Health is our most valuable asset, yet it seems that affording private healthcare is not feasible for most people. In Mexico, 91% of private healthcare is paid out-of-pocket and healthcare providers demand up-front payment for high-priced medical procedures. The landscape is dire, Mexicans end up postponing or neglecting medical procedures, and as a consequence, end up suffering from negative lifelong consequences on their health.
Access to healthcare boils down to whether you have insurance or a provider offers a friendly payment plan. Lenders have taken advantage of the situation by charging rates up to 100% interest rates on loans for medical procedures. We believe that people’s lives are being jeopardized by the lack of access to private healthcare. We are confident that to make private healthcare accessible in Mexico, and LATAM, we need to lower its cost.
There are two fundamental cost components that if reduced will yield higher access to private healthcare.
Information cost
How much time do I need to spend to acquire information, price/quality ratio, about a new healthcare provider. The information cost maps to the number of options considered at a patient's decision point. A lower information cost results in more options considered and higher expected value/outcome for the patient.
Financial cost
Healthcare procedures are highly-priced and are needed at unexpected times – it’s hard to plan ahead and save money to afford them. For these reasons, the cost of borrowing money to afford a procedure is critical. A lower financial cost yields a shorter period of time until care is received by a patient.
We are building a company that aims to reduce the cost of private healthcare along both axes: information cost (marketplace) and financial cost (medical loans). Here is the plan:
Master plan
1. Launch a marketplace where patients compare healthcare providers locally through price/quality ratios and book appointments for free.
2. Offer low-interest loans for high-ticket healthcare procedures like surgeries.
3. Offer low-interest loans for low-ticket healthcare expenses like preventive care (lab tests and medical treatments).
4. Give healthcare providers the infrastructure to lend to their own patients at 0% APR.
5. Build distribution infrastructure for vaccines, genetics, longevity and up-coming biology breakthroughs.
