At a meeting with hospital system CEOs last Wednesday, one asked: “has healthcare reached the tipping point?”  I replied ‘not yet but it’s getting close.’

I iterated factors that make these times uniquely difficult in every sector:

• An uncertain economy that’s unlikely to fully recover until next year.
• The growth of Medicaid and Medicare coverage that shifts their financial shortfall to employers and taxpayers who are fed up and pushing back.
• A vicious political environment that rewards partisan brinksmanship and focus-group tested soundbites to manipulate voters on complex issues in healthcare.
• The growing domination of Big Business in each sector that have used acquisitions + corporatization to their advantage.
• The widening role of private equity in funding non-conventional solutions that disrupt the status quo (and the uncertain future for many of these).
• The federal courts system that’s increasingly the arbiter over access, fairness, quality and freedoms in healthcare.
• The lingering impact of the pandemic.
• And growing public disgust and distrust as the system’s altruism and good will is undermined by pervasive concern for profit.

Unprecedented! But events like those last week prompt hitting the pause button: not everyone pays attention to healthcare like many of us. The slaughter of 6 innocents in Nashville hit close to home: it’s about guns, mental health and life and death. The appeal of tech-giants to press the pause button on Generative AI for at least 6 months was sobering. The ravage of tornados that left thousands insecure without food, housing or hope seemed unfair. Mounting tensions with Russia and complex negotiations with China that reminded us that the U.S. competes in a global economy.  And President Trump’s court appearance tomorrow will stoke doubt about our justice system at a time when it’s role in healthcare and society is expanding.

I am a healthcare guy. I am prone to see the world through the lens of the U.S. health industry and keen to understand its trends, tipping points and future. There’s plenty to watch: this week will be no exception. The punch list is familiar:

• Medicaid coverage: Many will be watching the fallout of from state redetermination requirements for Medicaid coverage starting as soon as this week with disenrollment in Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, New Hampshire and South Dakota.
• Medicare Advantage: Health insurers will be modifying their Medicare Advantage strategies to adapt to CMS’ risk adjustment and Value-based Insurance Design modifications announced last week.
• Prescription drug prices: PBMs and drug companies will face growing skepticism as Senate and House committees continue investigations about price gauging and collusion. Hospitals will be making adjustments to higher operating losses as states cut their Medicaid rolls.
• Technology: The 7500 VIVA attendees will be doing follow-up to secure entrées for their technologies and solutions among prospective buyers.
• Physicians: And physicians will intensify campaigns against insurers and hospitals now seen as adversaries while lobbying Congress for more money and greater income opportunities i.e., physician-owned hospitals.
• Hospitals: On the offense against site-neutral payments, physician owned hospitals, drug prices and inadequate reimbursement from health insurers.

All will soldier on but the food fights in healthcare and broader headwinds facing the industry suggest a tipping point might be near.

I am not a fatalist: the future for healthcare is brighter than its past, but not for everyone. Strategies predicated on protecting the past are obsolete. Strategies that consider consumers incapable of active participation in the delivery and financing of their care are archaic. Strategies that depend on unbridled consolidation and opaque pricing are naïve. And strategies that limit market access for non-traditional players are artifacts of the gilded age gone by when each sector protected its own against infidels outside.

These times call for two changes in every board room and C Suite in of every organization in healthcare:

Broader vision: Understanding healthcare’s future in the broader context of American society, democracy and capitalism: Beltway insiders and academics prognosticate based on lag indicators that are decreasingly valid for forecasting. Media pundits on healthcare fail to report context and underpinnings. Management teams are operating under short-term financial incentives lacking longer-term applicability. Consultants are telling C suites what they want to hear. And boards are being mis-educated about trends of consequence that matter. Understanding the future and building response scenarios is out of sight and out of mind to insiders more comfortable being victims than creators of the new normal.

Board leadership: Equipping boards to make tough decisions: Governance in healthcare is not taken seriously unless an organization’s investors are unhappy, margins are shrinking or disgruntled employees create a stir. Few have a systematic process for looking at healthcare 10 years out and beyond their business. Every Board must refresh its thinking about what tomorrow in healthcare will be and adjust. It’s easier for board to approve plans for the near-term than invest for the long-term: that’s why outsiders today will be tomorrow’s primary incumbents.

So, is U.S healthcare near its tipping point? I don’t know for sure, but it seems clear  the tipping point is nearer than at any point in its history. It’s time for fresh thinking and new players.