A year ago, Lesley Johnston weighed 298 pounds. At 30, the Norman (Okla.) resident suffered from hypertension, a rapid heart rate, and sleep apnea so severe she slept attached to a machine. In July, Johnston had bariatric surgery to shrink the size of her stomach. So far she’s lost 72 pounds, and the apnea and hypertension are gone. “I don’t worry about dying in my sleep,” she says. Now her husband, Josh, wants the same surgery. And you might be able to profit from it.
Johnston paid for her procedure by putting $15,750 on a credit card, but she and her husband are considering financing his surgery with a loan from LendingClub or Prosper Marketplace, the two largest startups in the rapidly growing field of peer-to-peer lending. The companies match borrowers who want to do home repairs or refinance debt with investors eager to diversify from stocks and get returns higher than those of traditional bonds. The platforms see health-care lending as a growth market. Both companies acquired small medical lenders in the past year: Prosper bought American HealthCare Lending in January for $21 million, nine months after LendingClub acquired Springstone Financial for $140 million.
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