Shelly Banjo

Deputy Editor-in-Chief

Capitalism has pretty much failed healthcare. And yet, there hasn’t been a system that’s worked any better. Scientific innovation is slamming into the dead weight of a crumbling delivery model, where aging populations, rising chronic disease and workforce shortages are pushing countries to buckle under the growing health-care burden.  

The evidence of this failure is no longer confined to the fringes of society; it has moved up the food chain. The rise of concierge medicine—essentially a "fast-pass" for the elite—is a loud admission that the standard system is broken. Even for high-earners, the safety net of employer-provided coverage is fraying into a confusing mess of soaring premiums and shrinking benefits. In the world’s wealthiest nations, health care has transitioned from a basic right to a luxury asset that even much of the middle class can no longer afford.

There is plenty of room for optimism, though. AI has turbocharged drug discovery and diagnostics, while making the tedious parts of patient care more efficient. The promise of personalized treatments and genomic breakthroughs feel closer than ever.

Meanwhile, a once-in-a-generation wave of treatments linked to obesity drugs are not only changing the health profiles of millions of people around the world, they may just usher in a new wave of productivity and economic prosperity if they fulfill the promise of reducing diabetes, heart disease, addiction – and end up keeping people in the workforce for longer. That is, if paying for them doesn’t bankrupt global health systems. 

We’re witnessing a systemic collision between 21st-century science and 19th-century systems, where countries that don’t figure out how to care for their people face an unsustainable future. The path forward calls for both scientific ambition and policy pragmatism.