With pandemic-era Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies due to expire at the end of the year, health insurance alternatives could take advantage.

A June 11 report from global professional services firm Alvarez & Marsal (A&M) predicts that more beneficiaries might soon ditch insurance coverage for options like short-term, limited duration plans or healthcare sharing ministries (HCSMs), which aren’t regulated like health insurance and aren’t required to comply with ACA protections like covering maternity care or pre-existing conditions.

Craig Savage, A&M managing director and health plans and managed care practice leader, told Healthcare Brew that A&M has recently worked with “one of the larger” HCSMs—which he declined to name—to help the ministry scale in anticipation of more enrollment.

“They are really gearing up for growth in membership,” he said. “The market dynamics, the environment in which we find ourselves, I think, is going to lend itself to those health sharing ministries.”

Why these health plans might soon see a boom.—CC

On June 10, Bobby Mukkamala was inaugurated as the 180th president of the American Medical Association (AMA).

An otolaryngologist from Flint, Michigan, Mukkamal chairs the organization’s substance use and pain care task force, won the AMA Foundation’s Excellence in Medicine Leadership Award last June, and served on the AMA board of trustees in 2017 and 2021.

He spoke with Healthcare Brew about how his recent brain tumor diagnosis has informed his leadership at AMA and his plans for the new role.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Why did you want to become president of the AMA? What are your goals?

I have a slightly different answer than before. Up until I became a patient, it was all about my practice of medicine and just the hassles around trying to take good care of patients. Hassles like prior authorization…That hassle factor was something that bothered me, and it bothered my patients.

Here’s what he’s planning in his new role.—CM

Remember the days when all patient details and notes were recorded on paper and when artificial intelligence wasn’t lurking in the shadows contemplating how it can take our jobs?

Healthcare Brew remembers.

Patients now have “portals” with all their data and vitals. The Affordable Care Act has given millions of people in the US access to healthcare. A pandemic upended our society while also ushering in innovative medical research that saved lives.

Which is why we, alongside Morning Brew’s other professional publications, are embarking on the ambitious task of highlighting some big moments from the last 25 years. Because in order to understand the present and future, we need to have a clear understanding of the past.

But beyond those tectonic moments, we’re also exploring how developments in areas of importance for the industry—like the rise of health equity, the introduction of robotics, and the growing threat of cybersecurity—have impacted the business of healthcare.

So join us as we take a nostalgic stroll down memory lane, stopping along the way to examine the last quarter century of changes in a way that only healthcare pros know how: with meticulous, highly detailed, thoroughly researched reporting.

See our full timeline here.