Conversations Driving Healthcare Post Election and into 2025

The past few years in healthcare have been interesting, to say the least. At a high level, we’ve seen funding in digital health drop considerably since 2020, a decrease in IPOs (and lackluster market reception on the part of some companies who have gone public), and layoffs across all sectors with companies big and small. 

On the flip side, there has been a tremendous amount of innovation and advancement in the sector, benefiting the efficacy and efficiency of care. Layer on top of all that a Presidential election and the debate, uncertainty and attention an event of that magnitude generates from both a general market and a healthcare perspective.

In the recently issued PAN HealthPulse: Election Edition Report, the PAN healthcare team identified five key topics driving media conversations in the election cycle—Women’s Health, Mental Health, Health Equity, Healthcare Costs, and Prescription Drug Pricing. Leading into the election in November, healthcare was a top priority for voters with numerous studies showing that more than eight in 10 voters stated healthcare was either their top priority (35%) or among their top three priorities (50%). Now that we know the outcome, the general population’s sentiment around healthcare likely won’t change—especially considering that healthcare is a personal topic that impacts every American on a daily basis whether they are a patient, a caregiver to a family member or friend, or both. 

The one unknown factor for the industry remains how Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s nomination as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services will play out and the implications if he is confirmed by the Senate. If confirmed, Kennedy would oversee a $1.8 trillion department with 10 health agencies and three human services agencies including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Additionally, his leadership would include the administration of Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. 

While the specific policies and potential changes and impact remain to be seen until January 2025, those five key topics and others will continue to drive media conversations and investments in and advancement of the healthcare industry at large. 

Let’s take a closer look at how brands can leverage these topics to increase awareness and build trust and affinity. 

Women’s Health

No conversation is driving more coverage than women’s health according to PAN data—with the highest volume of coverage compared to the other four topics examined in relation to the 2024 election—at more than 4.5K article inclusions between March 1–August 30, 2024. Within this broader topic of women’s health, three key issues bubble to the surface: Reproductive services (e.g., fertility treatments and coverage), abortion, and access (e.g., the strengthening or restricting of Medicaid coverage). With the overturning of Roe v. Wade, many of the issues impacting women’s health now sit at the state level, and the results of the election will likely ensure that current status quo. Regardless of political affiliation, there are many areas of women’s health that need more advocacy, presenting opportunities for brands to champion holistic care approaches. For example, pregnant and breastfeeding people are often excluded from clinical trials, leading to healthcare inequities for them due to lack of drug safety evidence. If a brand provides offerings or services for maternal care, ring the alarm on the need to modernize clinical research by prioritizing trials for these demographics. Advocating for women’s health issues is important, but so are the individual voices contributing. Brands should also look to elevate the voices of its female leaders who are passionate on specific issues, embracing authenticity and avoiding performative activism.

Mental Health

There has also been significant attention on mental health in the media, garnering 2,300 total mentions in the six-month period measured. In particular, conversations around suicide resulted in spikes, coordinated with reports on challenges in accessing appropriate resources as well as recent efforts to put mental health on equal footing as physical health with parity laws. With $682M of VC funding raised in H1 2024, according to Rock Health, and bipartisan support for ensuring robust access to mental health care, mental health remains a top priority for lawmakers, as it has for almost 15 years. The 2024 Presidential election result will have a direct impact on the mental health crisis, all of which hangs in the balance until the new administration takes office in January and begins to activate its agenda, with key issues and outcomes related to access to mental health care, Medicare and private insurance coverage, mental health parity requirements to Medicare beneficiaries, and Medicare incentive programs aimed at addressing mental health provider shortages.

Brands have an opportunity to voice their support for mental health care initiatives. Beyond just championing solutions such as telehealth that have become more ubiquitous with tackling issues to care access or better mental health care coordination, brands that can speak to the impact mental and physical health have on each other, with a more recent focus from lawmakers on strengthening mental health parity laws, will stand out. On the health care provider side, there’s ample green space to weigh in on different conditions and their correlations to mental health, from anxiety to suicide risk to obesity to cancer as well as all the multiple and overlapping comorbidities associated such as heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure. Additionally, employers, who are on the frontlines as one of the biggest spenders on healthcare in the U.S., are uniquely positioned to contribute to conversations about supporting employees’ desires for more comprehensive healthcare benefits, such as family planning, and wellness initiatives, which has a direct impact on employee stress and anxiety levels, as well as physical health.

