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Hospital Membership | |||||||||||||||||
Pay insurance dues as a Hospital Membership instead of Health Insurance Instead of paying Health Insurance, and then make claims against your insurance policy, why not cut out the middleman and pay dues directly to your hospital. The goal would be that with all members of a hospital paying dues to that hospital, the cost of care would be better controlled because the hospital will be charging itself for your care. Hospitals would need to become non-profit organizations in order to keep them "honest".It is my opinion that unlike most businesses which exist to make a profit, hospitals exist to care for their patients. There is no reason to post a profit, as that would just mean that the members are being overcharged. I hear rumours of hospital patients being charged $11 for an aspirin, and other insanely high rates.The reason the hospital can get away with this is because they want to make a profit, and they get to pass the bill onto the insurance company. The insurance company has to pay, but in the end that cost gets passed on to the buyers of insurance. More realistic charges and removing a bunch of administrative costs should make health care more reasonable in the US. I doubt health care will ever be cheap, but should it be? The simple argument against this is "what happens when you can't be cared for by the hospital you are a member of?" Hopefully enough 'membership' type hospitals will exist that the hospitals could charge 'guest' patients a rate in-line with what it charges to it's members. Of course, the patients don't pay directly, it gets taken care of by their 'membership' which now acts as insurance.
pedalpete, Mar 01 2004
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2 Problems with this:
1. Most health insurance costs are on a "catastrophic basis", so membership at one hospital wouldn't really reduce those rates.
2. Unfortunately, the tax system is set up so that such fees would be hard to pay with pre-tax, rather than post tax dollars. If this could be altered, then this would be a good plan for group purchasing of preventative coverage, separate from catastrophic insurance.
A comment on "non-profits". Non-profit doesn't make you better, and sometimes makes you worse. Consider ETS (of SAT fame). They are "non-profit", but their execs make 100's of thousands a year, their operations are opaque, and they are a monopoly (a duopoly with ACT, in some instances). The profit motive helps, in that if my doctor wants to make money, he will offer good care so that I continue to choose him and so he doesnt get sued for malpractice.
In response to mithryll1
I believe that problem #1 is exactly why an idea like this would work. Current health insurance costs based on a "catastrophic basis" means that essentially, everybody is overpaying with the insurance company recieving all the benefits. I think this is why hospitals can also overcharge.
With the "membership plan" the hospital needs to cover it's costs from members. Members are buying into the plan to ensure that they will be taken care of in the event of illness. Catastrophic or not. My insurance costs don't necessarily reflect my health care costs, but my share of the cost of operating the hospital. If you think about it, who pays for that now? You do with your health insurance, but you also have to pay the cost of administering the health insurance company and the hospital seperately, and each attempting to post profits in the end.
I wish I could respond to your pre-tax/post-tax dollars comment, but I am not sure I understand your argument. Are your health insurance plans paid for pre-tax now? If so, why would it be any different if the insurance was paid directly to the hospital.
I do partially agree with your comments on non-profits. The hospital membership plan does not specify that doctors should not be well paid. The individual hospitals operate as any other company in a capitalist system, and they will pay to attract the best doctors, etc. But different hospitals will sell themselves through different methods. Maybe there will be a 'discount' hospital that doesn't pay it's doctors as well, and some people will only be able/willing to pay the dues to belong to that hospital. Others may pay for a hospital that always has the most state of the art equipment, while maybe another hospital has the best doctors. The non-profit issue came up so that the hospitals main goal as a business is not to turn a profit. In hindsight, I was probably wrong, it might not be necessary.
I dont know how far the Kaiser Permanente Health Group extends into this country, we have it in California, everything is done in one place, instead of having to go see a Doctor in their clinic and then get a referral to drive off to another Clinic or Hospital to get Lab work done, at Kaiser you only go from floor to floor or room to room all in the same Building, Plus you save Gas. Great Idea, but I dont think it will happen anytime soon. Too many beaurocrats and well connected investors would stand to loose a lot of money, and as we all know our Political "Leaders" are more interested in the pockets of it's high political donors than the well being of their Citizens
This is a great idea. The hospitals could re insure themselves against excessive losses. I think it is something that should be done. Insurance companies would have a fit but let them. They have been screwing us for years.