Mortgages For Costly Health Care? Some Experts Consider It Can Work.

A Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist and Harvard oncologist have a proposal to acquire highly effective but prohibitively costly drugs into consumers’ hands: health care installment loans.

Writing last month in the journal Science Translational Medicine, the authors liken drug loans to mortgages, noting that both can enable customers to purchase big-ticket items needing a hefty up-front payment that they could not otherwise afford.

Some customer advocates and health insurance experts observe it differently.

“Is not this why we have health insurance?” inquired Mark Rukavina, a Boston-based health care consultant whose work has concentrated on affordability and medical debt. “Insurance utilized to secure people from financial ruin for these unpredictable, expensive occurrences. Now, with huge deductibles, we have got coverage for preventive care but not for treatment.”