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An option I've thought of btw -- also is what about hospitals BEING the insurer? For instance, say they simply charged 6% of income for insurance. You'd signup
by gremlinsinc 8y ago
An option I've thought of btw -- also is what about hospitals BEING the insurer? For instance, say they simply charged 6% of income for insurance. You'd signup through your local/favorite nearby hospital -- and pay your 6% of salary (nothing if you are in poverty), the hospital benefits because they have recurring monthly income that they can count on for budgets and things. When you travel your hospital pays other doctors and hospitals. Your hospital also pays your primary doctor, and other professionals as needed. This would basically cut out the insurer middleman, still leave it fairly privatized, but also lower the need for billers. Hospitals aren't going to gouge prices when they're the ones paying the bill right?
Government could also give grants/subsidies to help w/ the system as needed or tax relief. I think fair % might be 2% per 30k annual salary upto 10% of income.
- kwhitefoot 8y agoApart from your idea of signing up to a specific hospital this is how systems like the NHS work. They are funded from a specific tax in the UK and general taxation in some other countries. They either don't bill anyone for the care they provide and have no bureaucratic machinery for doing so, like the UK NHS or a here in Norway we pay a sort of co-pay for each doctor or hospital visit but it is capped at quite low levels, a couple of hundred dollars a year. And it is not related to the fine details of the treatment you have received so again there is very little bureaucracy.
- nradov 8y agoKaiser Permanente already acts as both a provider and payer in a single organization. The rest of the industry is gradually moving toward that model. But patients probably won't pay based on an income percentage.