Top 10 Healthcare Industry Predictions For 2024
Forbes / By Sachin H. Jain
The Tofurkey’s been cooked and Black Friday sales have passed, which means it’s time for my annual forecast about what the year 2024 will hold for the healthcare industry.
To divine my predictions, I consulted a range of industry insiders, journalists, experts, psychics, shamans, and palm readers (phrenology anyone?).
The predictions below—delivered in high-resolution and with a money-back guarantee—touch politics, managed care, big pharma, artificial intelligence, academic medicine, and other arenas.
In sum, they lead me to predict that 2024 will be a year of major industry change.
Here’s what I believe the year has in store for us:
1. Presidential candidates will largely be silent on healthcare.
Nikki Haley gave a nod to Medicare Advantage in a recent Republican debate, but in general healthcare will take a back seat to other topics (Ukraine, the Middle East, and the economy) in the coming presidential election. Vivek Ramaswamy has experience as a health industry executive and could make healthcare a focus of his campaign, but so far he’s shown more interest in discussing other topics, including international affairs and his physician wife’s marksmanship skills. To be fair, the most significant underlying issues facing the healthcare industry are wonky and unlikely to capture the public imagination. If healthcare does come up, expect it to be addressed superficially, hyperbolically and with little of the nuance this important subject deserves.
2. Mega-mergers are coming back.
After a few years of quiescence, all signs point to mega-mergers reappearing on the horizon. A few weeks ago, Reuters reported that that Cigna is considering selling off its Medicare Advantage business. The news left a lot of people scratching their heads. But it makes perfect sense. Selling its Medicare Advantage business—likely to a cash-rich regional or national health plan—enables Cigna to pursue a merger with another national player with a strong footprint in government programs—think Humana and Centene—free and clear of anti-trust issues. In the year ahead, look for other big national health plans such as Elevance and Molina to follow in Cigna’s path with their own follow-on moves. And don’t forget about smaller regional plans, who will continue to shore up their competitive positioning in the increasingly consolidated landscape of national giants.
3. Medicare Advantage growth will slow.
Last year I predicted that there would be continued backlash against Medicare Advantage. (To get an idea of the arguments against the program, check out my recent debate with Richard Gilfillan, one of the program’s fiercest critics, on the main stage at the HLTH Conference.) I anticipate that criticism of the program—now spilling into mainstream consumer-facing media—will affect enrollment rates. In addition, there are some early signals that the market may have reached a saturation point. Those who desire Medicare Advantage likely have already chosen it; those who haven’t already chosen it will not.
While the Medicare Advantage program is certainly in need of a refresh (as I’ve described in previous columns),the legacy fee-for-service Medicare program is in even greater need. Fee-for-service Medicare still charges older adults high co-insurance rates for most services and lacks dental, vision, and hearing coverage. Medicare was intended by President Lyndon Johnson to provide older adults with a degree of security against bankruptcy from medical costs. The legacy program—as it has evolved—fails miserably to do so—and all the scrutiny on Medicare Advantage is giving traditional Medicare’s shortcomings far too great a pass…
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