Dear clients and friends: Happy holidays! It’s the time of year for parties filled with eggnog and awkward conversations with people in reindeer sweaters.

Fret not! We rounded up our favorite healthcare articles we read this year, and we share them with you as conversation starters.

Here’s to yuletide cheer and fewer discussions about the weather!

1. To talk to your neighbor’s kid… 

…who just read the ChatGPT summary of Das Kapital and blames pharma for the world’s ills, talk about how medical innovation and marketplace incentives create our best chance to fight addiction:

From Recursive Adaptation: The recent null results from a large study of a suite of overdose interventions is a warning that the tools available today are not nearly enough, even when implemented effectively — we need breakthroughs. Between the polarized camps on addiction policy is an achievable, non-partisan path: better medicines. Reducing rates of addiction has tremendous economic and social benefits, but most of those benefits occur outside of the medical system, which means the value generated can’t be captured by pharmaceutical or insurance companies. By redesigning the incentives of the dysfunctional addiction medicine market, we can put ourselves on a path to permanently solve addiction. 

2. To talk to that elitist Pilates instructor… 

…who scoffs at GLP-1s and tells you to surrender to the pose, share what’s happening at Poshmark, a second-hand marketplace: 

From Vogue Business: Poshmark’s data reveals a significant surge in plus-size women’s apparel listings on the platform over the past two years, including a 103 per cent increase in size 3XL listings, 80 per cent in size 4XL, and a 73 per cent rise in size 5XL. The company also reported a 78 per cent increase in new listings mentioning “weight loss” in the title or description as sellers look to get rid of items that no longer fit. 

3. To talk to a Luigi Mangione fanboy…

…pour some cold economic water on his vigilante fire: 

From Noahpinion: Insurance companies just don’t make that much profit. If UnitedHealth Group decided to donate every single dollar of its profit to buying Americans more health care, it would only be able to pay for about 9.3% more health care than it’s already paying for. If it donated all of its executives’ salaries to the effort, it would not be much more than that. What about those denials of coverage, copays, deductibles, and so on? In fact, Americans are paying a smaller percentage of their health costs out of pocket than people in most other rich countries!

4. To talk to parents with a college kid…

…you can, very carefully, suggest the unpopular opinion that schools are doing too much on mental health:

From The New York Times: Mental health awareness campaigns... help some young people identify disorders that badly need treatment — but they have a negative effect on others, leading them to over-interpret their symptoms and see themselves as more troubled than they are…Researchers in [one] study speculated that the training programs “bring awareness to upsetting thoughts,” encouraging students to sit with darker feelings, but without providing solutions, especially for societal problems like racism or poverty. They also found that the students didn’t enjoy the sessions and didn’t practice at home. 

5. To talk to a family dealing with Alzheimer's…

…talk about Mike Zuendel and his heroic work to “change the D-word.” Mr. Zuendel, who lives with early Alzheimer’s, is on a mission to change not only words, but care:

From Stat: "The journey toward diagnosis needs to be as easy as possible. And that depends on a shared effort to break down stigma so people can get the support and care they need, find trial opportunities, and approach their next steps feeling empowered and well-informed. Changing how we talk can change how we fight Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive impairment — unleashing earlier diagnosis, better care, and improved lives for people with these conditions."