My healthcare wishlist for 2024

All healthcare-newsletter folks have dropped their healthcare predictions for 2024, but none have dropped their healthcare holiday wishlist.

Below is my healthcare holiday wishlist based on the common topics I cover. My wife, unfortunately, lacks the political influence or money to fulfill this wishlist.

Business

• Increased direct primary care traction to expand access to high-quality primary care.

• New policy limiting the encroachment of retailers and other corporations into patient care.

• A reality-check for companies offering willy-nilly whole-body imaging scanning.

Digital Health

• A successfully EHR-integrated LLM model that can significantly limit my computer time in the hospital.

• Increased effort by digital health companies to test their solutions and prove they’re worth it from both an evidence and cost perspective.

• More weight-management startups offering all-encompassing obesity care vs. being a pill mill for GLP-1s.

Insurance

• Increased scrutiny over Medicare Advantage insurers to make sure tax payers’ money is well-spent.

• Less insurers vying to be like UnitedHealthcare.

• More insurers experimenting with new drug pricing models.

Policy

• New legislation to increase oversight over insurers’ perverse prior authorization schemes.

• Finalized legislation regarding the fate of telehealth prescribing of controlled substances.

• New legislation allowing physicians to own hospitals.

Drug Supply Chain

• New and innovative drug purchasing models to increase access to high-cost, high-impact drugs.

• New incentives to encourage novel antibiotic discovery.

• Increased disruption by Cost Plus Drugs to lower the price of generic medications.

My healthcare holiday wishlist will be difficult to fulfill, but that’s why they call it a wishlist. Nothing wrong with being ambitious!

Let me know what’s on your healthcare wishlist for 2024 in the comments below 👇️