Health Equity

Although the data demonstrated this topic hasn’t quite made it to the main stage compared to other topics analyzed and the conversation of health equity is still evolving, the election outcome and the planned nomination of RFK Jr as Secretary of the Department of HHS should certainly change that in the months (and years) ahead given his recent statements and their tangential relation to the broader topics falling within health equity. The list of negative outcomes associated with public health inequities can be long and broad, including, but not limited to, food insecurity and hunger, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, infectious diseases, substance use disorders, mental health disparities, air pollution, and other environmental exposures. Regardless of one’s political stance, Kennedy’s attention to and oversight of these topics should create for much conversation—and media coverage—as he tries to enact specific measures to improve the health of Americans should add much needed attention to the larger issue of health equity. 

When it comes to health equity, brands should remain vigilant about their messaging. Access is no longer enough; that’s table stakes with the advent of digital solutions and telehealth. Consider what makes your product or solution truly unique in helping to expand the healthcare system and make every patient’s experience equitable. 

Health Costs

Healthcare spending accounted for 17.6% of U.S. GDP in 2023, currently outpacing economic growth as reported by Health Affairs. Despite the high spending, health outcomes in the U.S. lag behind other high-income nations, including the highest rates of avoidable deaths among similar countries. This underscores the need for more affordable and high-quality healthcare, and that’s something brands can get behind without talking about politics. Across the industry, value-based care (VBC) continues to gain steam and favor over fee-for-service (FFS) models, prioritizing preventative care and early interventions to improve outcomes and reduce costs. This is also a great opportunity for health tech brands to speak about their solutions that support holistic care approaches and reduce operational costs for healthcare organizations. In particular, the surge of AI utilization among healthcare companies is making a big impact in developing full care paths for patients and reducing unnecessary readmissions, among other results. From an employer standpoint, employer health insurance costs are expected to rise nearly 6% in 2025. This is due to the widening supply and demand gap between available healthcare workers and needed healthcare services, the consolidation of health systems leaving larger health systems with greater negotiating power, and most notably, rising prescription drug costs. There is a major opportunity for brands to talk about ways to improve healthcare affordability for employees while managing overall healthcare coverage costs. Employers should also consider putting a stake in the ground when it comes to greater caregiver flexibility, as the growing senior population will necessitate additional support, demanding caregivers take more time out of work to take loved ones to appointments, care for them post-op, etc.

Drug Prices

While drug prices were the second lowest term by volume analyzed by PAN around the election cycle, there’s no doubt that drug pricing and related policies (will) continue to dominate headlines. With recent battles over the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the ever-present conversations around the impact of PBMs as middlemen, we anticipate these conversations will grow, especially when coupled with the incoming administration’s, and specifically Kennedy’s, apparent distrust of big pharma. Like political leaders on both sides of the aisle, Kennedy has supported measures to lower drug costs; the conversations will take shape based largely on the manner (and measures) in which Kennedy looks to lower those costs. 

Key for pharma brands and marketers will be to first recognize the need to balance communications and messaging by audience. Pharma does not necessarily hold the same goals as payers and health systems or hospitals. While it’s essential to craft compelling narratives for each specific key audience, it’s equally important to ensure those messages don’t alienate unintended audiences.

Additionally, Generative AI, Specialty Pharmacy, and Data & Analytics have also been a focus within healthcare over the past 12-18 months and should continue to remain topical throughout 2025. Moving forward, the remainder of 2024 and 2025 should see further adoption of GenAI to accelerate the application of digital and automation in healthcare.  According to McKinsey & Company, specialty pharmacy is one of the fastest-growing subsegments within pharmacy services, currently accounting for 40 percent of prescription revenue and, according to some industry analysts, expected to reach nearly 50 percent of prescription revenue in 2027. Growth in specialty pharma will be driven by various factors but perhaps most significantly, the continued expansion of pipeline therapies (e.g., cell and gene therapies, and oncology and rare disease therapies). Lastly, Data & Analytics should continue to present opportunities for both HIT/digital health and biopharma/life sciences companies in their efforts to make strides with streamlining processes and operations, making more informed decisions, engaging patients, improving care, reducing costs, getting drugs and therapies to market faster, and personalizing care. 

From a marketing, PR and strategic communications perspective looking across all of the above topics and the myriad of others relevant to healthcare brands, taking a stand on important conversations shaping the healthcare industry doesn’t have to be controversial. Each brand has a mission and a purpose, and those are likely tied to at least one of the conversation drivers taking place around the Presidential election given the plethora of topics on the table. 

Brands that can authentically put a stake in the ground to champion conversations around Women’s Health, Mental Health, Health Equity, Healthcare Costs, and Prescription Drug Pricing—as well as Generative AI, Specialty Pharmacy, and Data & Analytics—will be the brands that rise to the top in this crowded post-election news cycle and into 2025. 

The same goes for company executives who work passionately every day to solve the biggest issues plaguing healthcare. Each executive has a story to tell and a purpose behind their work. Don’t be afraid to lean into those stories, engage in critical conversations, and be a champion for change.