Health Law Advisor

On July 24, 2025, President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 14321, titled “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets” (“the E.O.”).

Although the E.O. has a number of elements, the one most notable for behavioral health stakeholders is a policy to increase use of involuntary commitment for mental health and substance use disorder treatment. The introduction proclaimed: “Shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings for humane treatment through the appropriate use of civil commitment will restore public order.”

The backlash to the suggestion of a sweeping lock-up of people because of mental illness and addiction was swift and fierce. Many advocates and commenters immediately called out the E.O. as criminalizing mental illness, addiction, and homelessness. However, as a matter of federal policy, the civil commitment provision of the E.O. may have less impact than some of its other components.

Based on their extensive experience advising health care industry clients, Epstein Becker Green attorneys and strategic advisors from EBG Advisors are predicting the “hot” health care sectors for investment, growth, and consolidation in 2020.  These predictions for 2020 are largely based on the increasing confluence of the following three key “drivers” of health industry transformation that is substantially underway:

1. The ongoing national imperative of reducing the cost of health care, via disease prevention and detection, and cost-effective, quality treatment, including more efficient care in ambulatory and retail settings;
2. Extraordinary advances in technologies which enhance disease prevention, detection and cost-effective treatment (e.g., artificial intelligence (AI)-driven diagnosis and treatment, virtual care, electronic medical record (EMR) systems, medical devices, gene therapy, and precision medicine); and
3. The aging baby-boomer population, with tens of millions of Americans entering into their 70s, 80s, and above.