"Mr.Delaney, your idea is great; could it be adapted to provide the loans 4 entrepreneurs 2 start own healthcare company?
I balked at first.
Insurance companies used the funds invested by their policy holders to build monstrosities called HMOs (Health Maintenance Organizations). These massive institutions would have a monopoly on the care of their policy holders. HMOs are great at delivering untold profits but are horrid at delivering care.
My gut reaction is that people should avoid having the health care funding system owning the health delivery system.
Yet as I tried imagining an MS&L making investments in clinics, I realized that such clinics are likely to be more like buyers' coops than the industrial HMO created by insurance companies.
The dissatification that people have with HMOs was the result of the tight command and control profit structure of the insurance paradigm. Clinics funded by the Medical Savings and Loan are likely to reflect the more loose knit structure of the funding device.
Having the funding mechanism for health care directly investing in the health care delivery mechanism is only problematic when the system is owned by a third party.
The ability of a Medical Savings and Loan to invest in new clinics is a wonderful way for people to overcome weaknesses in the current infrastructure. My thought experiment on this matter seems to further my belief that we should move from the insurance model to the MS&L model.
Mr. Delaney,
ReplyDeleteI take from this that basically, our ideas together would work (correct me if I'm wrong).
If that indeed is the case, that your MS&L plan could provide the funding for our Nation's medical professionals and students to pursue entrepreneurial opportunities that today are restricted by HMO's, then that's a big part of the answer. Offering incentives to build those private medical service companies with our existing resources, the buildings in every city that today are vacant, is the next challenge. The last will be to offer tax breaks that are directly correlated to increase with the # of patients served to their satisfaction is the last step.
As far as the legality of such privatized, innovative reform, is not an issue for two reasons:
One, there will be no bill passed. Such is the irresistible nature of Freedom, that by definition it adapts to survive, especially in the face of oppressive actions.
Two, if our Government continues to disregard the voice of our free people as disingenuous (or worse), I will address our nation to propose a "Federal Liquidation Sale" of sorts. Now that technology is truly capable of enabling our freedoms and provide the framework for a Government that is truly Of, By, and For the People; it is our right, our responsibility, our duty, to see those ideals to fruition.
As Kennedy inspired our nation's freedom to get to the moon, inspiring freedom will again prove capable of reaching this new goal.
"In the long history of the world, only a select few generations have been granted the role of protecting freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not flee from this responsibility. I welcome it."
-John F. Kennedy
In the words of Patrick Henry, as for me, however great the anguish of the spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and provide for it.
Sincerely,
Kellen Smith
www.My1stAmendment.com
Very interesting thoughts and useful ideas.
ReplyDeleteYou will have to excuse me, but when I started thinking about having medical loans offered right in the clinic, the picture of an auto dealership popped into my head. In my mind's eye, I could see a heavily musk scented salesman pressuring some poor sap to buy more car than he needs and saying, "I don't know. Let me talk to my manager and to the loan officer to see if I can get this deal approved."
What would stop a clinic from operating like that?