Read FierceHealthcare's other stories for your upbeat news this morning: in this article, all we have to offer healthcare executives is more bad news from Fitch Ratings.

Specifically, Fitch has issued a negative outlook for healthcare as a whole. We've already seen it happening, but the weak economy is expected to keep increasing the number of uninsured and underinsured patients into 2009. Not unexpectedly, there also will likely be a rise in bad debt, and demand will likely be reduced further as patients try to scale back on drug spending and elective care.

Fitch also issued a negative outlook for pharmaceutical companies, who are facing uncertain regulatory and legislative environments. The only positive news from Fitch is that medical devicemakers have a stable outlook.

To learn more about the ratings:
- read this Modern Healthcare piece [1]

Related Articles:
Fitch delays ratings changes given economic turmoil [2]
Fitch changes not-for-profit hospital outlook to negative [3]
Moody's ratings changes could raise healthcare credit ratings [4]