One of PSA’s long held theories of change in the Age of Digital Disruption, is that new tools will be implemented if they are more economically effective, especially for hugely expensive public costs such as education and healthcare. Current “control” of those markets is wobbling, but appears more “open” in healthcare than in education, perhaps because health outcomes are more empirical, and less a matter of a “credential gatekeeper” guiding the MO as in education.
Of course the matter of universal health care insurance, or not, is one of the national and state political battles underway. But that hasn’t stopped various large corporations placing bets that they can find their way into the healthcare “marketplace”, with digitally enhanced methods powering one stop “fast and cheap” care.
It’s possible that a similar process could take place for education, where the individual and the family take on more active roles in the process empowered by online tools and neighborhood/ community school hubs of educational services. IOW, a new educational “marketplace”.
Below is a current story on healthcare marketplaces; previously. there have been announcements of various other partnerships to address this market by Amazon, Google, and various Wall Street entities. One presumes Apple and Microsoft are also “working on this”, as well as the social media companies.
[gview file=”https://publicservicesalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Large-Retailers-Walmart-ATT-Inching-into-Health-Care.pdf”]