We asked our star health care team to share what they’re tracking as we head into the back half of 2024. Read on and subscribe to Axios Vitals for their daily reporting on the industry.

🏛 Regardless of who wins the election, Washington is becoming increasingly hostile toward certain industry groups, writes Caitlin Owens, author of our weekly Friday Future of Health Care edition.

• Congress has put a spotlight on what members from both parties say are anti-competitive hospital business practices. And Medicare Advantage is under a lot of scrutiny over whether the feds are overpaying insurers.‍
• At the same time, experts say the U.S. is poised to enter a golden age of health care innovation that could transform the future of medicine, with promising drugs and technologies that present tough questions about patient access and affordability.

🩺 How the competition in health care is being policed and what the next administration will do will be a focus of Vitals co-author Tina Reed.

• Another recurring coverage area is how weight-loss drugs are disrupting the health ecosystem, creating demands for new services and drawing new competitors to the space.
• There’s also a need to chronicle how the U.S. patient experience is changing with longer wait times, shorter appointments, more concierge arrangements and health systems dropping out of insurer networks.

📈 Tracking the worsening mental health crisis, including what’s being done to address the shortage of providers and insurers’ payment policies, is a top priority for Vitals co-author Maya Goldman.

• Another coverage area is how states are grappling with rising health costs and access now that the feds have dialed back pandemic-era aid.
• And we’re hoping to do deeper dives into women’s and children’s health, including what’s driving high maternal mortality and how providers are aligning in the post-Roe world.

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