We recently published a list of 11 Best Performing Healthcare Stocks to Buy Now. In this article, we are going to take a look at where iRhythm Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:IRTC) stands against other best performing healthcare stocks to buy now.

Trump’s Healthcare Executive Order Brings a Win

On April 15, CNBC reported that President Trump’s healthcare-focused executive order brought in a win for the sector. Trump directed his health department to collaborate with Congress to revamp a law allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices. The announcement seeks to bring a change that the pharmaceutical company has lobbied for. Since the negotiation process is included in legislation, Trump’s executive order cannot implement the change itself. However, it directs Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to join hands with Congress and change it.

CNBC reported that drug makers have been working to delay the eligibility timeline for small-molecule drugs to be available for price negotiations by four years. This typically includes pills and most medications. This goes hand in hand with the 13-year wait until more complex biotech drugs are eligible for Medicare price negotiations.

Trump’s wide-ranging executive order also focuses on slashing healthcare costs. It comes a day after the administration instituted a national security report on the pharma industry. CNBC called the report “a precursor to sector-specific tariffs.”

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Medicare’s negotiating powers have been a subject of contention, as drug makers have opined that they would suppress innovation and have rallied against the time frame for negotiation eligibility for most drugs. The law now allows the government to negotiate prices for drugs with no competition, which includes complex biotech or biologic medications after 13 years on the market, but 9 years for their administration as capsules and pills.

Although they did not provide specifics, White House officials told reporters that other changes to the negotiation process would yield more savings than those attained during the first round under the Biden administration. While the Biden administration negotiated price cuts as steep as 79% for the first ten most expensive drugs to the Medicare program, the Trump administration would negotiate prices for the following 15 medications. This includes Pfizer’s cancer drugs Ibrance and Xtandi, as well as Novo Nordisk’s blockbuster diabetes and weight-loss treatments Ozempic and Wegovy.

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Our Methodology

We used Finviz to screen healthcare stocks and selected the best performers based on their year-to-date (YTD) performance, as of May 9, 2025. We also included the number of hedge fund holders for each stock as of Q4 2024. We sourced the hedge fund sentiment data from Insider Monkey’s database. The list is sorted in ascending order of year-to-date performance.

Why do we care about what hedge funds do? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points (see more details here).

A patient being monitored with a portable ECG device, showing the effectiveness of the company's products.

iRhythm Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:IRTC)

YTD Performance: 52.71%

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 24

iRhythm Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:IRTC) is a digital healthcare company that provides design, development, and commercialization of device-based technology. It provides ambulatory cardiac monitoring services, along with solutions to detect, predict, and prevent disease.

On May 2, analyst William Plovanic from Canaccord Genuity revisited iRhythm Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:IRTC) and maintained a Buy rating on the stock with a $139.00 price target. The analyst highlighted the company’s potential and strong performance, reasoning that it underwent a significant 20.3% year-over-year growth in its fiscal Q1 2025 revenue, exceeding internal and consensus estimates.

The growth was attributed to the success and unexpected strength of iRhythm Technologies, Inc.’s (NASDAQ:IRTC) Zio AT product, which is anticipated to continue its positive trajectory. The analyst further said the company raised its profitability and revenue guidance for fiscal year 2025, demonstrating confidence in sustained product demand.

iRhythm Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:IRTC) is also progressing on regulatory fronts. It plans to submit the Zio Monitor in Q3 and complete compliance efforts by the end of 2025. It is the fourth best-performing healthcare stock to buy now on our list.

Overall, IRTC ranks 4th on our list of the best performing healthcare stocks to buy now. While we acknowledge the potential for IRTC as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. There is an AI stock that went up since the beginning of 2025, while popular AI stocks lost around 25%. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than IRTC but trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.

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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.

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