Who needs a loan shark when you have a dentist

In October, the New York Times published an extensive article on a new form of health financing that literally involved financing. While most Americans’ health insurance (granted they have it) covers the basics—primary care such as ER visits, yearly check-ups, and some forms of PT or psychiatry—, dental is rarely covered. The Times explained that for people who cannot afford certain medical procedures, such as a root canal, dentures (or diverging from the dentists, hearing aids), without some form of alternative financing, just wouldn’t get the treatment. But, doctors to the rescue, there’s a solution: financing.

If you can’t afford the dentures now, just sign up for the dentist’s financial package, and after a quick credit check, you’re on the road to good teeth, and bad debt. In the Times article, 78 year old Ms. Gannon was charged 23 percent interest rates, with 33 percent penalties for late payments, resulting in 214 dollar payments each month for a 5700 dollar procedure. That was a third of her Social Security check each month.

This reminds me of the scam of an industry run by used car salespeople: This past summer I went to an auto mall in Queens where they tried to sell me a Sandy-soaked car for 10,000 dollars above my budget. When I told them it was out of my price range, they proposed an outrageous financial package of nearly 37 percent interest. It’s one thing to try to scam a college student looking for a car, but another to scam a senior citizen for medical care.

I am by no means filled with an antipathy towards capitalism; I believe a good profit is the best motive of all. However, I agree with the global tenet that health is a human right, if human rights are even a thing, and therefore find this to be some form of usury that even the venture capitalist in me can’t understand.

When paying for health we should look to more of a balance of payments, rather than a system of payment. What I mean is that there is something missing along the way, that doesn’t quite add up: we pay exorbitant amounts for health insurance, insurance companies pay exorbitant amounts to hospitals, who pay very cushy—but not entirely exorbitant—wages to doctors, and yet hospitals are going bankrupt. Paying for healthcare has become a higher and greater burden on the patient and the money doesn’t go to the doctors, it goes to the insurance providers…and now the bankers too.