A new report from federal actuaries estimates that national health spending will increase by 7.1% in 2025, with spending growth set to outpace growth in the U.S. gross domestic product. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Office of the Actuary released its annual look at spending projections last week, and they estimate that from 2026 to 2027, healthcare spending will increase by 5.6% on average, driven by a likely decline in the number of people with insurance.
The Data That Heals: How Real-World Data Is Rewriting Healthcare
Healthcare systems worldwide are facing unprecedented pressure, from the rise in chronic diseases and aging populations to fragmented healthcare and over-stretched resources. The result? Delayed, reactive and often inconsistent care, with too many patients diagnosed late and treated in emergency settings. But what if healthcare could work smarter, not just within hospitals or at a national level, but globally and across entire ecosystems? What if we could shift from reactive treatment to proactive, consistent and data-driven care? The key may already be in our hands: the systematic, equitable and extensive application of existing real-world data (RWD).
American medicine is facing an epidemic of physician burnout that threatens the overall quality of healthcare. Unhappy clinicians are bad for patients and for business, leading to an estimated $5 billion in losses annually due to turnover, reduced clinical hours and inefficient care, according to an analysis by investigators at Mayo Clinic, Stanford University School of Medicine, the American Medical Association and other institutions. This predicament takes on great urgency as the nation confronts a shortage of primary care physicians and specialists that is expected to worsen in the coming decades.
The Department of Justice announced charges against 324 individuals the law enforcement agency said were behind more than $14.6 billion of healthcare fraud. The charges were spearheaded by the Health Care Fraud Unit of the Department of Justice Criminal Division’s Fraud Section, and more than double law enforcement’s prior $6 billion record for a coordinated healthcare fraud takedown, according to a Monday release.
Nearly 800 rural U.S. hospitals are at risk of closure due to financial problems, with about 40% of those hospitals at immediate risk of closure. The count is drawn from the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform’s most recent analysis, based on hospitals’ latest cost reports submitted to CMS and verified as current through June 2025. The analysis identifies two distinct tiers of rural hospital vulnerability: those at risk of closure and those facing an immediate risk of closure.
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