Healthcare’s Big Stories of 2024 and What’s Next in 2025

1. Change Healthcare Cyberattack

As the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce explained, Change Healthcare is one of the largest health payment processing companies in the world, processing more than 15 billion medical claims, or 40% of all claims generated, each year. UnitedHealth owns Change Healthcare, which was the target of a cyberattack in February. Not only did millions of Americans have their healthcare information leaked on the dark web, but the attack created a backlog of unpaid claims that left doctors’ offices and hospitals with serious cashflow problems.

Attacks like these are nothing new in healthcare settings. Anything involving third-party services that sell patient information is particularly vulnerable. (A study published in The Journal of American Medicine in April 2024 found 96% of hospital websites transmitted user information to third parties such as Meta and Google.) Corporations like UnitedHealth must do better.

RESOLUTION: Impose stringent data protection measures across all healthcare platforms, digital and traditional.

2. Steward Health Care Bankruptcy

Having amassed more than $9 billion in debt, in May 2024, Steward Health Care filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. At that point, the company was operating 31 hospitals across eight states that provided care to more than two million patients each year. As PBS explained, Steward was founded in 2010 when private equity (PE) firm Cerberus Capital Management bought six hospitals. The PE-backed firm grew from there, amassing significant wealth for its investors and executives.

While investors got big payouts, patients suffered. Indeed, according to a Boston Globe investigation, Steward Health’s more than 30 hospitals were some of the worst in the nation.

Private equity’s profit-driven nature can result in cost-cutting measures that negatively impact patient care. In fact, as a 2021 study found, patient mortality increased and overall well-being fell following a PE firm’s acquisition of a nursing home facility. The same is true for hospitals.

RESOLUTION: Policymakers must finally consider regulations that promote competition and prevent excessive consolidation. This goes for vertically integrated healthcare entities as well.

3. Assassination Of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson

On Dec. 4, a lone assassin gunned down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in front of a midtown New York City hotel. Thompson was in town for the company’s annual investor conference. The assassin’s bullets were reportedly inscribed with the words “deny,” “defend,” and “depose,” phrases referring to health insurers’ common practices of denying care, defending their positions in court, and deposing those who challenge them.

The killing resulted in an outpouring of sympathy on social media … for the assassin, who may or may not have been denied coverage by the insurer. Additionally, a survey about the murder found about 70% of Americans believe denials for healthcare coverage by insurance companies, or the profits made by health insurance companies, also bear at least “a moderate amount” of responsibility for Thompson’s death.

While nothing justifies murder, UnitedHealth remains deaf to Americans’ concerns. In an internal video message sent to employees on Dec. 6, UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty said insurers “guard against the pressures that exist for unsafe care or for unnecessary care ...” That statement sounds a lot like Witty is demonizing doctors.

RESOLUTION: As ABIG Health Founder Dr. Adam Brown wrote at MedPage Today, caregivers cannot let these sentiments or tactics stand. Physicians must advocate for systemic change, using their voices to demand a healthcare system where medical expertise, not financial incentives, drives care.

4. Election Of Donald Trump

In November, Donald Trump defeated sitting Vice President Kamala Harris to be the next president of the United States. Trump quickly nominated Robert F. Kennedy to run the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and media personality Dr. Mehmet Oz to oversee the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Surgeon Martin Makary, who opposed COVID-19 vaccine mandates, is the president-elect’s choice to run the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The president and his would-be appointees have proposed radical reforms to reduce personnel at these agencies.

But that is not all. The Kaiser Family Foundation has compiled a list of executive actions Trump is expected to take once he assumes office on Jan. 20. The proposals include everything from reducing access to emergency contraception and birth control to undoing regulations that streamlined Medicaid enrollment and changing the FDA review process for vaccines.

RESOLUTION: Physicians, nurses, and other caregivers can no longer stand on the sidelines. We must speak out if and when we believe these proposals will erode access to care, diminish the quality of care, or increase healthcare costs.

5. Medicare Part D Drug Price Negotiations

In August, the White House announced the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had reached agreements with manufacturers on new negotiated, lower drug prices for the first 10 drugs selected for the Medicare Part D drug price negotiation program. (The program is the result of the Inflation Reduction Act signed into law by President Joe Biden.) The White House said the negotiations would reduce the list price of the drugs by 38% to 79%. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is set to announce a second round of negotiations, covering up to 15 Part D drugs, by Feb. 1, 2025, just 11 days after inauguration day.

The cost of prescription drugs in the U.S. consistently eclipses prices in other countries. Drug companies argue domestic costs are higher because the United States drives medical innovation and subsidizes care in other countries. They say, given the substantial challenges of drug development, including high rates of trial failures, and lengthy research timelines, recouping research investments is crucial if patients and providers want future breakthroughs. While that may be true, it is also true that current prices are too damn high for most Americans to get the care they need.

As Roll Call reported, President-elect Donald Trump “has remained relatively mum” about whether he will keep, or roll back, CMS drug price negotiations. What should happen?

RESOLUTION: Patients and taxpayers are paying too much. As ABIG Health Founder Dr. Adam Brown wrote at Medpage Today, the federal government sets parameters of pricing for all sorts of vendors all the time. Consumers, represented by CMS, deserve to continue to have a seat at the negotiating table, and federal lawmakers must make sure that they do.