“You’re working where?!” I asked in disbelief.
My husband, a registered nurse, had come home with news I was less than thrilled about.
“I’m working the COVID floor,” he said over dinner. My heart sank.
This was in March. At the time, the U.S. was just starting to feel the full effects of the coronavirus, but a lot of the information surrounding it was still far from certain.
My husband’s hospital was becoming overrun. It was moving all coronavirus patients to the cardiac unit he’d just started at.
And neither of us knew what to make of it.
We opted to live separately until he felt it was safe for us to be in contact again.
So for the next two months, the most we saw of each other was on FaceTime.
By early June, we decided we could take steps toward coming back together.
[Breakthrough: This Could be the Closest Thing to Buying Amazon When it was $50]
At that point, we were more confident that the hospital was taking every precaution to ensure his well-being — providing the best equipment and training.
And it wasn’t just his hospital that was adjusting to accommodate workers.
People from all over were showing their support — putting together care packages, sending lunches to hospitals and offering deals specifically for frontline workers.
It seemed like everyone wanted an opportunity to show their appreciation for health care heroes.
Since the outbreak of the virus, the importance of health care has become more evident than ever.
As it continues to expand, the health care industry is shaping up to be one of the most important forces in the decades ahead.
These are the kinds of sectors we keep our eyes on.
The Health Care Mega Trend
My boss, Charles Mizrahi, has been working in and around Wall Street for 37 years. He has been studying massive industries like health care for almost that whole time.
The pandemic has nailed home the fact that health care is not only an essential service, it’s an essential business.
In late February and early March, health care advocates asked that people not try to buy out surgical masks online — medical workers needed to have access to that supply. And some factories around the country were converted at lightning speed to make ventilators to meet hospitals’ demand. Anecdotally, health care sites are snapping up personal protective equipment from donations, online stores and anywhere else they can buy them. An entire cottage enterprise has cropped up to make extra masks and face shields for local facilities.
[Buy Alert: Buffett Recently Dumped $800 Million of Apple Stock to Invest in This!]
Anyone with a pharmacist, child care provider, researcher or senior caregiver in the family can tell you that the sector is far-reaching. These workers are all part of a massive interconnected industry. And as modern medicine continues to advance, we’re going to see health care grow even more.
Outside the pandemic, there are still dozens of factors supporting health care. In fact, since the 1960s, health care spending has grown from 5% of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) to 17.8% — a total of $3.8 trillion. With the aging of the baby boomer generation (the largest generation in the U.S.), increased spending on prescription drugs and rising wages of health care workers, analysts expect spending to grow at an average rate of 5.4% over the next few years. They project it will reach 19.7% of GDP by 2028.
And if you’ve been following Winning Investor Daily for any length of time, you know that this is a trend we want to own…
We recommend the Vanguard Health Care Index Fund ETF Shares (NYSE: VHT) as a simple way to get in on the growing importance of the health care industry.
This is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that gives exposure to the health care sector through a number of stocks related to the industry, such as Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ), UnitedHealth Group Inc. (NYSE: UNH) and Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE).
With many other solid companies, low fees and steady returns, Vanguard provides a simple way for you to stay invested with this trend.
And with the growth expected from this industry, we’ll definitely be keeping an eye on it.
Regards,
Nicole Zdzieba
Assistant Managing Editor, Alpha Investor
[Learn More: See Why Billionaires are Flocking to this Tiny Niche of the Tech Sector]
Leave a Comment