New Health Care Paradigm in the USA: Trends and Perspectives

Global health care spending is growing faster and faster due to an aging population, the spread of chronic diseases and the introduction of expensive technologies. Market players will have to adapt to growing digitalization and adapt to changing external conditions.

Medicine is becoming expensive and digital

Deloitte experts estimate that global healthcare spending in 2017 was $7.7 trillion. Until 2022, this spending will grow by an average of 5.4% per year and will reach $10 trillion. For comparison, from 2013 to 2017, the growth rate was 2.9% per year.

There will remain a huge gap between different countries. While in the United States by 2022, per capita spending on health care will be $11.7 thousand per year, in Pakistan – $54. In 2022, annual health care spending in North America should reach $4.2 trillion, in Western Europe – $2.3 trillion, while in Latin America – only $437 billion, and in the Middle East and Africa – $279 billion.

Life expectancy will continue to rise – from 73.5 years in 2018 to 74.4 years in 2022. In this regard, the proportion of the population over the age of 65 will grow to 11.6%, amounting to 668 million people. In some regions, the proportion of older people will be much higher – in Japan, it will be 29%, and in Western Europe – about 22%.

Analysts predict that the fight against infectious diseases will become more effective. For example, the number of AIDS-related deaths has already fallen from 2.3 million in 2005 to 940,000 in 2017 and will continue to decline. The number of people who died from malaria fell from about 1 million in 2000 to 445,000 in 2016.

The proportion of deaths from noncommunicable diseases, primarily cardiovascular diseases, cancer and diabetes, will grow from 71% in 2016 to more than 80% (in a number of developed countries). The number of deaths related to environmental pollution is also growing. In 2016, their number was 4.2 million. First of all, this problem affects the Asia-Pacific region.

The experts also identified the main problems and challenges facing the healthcare market players in 2019.

The main challenge is the need to maintain financial stability against the backdrop of rapid change. This is both about the fact that, due to growing costs, players need to think about reducing costs and increasing efficiency, and about the appearance of new competitors in the face of technology companies in traditional medical institutions. According to the authors of the study, the medical technology sector will grow in the coming years by an average of 15.9% per year and will reach $280.3 billion by 2021.

According to statistics, telemedicine is a rather attractive format in the USA. Free medical care comes with relatively difficult accessibility, long waiting times and queues. Private medical clinics are not yet widespread in the regions and are relatively expensive for most of the population. Online stores have formed consumer preferences for receiving goods or services “here and now”.

Another challenge is related to this – adapting to the changing needs and expectations of customers. Such changes are related with:

• an increase in the number of chronic diseases;
• competition from tech companies;
• the proliferation of apps that allow people to track their health;
• consumer experience in other areas;
• more demanding clients of paid medicine.

Another challenge for the industry is compliance with regulations, which also change quite rapidly. Due to digitalization, market players will have to pay more and more attention to cybersecurity, especially since data on the state of human health is quite delicate.