Best Healthcare Stocks of 2025

Indiana-based pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly employs more than 34,000 employees across 18 countries and sells its products in 120 different countries. The company was founded in 1876 by Colonel Eli Lilly, who was a veteran of the Civil War. One of the first products it developed was quinine, a medication used to treat malaria.

Headquartered in Bagsværd, Denmark, Novo Nordisk is led by CEO Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen, who also serves as vice president elect of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA), of which Novo is a member.

Currently, Novo employs more than 45,000 people and sells its wares in over 160 countries. It has also been named one of the best companies to work for for over a decade and in 2012 was named the most sustainable company in the world by Canadian media company Corporate Knights.

UnitedHealth Group is the biggest publicly traded health insurance company in the U.S. by market capitalization. Through its network of companies, UnitedHealth offers numerous health insurance plans as well as owns Optum, which provides, among other things, healthcare benefits like health savings accounts (HSAs).

UnitedHealth was founded in 1977, and it has a strong track record of paying shareholders regular dividends. The company is headquartered in Minnesota and its provider networks span the country.

While Johnson & Johnson is often thought of for its consumer products, it actually makes far more than Q-tips and baby powder. For example, researchers at the company developed one of the three FDA emergency authorized Covid-19 vaccines, the only single-shot option currently available. Started in 1886, J&J has a whopping 130,000 employees spread across operations in 60 countries.

Merck traces its history back to 1668, making it the oldest company on our list. The company’s predecessor firm was founded by the Merck family in Germany, and the modern incarnation of Merck was actually started as an American affiliate of the German enterprise in 1891.

Merck was nationalized during World War I under the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917—being an offshoot of a German company. However, the firm was bought back at government auction in 1919 for $3.5 million by George Merck, a member of the Merck family, with help from Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers.

Roche Holding is a Swiss multinational corporation that operates in two primary areas: pharmaceuticals and medical diagnostics. Among other things, the company produces reagents and drugs, including for treating cancers and depression. Roche is also an old and established company, founded in 1896—more than 30 years before the discovery of penicillin.

Waltham, Mass.-based Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. manufactures scientific equipment, instruments and software used in medical research and development as well as reagents and consumables.

Like many other healthcare companies, Thermo Fisher has jumped into the Covid-19 business. The company already offers a test that it says can detect the new omicron variant, making it presently the only FDA-authorized test capable of detecting the variant.

Danaher is an American conglomerate headquartered in Washington, D.C. The company is relatively young—its predecessor firm was founded in 1969. It gets its name from Danaher Creek in western Montana, where co-founders Steven Rales and Mitchell Rales first conceptualized the company while on a fishing trip.

Like many other companies on our list, Danaher’s operations are vast and diverse. The company operates primarily in environmental sciences, diagnostics and life sciences. The life sciences division represents the core of its healthcare operations, through which it produces a wide array of medical devices and instruments.

Abbott Labs was founded in 1888 and is headquartered outside of Chicago, Ill. The company is a large developer of pharmaceuticals and medical devices, including tests. Abbott is perhaps best known for some of its more innocuous consumables, such as PediaSure, Pedialyte and Similac. But, like other healthcare companies responding to the pandemic, it also has a Covid-19 test.

Headquartered in New York City, Pfizer is a pharmaceuticals giant that makes medicines, vaccines and some consumer healthcare products. Pfizer has operations in more than 50 countries around the world—in 2020, only about half of its revenue came from the United States.

Pfizer’s top-selling pharmaceuticals are household names, including the antidepressant Zoloft, the erectile-dysfunction drug Viagra and the anti-anxiety drug Xanax. The company has also developed one of the leading Covid-19 vaccines, which it expects will defend against the new omicron variant of the disease.