Introduction:The Helping Hands is an idea that I have come up with that allows individuals the ease and ability to aid one another with their hospital, and funeral bills. My idea is both hospital, and web based. My idea is to have donation machines (Helping Hand) very similar to an ATM machine set up within hospitals and funeral homes. Patient visitors will be able to access a directory through The Helping Hand and select a patient from the directory. The visitor will then be able to select an amount of money that they would like to donate to the patient's hospital or funeral bill. The Helping Hand will operate as any other self check out machine, accepting credit cards, debit cards, cash... After the transaction the visitor will be issued a receipt of their tax deductible donation.The hospital or funeral home will Issue the patient/family a card stating that either the visitors name or an anonymous donation was made to their hospital or funeral bill. The hospital would still issue the same bill to the patient's insurance company, and the donations will go towards the remaining unpaid balance. The Helping Hand website will be set up in similar fashion. Hospitals and funeral homes will have the opportunity to enroll in the website, where caring families and loved ones from afar will be able to use the directory to search for their enrolled hospital/funeral home, and find the patient that they wish to donate for. Payments will be accepted through the website, and routed to the hospital account. The same insurance billing process will be conducted by the hospital, and the donations will go towards the remaining balance. The patient account may remain within the directory for a time agreed upon by the hospital, patient, and The Helping Hand Company. Through The Helping Hand donations may also be made towards the hospital itself, and not for the individual patient. Receipts will be issued for all transactions. Doesn't that seem a lot better than a card or flowers from the gift shop?Jason Vaughan
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Since you say that when the donation is toward a hospital, the amount would be deducted from the bill the insurance company has to pay, you've essentially created a donation to the insurance company.
The only way we're going to lower medical costs is to stop expecting other people to pay our medical bills, be they insurance men or government or benevolent givers. If we pay our own bills, we'll expect more for our dollar and compare costs.
Medicine, hospital, funeral and insurance are all businesses. This seems as illogical to me as setting up a kiosk where people can donate to Walmart or GM. And donations to businesses should not be tax deductible.
Also, it seems to me that if I'm visiting a hospital, I probably know someone there. Wouldn't I be better off to just donate to them? You're saying that because it's tax deductible, I'll prefer to donate through the kiosk ("ATM machine")??
And on this website, we'd be soliciting anonymous charity? Anonymous charity leads to people feeling entitled and not appreciating the charity.
Also, free money entering a system will be inflationary--the care-givers will still try'n charge what the 'market' (insurance in this case) will bear, regardless of how much other money they got free. Just like in universities, donations have zero-effect on tuition, which still goes up every year.
Hospitals are the biggest, newest, fanciest buildings in most towns, comparing only to government buildings and banks. They probably have a higher percentage of highly paid people working in them than any other buildings in a community. The most Mercedes in the parking lot, too. I refuse to pretend that they're a charity. .
Some day all of this insurance Other-people-pay junk will go away and the doctor will have to justify to you why you should pay him $600/hour to cut out your tonsils. Or why a hospital room costs $1500 a day when my dog can stay at the vet for $60. Costs will come down then.
Free markets, with they payers making the decisions. That's what we need. Like the Mall doctors.