This is Scott Becker with the Becker's Healthcare Podcast. We're back today with Alon Condon. Alon's one of the leaders, editor in chief of the editorial team at Becker's Healthcare. He joins us regularly to share with us what issues, what stories he's watching in healthcare closely. Alan, give us the rundown. What are you watching closely currently? What's top of mind in health care? Yeah. Absolutely. Pleasure to be back on with you, Scott. So a couple of key stories I wanted to touch on today. I think first and foremost would be HCA, of course, no secret to any of our readers, the biggest, largest for profit health system in the country. Just pull out some key takeaways from their 2024 results what they just reported at the end of last week. So ACA net income for the year of 2024 of $5,800,000,000, that's about 10% growth from 2023. When we're talking about operating margins, that's a 12.1% margin, a $8,500,000,000 operating income. So huge, huge, really robust returns, strong results from HCA here. Again, about on a par or minimum incremental growth when compared to fiscal year 2023. And that's again excellent results from HCA despite its performance being somewhat hampered by, hurricane Helene and Milton at the tail end of last year, which hurt some of its Florida operations, some of its North Carolina operations. But then when we think about revenue overall, just to put this in perspective, HCA's revenue grew to 70.6 $1,000,000,000 in 2024. So that's, about a $5,000,000,000 increase on 2023. And, again, HCA for 2025 expects revenues to grow by up to $5,000,000,000. That's at the larger end of the scale, for the expectations for this year. So I guess the last kind of, couple insights is from CEO, Sam Hazen, fantastic leader at HCA. Really, really doubling down on organic growth, primarily, through by buying outpatient businesses, complementing its hospital networks with some rural facilities, urgent care centers, some ASCs, and surgical facilities. So a key key component of HCA's growth, really strengthening some of its anchor hospitals, with some of those complimentary facilities around it, in addition to some of those big hospital acquisitions that we reported on over the last few months as well. Let me ask you this question. There's been a lot of discussion about concerns about the Trump administration for health care providers. Some of the health systems took it on the chin last week, but not notwithstanding that, HCA stock is still up 10% this year. Any thoughts on impacts of the Trump administration, or is it just too early to tell any of that? What it'll mean for reimbursement and more so for hospitals and health systems? Yeah. Absolutely. I think great question and no doubt something that's on the the top of every hospital leader's mind at the moment. And something I've been connecting with hospital CFOs are that the start of the year and to your point, it's, a lot of apprehension, a lot of concern around potential cost to Medicaid, ACA, and whatnot. But to your point, I think still a little bit too early to tell. Of course, there's some rumblings in there. We expect probably some health care costs within those areas, particularly in health systems, the safety net communities, community health systems, no doubt who are already struggling to turn that corner. This is a particularly bad news if we were to see some significant cuts in those regards really impacting their operations, their communities. But really looking to pay pay close attention and talk to some leaders as we continue on into into February of next month and see what happens in terms of potential cuts from the Trump administration. Thank you very much. And, Alan, anything else you're watching closely? HCA continues to outperform. Anything else that you're watching closely? I think one important deal we've been following for a while, and that's, Walgreens. Just to touch on Walgreens, I think, with Ryder reported that they were in in talks to sell to a private equity firm to potentially go private. Walgreens really looking to turn a bit of financial corner from reporting sizable operating losses for previous quarters gone by. New CEO looking to really drive the leadership and drive the financial turnaround there. But the latest out of this is, according to the Wall Street Journal, that Walgreens has essentially pulled out or these these tasks with Sycamore Partners, this private equity firm, likely not going to be go going through. And this comes shortly after, the justice department, the DOJ recently sued Walgreens, for alleging unlawful dispensate dispensation of millions of prescriptions, which obviously violates the Control Substances Act. Again, just allegations, but another, another hurdle for Walgreens to jump right in the middle of some of these talks and potentially sell to this private equity firm, likely not gonna get over the line at the moment. But it'll be interesting to see, Walgreens upcoming quarters, how it performs, and then also will another potential buyer step in here? Still a lot up on the air, but a a deal that we're closely monitoring to see what happens there. No. It's absolutely fascinating. It seems like Walgreens just as soon as they get out of one problem ends up with another problem. The way is this Department of Justice thing, what what a tragedy and a challenge for them. And I'm sure that I don't know if there's merits to the whole thing or not, but, like, just looks to me, some of these companies just fall on hard luck, like Boeing and Walgreens and so forth. It seems like just a constant effort to try and shovel back out of it and get those those back on track. Alan, thank you so much for joining us. We talked about Walgreens. Their private equity deal seems dead right now. Just as Tim went, we're trying to turn that company around. We talked about HCA, which keeps being, you know, all all all signals forward, keeps on moving forward. And, then we talked a little bit about the speculation, what the Trump administration means for hospitals health systems, and it's still early to tell in all that. Alan, as always, you do fantastic work. It's great to visit with you. Thank you so much for joining us today, on this quick episode of the Becker s Healthcare podcast. Thank you very, very much. Always a pleasure. Thanks so much, Scott.