UPDATE - quick thoughts:
RFK isn't confirmable
CDC is a much easier beach to assault
Freeze the vaccine landscape as it is today - that seems like the most likely scenario
path to market for novel vaccines will be challenging
Outside oncology and rare diseases path to market may be more challenging (maybe I&I) as well
payors - obesity could have issues (plus expansion side)
status quo remains my base case - so maybe you're freezing things here for a few years
makes companies closing in on the final stages most at risk
When it comes to healthcare and this fall's election stateside, some quick thoughts:
Pandering extreme policies hopefully (as with history) remains mere rhetoric; meaning we work forward with trends seen since the last major shift. Don't have the data at hand but volumes (relative to realized prices) seem to have been the story.
Meaning you need a system that can handle this; not sure the current setup is equipped for the material increase in volumes.. Begging the question, 'who benefits from far greater volumes'?
Not sure you necessarily get a new trend rate in say cash flows (also not so sure margins shift much); though, with more patients, how else do you get greater volumes, there's a greater diffusion of cash flows.
Clearly manufacturing benefits, especially if there is spare capacity; logistics providers dealing with increased volumes, though perhaps it merely helps balance the risk/reward situation better.. e.g., you've got the thinnest of margins if you're doing logistics but if a drug is worth less - a lost vial doesn't hurt as bad (though there's more chances to lose a vial so maybe it's neutral).
At the end of the day the sector and its myriad sub industries employs a tremendous number of people across jurisdictions, i.e., there's plenty of friction to any deviation from current trends or the status quo
Any time you've got these perceived shifts, they're opportunities - do people use them as an excuse to hunker down (wither into obscurity) or as mere 'reasons' for strategic shifts.. However they get there, true or mere change wholesale can be capitalized on.
Which organizations are more agile? Where are products and or services more scalable? Whose business model is currently challenged and could use a shakeup?
Where are the frictions to greater volumes, you can treat that as a threat or an opportunity; an example that comes to mind from more contemporary legislation (IRA vs Obama-care):
When ACIP/CDC doesn't throw a monkey wrench into things - greater access to vaccines (via that no copay mechanism); though that doesn't seem to be working as intended at the moment!
Anyways, the value chain is long within this space and that just makes for a massive matrix of opportunity. Assuming they don't blow it all up!
All those steps from diagnosis to monitoring, heck prescription (do we see more direct) (do we see more digital).. AHCs (advertising holding companies, e.g., Omnicom or Publicis), I'd think perhaps a step change, sorry those of you stateside, in advertising may be coming.
This isn't to say that the market wouldn't freak out; just, that it is worth doing some thought exercises here.
In my honest opinion, you should work from the base case of, history repeating and or rhyming, then model deviations (both ways) with some probabilities.
Likely netting out X)
haHA!!
TLDR; inertia, friction, and vested interests are a lot to overcome - especially in such a politically fractured environment!!
IF you want to hedge the short term, don't overthink it - the market surely wont.
br. -john
p.s. stepping back, what are payors willing to pay, what does the market bear today - doesn't that seem (with a fair growth rate) to be a good starting place? price is one piece to the equation which grand scheme by the way, as we who dabble here know well, is peanuts to the system!
p.p.s. two levers to pull, organic and in-organic, which could leave massive M&A/BD as a viable option for increasing volumes - if you lever up to do this it might even help with wherever taxes are headed!!
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