
Based on the 2025 survey, Americans ages 65 and older are around four times as likely as adults ages 18 to 29 to say they turn to their preferred news organization for this (59% vs. 14%).
By contrast, younger adults are more likely to say they turn to search engines and social media for breaking news. For example, 31% of adults under 30 say they turn to social media first to get more information about breaking news events. Just 6% of Americans 65 and older say the same.”
Where Do Americans Turn First for Information About Breaking News? | The Pew Charitable Trusts
Population Health
Senior health and mobility: “Efforts to improve care for older adults in the United States have focused heavily on safety, cost containment, and use. Falls, readmissions, medication management, and length-of-stay dominate quality reporting and reimbursement frameworks in post-acute and long-term care. These measures matter. Yet, one of the strongest predictors of outcomes for older adults remains largely absent from accountability structures: mobility.
Mobility is often treated as a therapeutic outcome rather than a system-level performance indicator. Once formal therapy sessions conclude, movement frequently disappears from routine care. Older adults sit longer, walk less, and struggle with basic transfers, such as moving from sitting to standing or from bed to chair. Over time, this pattern produces predictable functional decline that is frequently mislabeled as inevitable aging.
A substantial body of evidence links mobility and physical function to hospitalization risk, discharge destination, long-term dependency, and mortality in older adults. Functional decline is rarely abrupt. It is cumulative and driven by repeated exposure to inactivity. Yet, outside of therapy documentation, mobility is inconsistently measured, discussed, or incentivized…
As long as functional decline remains unmeasured, it will remain unaddressed. Incorporating mobility into quality and payment frameworks would represent a meaningful step toward a more effective, humane, and fiscally responsible aging care system.”
Mobility Is The Missing Quality Metric In America’s Aging Care System | Health Affairs
WHO: Cancer incidence increase anticipated: The World Health Organization projects that cancer incidence will rise about 67% globally by 2050 and disproportionately affect lower-income countries.
“Annual cancer cases are projected to rise considerably worldwide by 2050…its assessment, the United Nations body tempered optimism about improvements in cancer surveillance and treatment and warned that global health care inequities are driving further cases and deaths.
Around 20.6 million people were diagnosed with cancer in 2024, according to the findings. That number could reach 35 million a year by 2050.
The new cases will disproportionately appear in lower-income countries with poorer access to cancer surveillance and treatment, according to the report.”
Cancer cases worldwide are expected to soar in the coming decades, a report finds. Here’s why July 9, 2026 https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2026/07/08/why-who-is-warning-about-escalating-cancer-rates-by-2050/
Study: Online GLP-1 Website review: “Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 RAs) are widely available through online sellers, primarily for weight management, with nearly 20% of adults taking a GLP-1 RA obtaining prescriptions online….
All websites used a questionnaire While 39 (79.6%) asked about weight loss goals, 32 (65.3%) asked about prior nonpharmacological weight loss attempts and 26 (53.1%) about diet and physical activity. 48 (98.0%) asked about medical conditions, 46 (93.9%) about medications and allergies, and 27 (55.1%) about eating disorders. Eighteen (36.7%) asked for patient-reported clinical values (blood pressure, blood glucose, cholesterol, or triglycerides). Twenty-two (44.9%) asked questions related to personalizing compounded GLP-1 – RAs. Thirteen (26.5%) required a video visit and 3 (6.1%) required a call.”
Online Prescribing of GLP-1 Receptor Agonists | Diabetes | JAMA | JAMA Network
Study: In home care demand for dementia: “More than 8 million US older adults (>65 years) are dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid, representing one of the most vulnerable populations characterized by high health care use and spending. Alzheimer disease and related dementias (ADRD) are highly prevalent among older adults. Previous research indicates that dually eligible persons living with dementia (PLWD) have extensive health care use, including both acute care and home- and community-based services (HCBS) (eg, help with personal care)…
In this nationwide cross-sectional study, older dually eligible PLWD spent a mean 238 days at home. The substantial variation observed across states may reflect differences in local health service supply, state Medicaid HCBS policies and program design, family caregiving availability, and patient preferences.”
