Reshaping Healthcare

Reshaping Healthcare: For five years from 2007 to 2012, Criterion, with Good Capital and the Access Project, examined the root causes of medical debt and designing an innovative approach to leverage financial systems to alleviate the burden. We reframed the problem first as uncovered costs of health care, and then eventually to see that as in the broader context of a cash market in healthcare. Because the U.S. healthcare economy is driven by the paradigm of insurance, thinking about systems for increasing the value of a dollar in a cash market opened up new opportunities for solutions and ways to change the rules of the game. A defining moment occurred when we discovered the underlying system foundation to medical debt was a stunted and irrational $300 billion cash market.  Our discovery and exploration of the implications of an irrational cash market in healthcare are presented in our seminal Cash Market Report.