2026 is set to open in a complex healthcare environment, with rising costs and evolving policy priorities felt across the spectrum.
(SCAN Group)
Sachin Jain, M.D., CEO of SCAN Group, said that backdrop sets the stage for a “year unlike any other in U.S. healthcare” as part of his annual list of predictions for the coming year, published in Forbes. He told Fierce Healthcare that his outlook each year is a mix of industry intel, intuition and manifestation.
“Every year, I just think a little bit about things I’ve heard, things I’m instinctually seeing are going to happen,” he said, “and then some of it is kind of willing it to happen.”
Jain’s 10 predictions from the year include a resurgence of health equity work and opportunities for nontraditional medicine to grow, while artificial intelligence and smaller industry players may run into speed bumps. For example, he wrote that while there’s significant promise and buzz for agentic AI in healthcare, legacy organizations are always slow to embrace the newest innovations.
He said that part of the challenge is that while the tech has shown its promise in specific use cases—ambient listening for notetaking, as one example—the return on investment in other areas is lagging behind. And that can make the tech a hard sell.
Legacy players will likely give it a go, he said, and find AI vendors they choose to partner with, but that’s not the same as truly implementing the technology.
“Adoption is not the same thing as full-on implementation,” Jain said. “They’re going to enter into lots of vendor relationships, but they’re not going to really realize the full return, because the implementation will be incomplete by legacy operators who have done things the way they’ve always done them.”
“I think you’re going to just see many versions of that play out over this next year or two,” he continued.
In addition, Jain wrote that he sees the potential for more initial public offerings and dealmaking in the health tech arena, especially as the public markets have shown interest.
Beyond technology, Jain said he expects to see efforts at the federal in 2026 that aim to “operationalize a MAHA agenda.” Make America Healthy Again is the rallying cry for Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his followers as they push to address chronic illness.
Jain wrote that as Americans continue to feel frustration with the traditional system, there will be an interest in alternatives and lifestyle medicine. However, there is a clear risk of pitting these two things against one another rather than finding ways for them to work cohesively.
He said that also means figuring out what exactly MAHA means for the work at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“I think one of the most complicated needles to thread is the kind of broadening of the healthcare agenda to include lifestyle and prevention considerations while not simultaneously undercutting curative discussions,” Jain said. “I think that there is a tendency to be, in some of the longevity, as well as lifestyle medicine sectors, to be a bit anti medicine.”
He also predicts that despite the public pressure on the program, Medicare Advantage will continue to enjoy popularity among enrollees. Jain said that while the program has its flaws, which have been central to the policy conversation, there are many individuals who simply cannot afford traditional Medicare.
Legislators aren’t likely to broaden coverage under traditional Medicare, and that means MA remains a critical option for many, he said.
“That’s, I think, a big basis for my belief that MA is going to continue to roar forward,” he said.
As for one of the biggest headline topics of the past several years, GLP-1 drugs and the evolving market for them, Jain said he thinks that conversation will clearly chug on into 2026, with some bumps in the road.
For instance, there continues to be new data on the efficacy, indications and long-term implications of these medications. There are also rare instances where people have negative side effects and outcomes while on these drugs where it’s not clear as of yet how much of an impact the GLP-1s themselves had.
“As the numbers increase and as the number of people with different side effects or different comorbidities increases, there are going to be these new signals that are going to show up, and so that’s going to be something that we’re going to be keeping an eye on,” Jain said.
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