Buying health care on Groupon

In another sign of changing times, Kaiser Health News published an interesting article about health care being sold on Groupon, a website traditionally oriented around consumer retail experiences (e.g. restaurants). Groupon is known for its heavy discounting, and Groupon keeps a large cut of what it helps sell (around half). Thus, that healthcare institutions have started to make their services available through Groupon suggests that an increasing number of provider organizations are looking for new channels of bringing in revenue.

Interestingly, one provider organization indicated that it started offering its services on Groupon in response to other organizations already doing so. That response suggests that competition is at work. It will likely still be a long time before we see more sophisticated procedures being sold like this (if ever), but that there are some services available through this non-traditional channel suggests that some patients are keen on more affordable health care, and some providers would very much like to provide that.