The Market

Health Insurance Coverage

While everyone seems to agree that health insurance is a big problem–that most practices/providers hate dealing with–the facts about health insurance coverage reveal why practices may struggle if they don’t try to offer some benefit for patients with health insurance.

  • Health Insurance Demographics (Click Here)
    • 10% of Americans have no insurance.
    • 30% of Americans are Medicare/Medicaid/Tricare.
      • 7.5% Traditional Medicare
      • 7.5% Medicare Advantage
      • 15% Medicaid
    • 60% of Americans have private plans.
      • 35% Employer-based plans non-HMO
      • 15% Employer-based plans HMO
      • 7% of private individual plans non-HMO
      • 3% of private individual plans HMO
    • Target populations for private practices.
      • 90% of Americans have some form of insurance.
      • Most affluent groups are traditional Medicare and individual non-HMO plans (14.5%)
      • Remaining 85.5% (no insurance, Medicaid and employer plans) may not be a good fit.

Articles

  • “US maternity wards face wave of closures as Medicaid cuts kick in,” Tobi Thomas. The Guardian, October 11, 2026 (CLICK HERE).
  • “Health insurers are dropping Medicare Advantage plans — and nearly 3 million older Americans will be affected,” Vawn Himmelsbach. Yahoo! Finance, August 24, 2026 (CLICK HERE).
  • “Unlocked Repost: Curing U.S. Health Care, Part II,” Paul Krugman. Paul Krugman Substack, May 28, 2026 (CLICK HERE).
  • “Walmart will close all of its health care clinics,” Nathaniel Meyersohn. CNN Business, April 30, 2024 (CLICK HERE).
  • “Walgreens Shutters 160 VillageMD Clinics after $6 Billion Loss.” American Hospital Association, April 9, 2024 (CLICK HERE).
  • “BIG INSURANCE 2022: Revenues reached $1.25 trillion thanks to sucking billions out of the pharmacy supply chain – and taxpayers’ pockets,” Wendell Potter. Health Care un-covered, February 27, 2023 (CLICK HERE).
  • “Humana to exit employer insurance business to focus on government plans.” Reuters, February 23, 2023 (CLICK HERE).

e3Business Articles

  • “2027 Private Practice Outlook,” e3Business Article (CLICK HERE)
  • “There’s a New Sheriff with an IFM Digital Badge,” e3Business Article (CLICK HERE)
  • “The Source of Provider Compensation,” e3Business Article (CLICK HERE)
  • “Functional Medicine Data Fallacies,” e3Business Article (CLICK HERE)
  • “Failure to Launch” (CLICK HERE)
  • “Making Money with Functional Medicine,” e3Business Article (CLICK HERE)
  • “Direct Primary Care Goes Thud,” e3Business Article (CLICK HERE)
  • “Rise, Crash and Burn: Looking Back at a Las Vegas Medical Group Launch and the Lessons Learned,”  e3Business Article (CLICK HERE)
  • “The Elephant and I&FM: A Parable” (CLICK HERE)
    • One of the problem with integrative, holistic and functional medicine is that there is not a generally accepted definition of integrative, holistic and functional medicine–or what it looks like.

IFM Data

Since 2016, e3Business has periodically tracked the changes of the physicians listed on the Find a Provider page of The Institute for Functional Medicine (IFM).

Note: Some time in 2025 or 2026, IFM changed the “Find a Practitioner” listings to include all practitioners licensed in a state rather than just those physically practicing in each state, which makes it much more difficult to track the number of active providers.

Archived Case Studies and Competition

This area is no longer updated on a regular basis, but provides information on current and former integrative, holistic and functional medicine practices.