Mark Sanchez: I always like to start these conversations saying, okay, show of hands, everybody raise their hand, who just loves the status quo of the American healthcare system? Okay, not many hands have gone up out there. So, we've been focusing a little bit on folks trying to bring a whole new business model to healthcare in America, which is, you hear a lot of folks say it's just a broken system. In a story this week, I wrote, and we posted on Crain's Grand Rapids.com. It's about what's called direct primary care or concierge medicine. These are medical practices, primary care, your basic medicine that do not take health insurance. Instead, they use a different type of business model where it's a subscription or a membership model. You may pay $100, $150 a month membership and you get plenty of access that you need to a primary care doctor. Kid gets up in the morning, has what you think is an air infection, go on in. They're structured in a way to have some flexibility and they're also structured in a way where typical doctors are carrying a really heavy patient caseload these days, where their caseloads are smaller, so they're spending more time with the patients. And the real cost drivers of healthcare are a lot of these high-cost chronic medical conditions, diabetes, asthma, back pain, depression, cardiovascular disease, where that takes time. You need to manage these conditions. So, the doctors in these direct primary care practices, they're spending more time, they're learning more about their patients, their lifestyle, their habits that affect their health. And this model has really been gaining some traction here in West Michigan the last year or two. The story we did this week at Crain’s Grand Rapids Business, talked to a couple of practices. Exponential Health over on the East side, as well as MI Partner Health, talked to Dr. Reyelts, who's been a physician for 35 years and he just said straight out, I am no longer going to enable, or I refuse to enable a broken system. That's how a lot of doctors view it, is there has to be a better way. So, you're seeing more doctors kind of transition to this direct primary care model, the subscription membership model. These practices are gaining patients. They're selling not only, you know, they're not only going directly to consumers without that insurance company in the middle, but they're also selling this to employers. Employers of some size who are self-funding their health benefits for employees can bring this in and also their employees get better access to primary care. The idea is in time you get a healthier workforce. So again, it's a model that's really gaining some traction here in West Michigan. Just last week down in Holland, we saw the opening of Christian Healthcare Centers. It's its third location here in the region. It's also got a practice in Grand Rapids and one in Newaygo. Christian Healthcare Centers also follows a membership model. Pay X amount each month, each year, you get this access to primary care doctors without having that insurance in the middle.
Patrick Center: That’s one of many pieces of the healthcare pie. So when an ailment is identified that goes beyond primary care, how are we ensuring people in those situations?
Mark Sanchez: You're getting referred to a specialist and then you use your health coverage to pay for that. Think about it in a way for old guys like me who can remember what health insurance, healthcare, was like 50 years ago. Remember, you know when we were kids, our parents, usually our dad working had health coverage. But when you went to the doctor, mom or dad paid cash or wrote that check to the doctor for whatever you had going on that day. And then you carried catastrophic medical coverage if you got seriously sick or injured or hospitalized, that's when your health coverage kicked in. Healthcare is vastly complex industry and over the generations has changed immensely for health coverage and health insurance where there's expectations that it's going to cover first dollar and cover everything. Now in the last 20 years, we're in this high-deductible era with high co-pays and high deductibles that most people are enrolled in. So, it's really what this direct primary care model is kind of doing essentially is going back to what health insurance was. You go to the doctor; you pay the doctor. Only in this model, it's a membership or subscription fee. And then when you need a specialist or you had a large claim, hospitalization, then your medical coverage kicked in.
Patrick Center: We're talking with Crain's Grand Rapids Business staff writer, Mark Sanchez. Michigan cherry growers have had it rough the last few years, but this season, the crop is looking a little healthier and the farmers could be seeing some good profits.
Mark Sanchez: Let's hope so because I've always said, you know, everybody wants to preserve farmland. Well, the best way to preserve farmland is preserve farming. And you're right in a story my coworker Abigail Poirier did this week on just kind of how's that cherry harvest expected to do this year? There's been a couple of difficult years. Prices were down. The farmers aren't getting as much. We had a story last year here at Crain’s Grand Rapids Business how some farmers were just kind of burning their fields because they were exiting the business. And it was getting tough. There's a lot of optimism this year over last year. In 2024, farmers lost up to about 75% of their crop because of insects and disease damage brought on by a mild winter and spring and then a rainy spring. For sweet cherries in Michigan, the tart cherry harvest saw about a 28% uptick in 2024 to 171 million pounds. That was a little lower than the initial forecast and despite the strong harvest year it fell behind the 170 million pounds harvested back in 2022. So right now, the gist of the story is basically there's some optimism that perhaps the cherry farmers will have a better year. And of course, when we all go up north, head toward Traverse and the northern part of the lower peninsula, we go through those cherry fields. And that is part of the history of agriculture in Michigan, is this cherry industry and what it does for the agricultural industry here.
Patrick Center: And when somebody asks you, where is Traverse City? What do you do?
Mark Sanchez: Well, we point.
Patrick Center: Traverse City, you point to your pinky.
Mark Sanchez: And you have to have the pinky separated from the other fingers so you can show Grand Traverse Bay, right?
Patrick Center: That's right.
Mark Sanchez: You know, we've all been on vacation traveling out of state and somebody inevitably asks, where are from? What do we all do for those of us who were born and raised in Michigan? We hold up our hand and we point. It's a Michigan thing. And there's kind of a pride in that. You know, Michigan, we all learned as little kids that, you know, it's a peninsula state, the two peninsulas, and we're a mitten state. And so that's kind of translated here lately to kind of an industry. And this is a story we had last week here at Crain's Grand Rapids Business by Jack Grieve. He's a correspondent for the Crain's brands. In this case, he looked at this idea of mitten-shaped products or Michigan made products such as Carhartt jackets. T-shirts, bumper stickers, obviously Bell's Brewery and Vernors Ginger Ale are logos that you see the Pure Michigan logo on products. But also, you see these products, you mentioned before we went on air, cutting boards, Adirondack chairs, they're all shaped as mittens. And these products apparently sell pretty darn well. So, it's kind of a cottage industry that's been created here over the last several years. We look at the Grand Rapids apparel maker, the Mitten State. It ships products to 80 retailers across Michigan and delivers to customers nationwide. It's kind of a Michigan thing. So, to say, we love our Michigan-branded, our Michigan-shaped products, and its bit of a cottage industry that's been created.
Patrick Center: How many of these local Michigan businesses are there selling Michigan products?
Mark Sanchez: I think there’s at one point somebody mentioned about 80 or so businesses. There's a lot of them, obviously the Mitten Company here in Grand Rapids is growing and big and it's selling to, again, 80 retailers across the state that deliver products and sell products to customers. So again, there's not a lot of good solid data out there but basically talking anecdotally to the folks who are carrying these types of products, they say it has been, over the last several years, growing and something that resonates with the consumer.
Patrick Center: Crain’s Grand Rapids Business staff writer, Mark Sanchez. Thank you so much.
Mark Sanchez: Thank you, Patrick.