Dispensed: What to expect out of biotech M&A, Medicare Advantage enrollment in 2020, and what comes next for the DNA-testing industry
by Lydia RamseyHello,
Welcome to the Valentine’s Day edition of Dispensed, Business Insider’s weekly healthcare newsletter. Consider this my Valentine to you. I’ll try to resist making any health-related poems.
Are you new to the newsletter?You can sign up here.
While I’m sure you’re busy buying up treats for loved ones and ready to head into the three-day weekend, first here’s a breakdown of all the big stories that kept the team busy this week.
Last week, I mentioned the layoffs happening at Ancestry, which came just a few weeks after 23andMe also made a big cut to its staff. I also mentioned I’ve been asking myself the big question of what comes next for the industry.
Well, I decided to turn to industry experts and figure out if I could find an answer.
The DNA testing industry is stuck in a rut. Here’s how 23andMe and Ancestry are plotting their next moves.
- Two of the biggest consumer genetics companies – 23andMe and Ancestry – have recently laid off workers, citing a slowdown in the market for their tests.
- Consumers aren’t flocking to send their spit into genetic testing companies in as high a numbers as the industry expected, an issue the industry has sounded the alarm on for the past six months.
- Industry experts aren’t expecting that market to ever come back, forcing the companies to adopt new strategies. Here’s where the companies are betting the industry could go from here.
Andrew Dunn and I spent our first half of the week around the BIO CEO conference here in New York.
- I spoke with a group of biotech executives onstage Monday about what it takes to prove a new drug should be covered by insurers. They laid out for me the 4 strategies they use to convince health insurers to pay up for new drugs.
- Andrew tuned into a discussion about biotech dealmaking.The top dealmakers, from Centerview, JPMorgan and Raymond James, revealed the 4 areas of biotech that are ripe for takeovers in 2020, from drugs that harness the body’s immune system to more precise ways to take on cancer.
- Andrew also listened in on a conversation with Barbara Dalton, a top investor at Pfizer’s $US1 billion VC arm. She spoke about the 2 biggest mistakes startup biotechs make when trying to win her cash.
We’re only a few weeks away from getting annual financial results from health insurance startups.
While we wait, I figured it’d be useful to pull together some of the numbers around Medicare Advantage enrollment, drawing from data from the Centres for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the companies themselves, and more.
Here’s a look, complete with a great graphic from Ruobing Su.
Venture-backed health insurers are all competing for customers in the red-hot Medicare Advantage market. Here’s our first look at how Oscar, Devoted, and Bright stack up.
Some general observations: nobody’s cleared 100,000 members in Medicare Advantage yet, and I’ll be curious how long it takes for the startups to get there.
Compared to the millions of members insurers like UnitedHealthcare and Humana have, the startups still have a lot of room to grow.
Some updates on the novel coronavirus outbreak: This week, we got an official name for the virus, COVID-19.
We’ve gotten updates as well on the virus’s impact on healthcare workers in Wuhan. About 500 have gotten sick, and one study suggests that as much as one-third of all cases are in medical staff.
You can follow along with more coverage here.
I’ll leave you with a couple posts from around the newsroom.
Bradley Saacks, our hedge fund reporter, had the scoop on Prashanth Jayaram’s move to striking up his own fund. The Citadel portfolio manager, who holds a medical degree, is going it alone and launching his own healthcare-focused hedge fund.
For those of you in healthcare professions(or those simply curious), here’s a look at how to earn a 6-figure salary as a dietitian or nutritionist, according to 4 renowned entrepreneurs in the industry.
With that, I’ll leave you to your planning for Valentine’s Day and the three-day weekend. We’ll be back with more starting Tuesday. In the meantime, you can find me at lramsey@businessinsider.com, or you can reach the whole healthcare team at healthcare@businessinsider.com.
– Lydia