Strive Health, which manages kidney care, raised a massive new $550 million in financing, some equity and some debt, to support growth. The company has a comprehensive care model which supposedly will reduce costs will improving outcomes.
Mercer has now also released its survey on health insurance premium increases expected for 2026. Mercer anticipates average rises of 9% for employers, which they expect will be reduced to 6.5% by various cost-saving measures. Many of those aren't actual cost-saving but cost-shifting, as employers force workers to pay more in deductibles and copayments. These burdens fall heaviest on the middle and upper middle class families, who don't have access to gold-plated Medicaid coverage.
Eversana helps drug companies market their products, which we need less of, not more. It is a lucrative industry and the value of these companies, supposedly $6 billion just shows you how lucrative. It is merging with Waltz Health, which purports to match patients who need a specialty drug with the best pharmacy for them to receive that medication. This should really be something that helps patients--not. I mean, who are you working for--the patients or the drug companies.
Doximity, a kind of social media platform for physicians and other health care professionals, is acquiring Pathway Medical, which uses artificial intelligence and a large curated dataset to provide assistance to physicians. While AI may be useful in some cases, God help us if physicians begin routinely relying on it for diagnoses and treatment advice.
Two large companies, Dispatch Health and Medically Home, in the home medical space are planning to merge. The firms offer care in the home that includes hospital-like services. The trend toward doing even acute care in the patient's home is driven by a belief that quality will be equivalent, costs lower, and that patients will do better being in their own residences.
Teladoc is a poster child for bad health care investments in overhyped technology. The vendor of telemedicine services did very well during the epidemic, did a really stupid purchase of Livongo, a disease management company, tanked its stock and is now trying to recover by making other acquisitions, in this case of Catapult Health for $65 million. Catapult supposedly will help because it has a virtual "wellness" check-up platform that will funnel people to Teladoc's chronic care business. Another poor strategy, over-priced acquisition for a company whose stock has gone from $300 to $12 in four years.
Transcarent sells services to employers to help employees and their families navigate the health system, find the best prices, get treatment for certain kinds of conditions. It is paying $621 million to buy Accolade, which offers a "personalized" health care platform and similar navigation services. Both companies are heavy on the hype and short on financial performance. Accolade, for example, had $414 million in revenue and lost $100 million. Wow, kind of hard to lose that much money on that much revenue.
The use of electrical stimulation for various health conditions which involve the nervous system in some way has increased dramatically. This company, Cala Health, has a device for a common but hard-to-treat condition involving slight hand tremors. A lot of people suffer from this issue. The company raised $50 million for further commercialization efforts.
SureScripts is one of those relatively unknown entities that forms the backbone of US HealthCare. A joint venture of pharmacy chains and pharmacy benefit ventures, it handles most of the pharmacy and many other health care transactions, facilitating e-prescribing and clinical interventions. The venture has now sold a majority stake to a private equity firm, allowing a large cash-out for the founding firms, but raising questions about the future plans for this entity that literally has connections to every provider and payer.
The Healthy Skeptic is a website about the health care system, and is written by Kevin Roche, who has many years of experience working in the health industry. Mr. Roche is available to assist health care companies through consulting arrangements through Roche Consulting, LLC and may be reached at khroche@healthy-skeptic.com.
The Healthy Skeptic is a website about the health care system, and is written by Kevin Roche, who has many years of experience working in the health industry. Mr. Roche is available to assist health care companies through consulting arrangements through Roche Consulting, LLC and may be reached at khroche@healthy-skeptic.com.