Consumer sentiment sitting at 53.3 in March 2026, deep in pessimistic territory, retail investors are hunting for defensive names that can grow even as households tighten budgets. Healthcare keeps that promise. Personal healthcare spending climbed from $3.432 trillion in January 2025 to $3.741 trillion by March 2026, outpacing total consumption while motor vehicles and other discretionary categories softened. Medical device stocks trading below $30 give individual investors an affordable way to ride that resilience.
Chair of the Public Accounts Committee John Brady has said he is "flabbergasted" over the decision by University Hospital Kerry to spend €127,000 on a bike shed when cheaper options were available.
Healthcare spending in the United States continues its upward climb, approaching $5 trillion annually in 2023. Employer-sponsored family plans now average $27,000 per year, placing mounting pressure on households and businesses. Yet despite this spending, the country's health outcomes remain far from world-leading. The latest OECD data show U.S. per-person spending is roughly twice the OECD average, with Switzerland and Germany trailing behind as the next highest spenders.
The United States lags behind many other wealthy, highly developed countries in key public health indicators. According to a report published by the World Obesity Federation , a London-based non-profit advocacy group, the adult obesity rate in the U.S. was nearly 43% in 2022, higher than in all but a handful of high-income countries, and more than double the obesity rate in France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and across Scandinavia.
Sometimes, employers will provide grace periods of up to two and a half months past the end of the year to allow for extra time to use your FSA funds. Others may allow you to carry over up to $660 per year. But 33% of employers have a hard deadline, so if you don't use your funds by the end of the year, they're gone.
To be honest, I'm not at all surprised this question is coming up, although it's likely to have come up dozens of times in the same subreddit, as it's been a hot topic for as long as most of us can remember. There is no question that the baby boomer generation, which ranges from those born in 1946, immediately after World War II ended, all the way to those born in 1964.