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Meet the Canadian doctor who prescribes money to low-income patients - Vox
Boosting people’s incomes to help boost their health outcomes — could this model work in the US?
Gary Bloch became a doctor because he wanted to help people who were less privileged than him. For years, he tried his best to treat patients coping with poverty and homelessness.
But no matter how many blood tests he ordered and prescriptions he wrote, many of his patients’ health problems persisted. He realized it was because he wasn’t addressing the issue that most plagued them: poverty.
So in 2005, instead of prescribing only medication, he started developing the concept of prescribing money. And for the past 10 years, he’s been putting that concept into practice.
Boosting people’s incomes to help boost their health outcomes — could this model work in the US?
Gary Bloch became a doctor because he wanted to help people who were less privileged than him. For years, he tried his best to treat patients coping with poverty and homelessness.
But no matter how many blood tests he ordered and prescriptions he wrote, many of his patients’ health problems persisted. He realized it was because he wasn’t addressing the issue that most plagued them: poverty.
So in 2005, instead of prescribing only medication, he started developing the concept of prescribing money. And for the past 10 years, he’s been putting that concept into practice.