Zero-Interest Loans for Liposuction?

On August 30th The New York Times business section ran a story on zero-interest loans being extended to consumers—not for new Volvos or oak bedroom sets, but for healthcare expenses. Several days later a reporter from a Detroit newspaper contacted me to find out whether I thought this practice would become a trend in the consumer credit marketplace.

Words are important. And their meanings can be elusive. Even in the paragraph above I find myself slightly ill at ease with the various interpretations of the words “healthcare” and “expenses” once they have been typed onto the screen in front of me. But I am more discomfited by the thought that serious topics such as the American healthcare crisis and nearly $904 billion in revolving consumer credit outstanding could be conscripted in the service of a seemingly novel (and patently lite) look into medical financing.

Milt Freudenheim’s article, “Patients Turn to No-Interest Loans for Health Care,” should on its face prick up the ears of those interested in consumer credit and healthcare receivables, as well as consumers and those who advocate for them. But what follows in the article is a questionable exercise in linguistic conflation I find baffling.

Take “healthcare” for example. The procedures described in the article, which include laser vision correction, a cosmetic nose operation, and “$6000 ceramic tooth implants” (often touted in web-based advertisements as the most “esthetically pleasing solution” to all your dental needs), are acknowledged as procedures “not typically covered by insurance.” Yet in order to lend gravity to the story, the following two paragraphs begin:

“Of course, going into debt to pay for medical procedures is nothing new for many…” and “…as the price of health care continues to rise…”

Now we’re getting somewhere. Now this is serious. This is “healthcare.” But it’s not just healthcare, it’s a “healthcare trend.”

Freudenheim continues: “The room for expansion looks ample, as rising deductibles, co-payments and other costs may force more of the nation’s 250 million people with health insurance to finance out-of-pocket expenses for even basic medical care” [emphasis mine].

Zero-percent financing for basic medical care to rescue Americans from the plague of French Fry-itis (through liposuction), to end the crippling devastation of unleavened necklines (through breast augmentation), and once and for all to liberate the multitudes of four-eyed Americans (through LASIK) from their afflicted states.

This is not healthcare.
This is not basic.
This is vanity maintenance.

The Detroit reporter who called me looking for a lead on a new healthcare trend was right. And wrong. The starting point of her story was The New York Times piece, but the article should do little to convince readers that a definite and nouveau trend is emerging in the financing of healthcare expenses. At least until it can adequately define its own terms.

But there is an augmentation, a reconstruction of an already entrenched consumer behavior that accounts receivable management folks should pay close attention to here: the commoditization of medical procedures, however frivolous they may be. Like so many HDTV’s, sailboats, chic fall wardrobes, and stainless steel appliances, “health care” as Freudenheim understands it has been thing-ified.

To label tooth-whitening procedures a healthcare cost is like expensing a $129 per month cable television bill for access to commercial-free episodes of “The Quilting Channel” or “How Paint Dries TV” as a cure for chronic insomnia.

And according to The New York Times, by and large only the creditworthy are currently extended zero-interest loans.

Remember when that was true of home mortgages? Just how long will it take until this type of financing is extended to consumers with higher risks of default?

True healthcare providers and the accounts receivable management industry—both of which are at the center of medical bad debt—should alternately shudder (in the case of the former) and take notice (in the case of the latter) of Freudenheim’s new trend in medical financing.

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