The Big 3 American automakers plead for government bailouts to fix an outdated business model. I don't know; maybe hybrid and electric cars offer salvation from decades of strategic clumsiness, and maybe the bailout gives the Big 3 some breathing room to get there.
But I do know the only true, long-term fix is a recovery in demand for new cars, a demand driven by consumers' confidence in their own economic future. No confidence? No demand.
So it's interesting to see scrappy Hyundai tackling that problem head-on. Hyundai says "Buy one of our cars. If you lose your job or suffer some "life-altering circumstance" within the next year, bring the car back. At minimum, it's an interesting experiment in shifting economic risk from the buyer to the seller, though exactly how much risk is transferred remains to be seen.
I'm not sure what the idea's immediate relevance is for health care. Cars are 'goods' and health care is a 'service'. You can repossess a car but it's difficult to put back a removed appendix. Still, the lack of economic confidence is pervasive across all industries and, from its effects, health care appears less immune than normal.
For now, providers seem to have reverted to their typical "hunker down, cut costs, hope uncompensated care doesn't increase too much and demand comes back soon" mode. Is that really the best, risk-minimizing path these days? Possibly, but I wonder.
I wonder if there's an innovative health care marketer out there somewhere tinkering with the pricing model, responding to frightened, stressed consumers in a new, provocative way? Maybe that marketer is willing to assume part of that consumer's economic risk in order to gain a new customer and a new revenue stream. Maybe, in the current difficulties, that marketer sees a once-in-a-generation chance to move huge gobs of market share. ('Gobs' - a very technical, marketing term, by the way.)
Maybe that marketer is saying "Transfer all your family's health care and all your medical records to one of our physicians, use our facilities exclusively for all your needs, and if you suffer a "life-altering circumstance" in the next 12 months we'll do the following for you..."
Is that marketer out there? The marketer who can cut through the thicket of managed care contracts and Medicare regulations and bureaucratic red tape and institutional risk-avoidance? The marketer willing to tackle head-on THE demand-inhibiting issue of our day?
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