Health is wealth? Polymarket and Kalshi now host bets on measles and other US health crises

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Experts warn of risks of platforms hosting bets tied to US public health – including vaccine mandates and drug trialsThe sign was pasted on a construction fence next to an…

Experts warn of risks of platforms hosting bets tied to US public health – including vaccine mandates and drug trials

The sign was pasted on a construction fence next to an elementary school in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. “Vaccines,” it proclaimed in bold capital letters against a blue star-spangled background – appearing, at first glance, to be like any other public health message on the importance of getting vaccinated.

Polymarket joins Kalshi, another online prediction market, which began offering health-related predictions over the summer. Users can wager on when the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will approve a skin-cancer vaccine, or whether the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will change its vaccine recommendations. They can also bet on drug trial outcomes and approval; they can bet on how many cases of measles the US might see in 2026 and whether it will lose its measles-elimination status this year.

“I am not surprised,” said Matthew Eisenberg, professor and chair of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “Kalshi and Polymarket will list contracts on anything with a checkable outcome.”

Despite being functionally “identical” to regulated gambling, prediction markets are largely unregulated, said Lia Nower, a professor and the director of the Center for Gambling Studies at Rutgers University.

“Gambling right now is like the wild, wild west,” she added. “There’s no federal regulatory body that’s really prescribing any limits on any of this, or just minimum guidelines for states to follow – so anything’s possible.”

Prediction markets position themselves as financial derivatives, rather than traditional bets, in a regulatory loophole, Nower said – which means they operate under federal commodities laws, with oversight from the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and are not regulated by states as gambling operations.

Advocates, officials and lawmakers could place bets on ending…

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