Universally Bad Care, Ads For January, Etc.

It has long been a disturbing article of faith that affluent people get vastly better medical care than their poorer compatriots. But take comfort, America: A new study by Rand Corp. finds that well-to-do folks receive shoddy medical care, too! The gist of the findings is that while disparities exist, "they are small relative to the gap between what everyone needs and what they are receiving." The study calculated the percentage of medical care people receive, relative to what they need, for 30 acute and chronic conditions. Overall, it found them getting about 55 percent of the care recommended for what ails them. "Those with annual family incomes over $50,000 had quality scores that were just 3.5 percentage points higher than those with incomes less than $15,000." The difference in degree of care for the insured vs. the uninsured was negligible. Studies have shown women more avid than men in seeking regular medical attention, but Rand found only a modest gap in the proportion of recommended care the two sexes receive (women, 57 percent; men, 52 percent). While noting that other research has shown blacks less likely than whites to receive certain high-cost procedures like kidney transplants, Rand's broader assessment of care said, "Overall quality scores for blacks were 3.5 percentage points higher than for whites." Among other tidbits from the study: "Younger and wealthier participants were more likely to be screened, but less likely to receive follow-up care than older participants."Demographic change has a different pace for different age groups. Immigrants tend to be disproportionately young, which makes a country's younger population more ethnically diverse than its senior citizens. Childbearing—something the elderly have outgrown—amplifies the ethnic changes at the youngest end of the age spectrum. This explains why the 65-and-over population of the U.S. has remained mostly non-Hispanic white, even as the population as a whole has grown significantly more varied. Over time, though, such changes permeate the total population. A new Census Bureau report makes it clear that the next few decades will see a striking change in the composition of America's 65-plus cohort (see chart). One way of looking at this: Marketers who've ignored the current, mostly white crop of old folks will soon have the opportunity to ignore old folks of many ethnicities. Americans view the health-care sector as a money pit, but this doesn't keep them from acknowledging that it's an innovative field. A survey commissioned by JWT (and timed to coincide with the launch of the American Inventor television show on ABC) sought to gauge Americans' opinions on the state of inventiveness in this country. When respondents were given a menu of industries and asked to pick those in which they think the U.S. is outstandingly inventive, medical science got the biggest vote, cited by 38 percent; pharmaceuticals picked up another 17 percent of the vote. Thinking of innovation more broadly, Americans don't regard it as an unmixed blessing: 79 percent of the poll's respondents said they think people in this country "are too easily seduced by shiny new things and ideas." Marketers in some consumer-product categories should get serious about advertising in January to capture the sales of shoppers bearing gift cards. A report from the National Retail Federation notes that "January sales were so strong that they were revised upward to 8.4 percent above the previous year and 2.8 percent seasonally adjusted from December." The rising use of gift cards is an obvious factor in this. Since consumers devote their gift-card loot largely to themselves (unlike their pre-Christmas shopping, which is all about the joy of giving, etc., etc.), they'll pay close attention to ads that propose ways for them to spend it.

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Universally Bad Care, Ads For January, Etc.

Mark Dolliver

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Mark Dolliver