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I wonder what would happen if you could preemptively donate onto a pool that would guarantee you first place in line should you ever need to pay for an emergenc
by JudgeWapner 7y ago
I wonder what would happen if you could preemptively donate onto a pool that would guarantee you first place in line should you ever need to pay for an emergency medical expense? Yes this is almost the same as insurance, just without the middle man:
$100 upfront buys you 2 years of protection up to $50k for emergency issues. I would go for it. The major issue I see are the grey area in what constitutes an emergency, as well as the "hidden menu" as someone here calls it. That if you don't try to negotiate, you are throwing away massive amounts by paying sticker price.
Perhaps another approach is to buy "attorney insurance" that buys you an expert negotiator (and legal representation) should you ever need to fight the hospital over one of these ordeals.
- JamesBarney 7y agoThe biggest issue is death spirals. Healthier people will drop out of the market increasing costs, causing the almost healthy people to drop out, increasing costs, until no one is left.
- ThrustVectoring 7y agoThe problem is that if you don't have an insurance company for the hospital to attempt to gouge, all you're going to get is the bare minimum required to stabilize you and push you out of the ER. And if you do have insurance, you just need to keep enough bankruptcy-seizable assets to fill your out-of-pocket maximum and then play hardball over any excess that they attempt to charge you. Pay your OOP max, then cordially invite everyone who bills you to either work it out with the insurance company/regulator/mediatory or go pound sand because you're judgement proof.
- mikeash 7y agoI don’t see how that would get rid of the middleman. You’d still need some entity to hold on to the money, evaluate claims, and pay them. This is just a specialized kind of insurance.