Universal Healthcare Without Politics

What is my project:

The goal of my project is to utilize web based social networking technologies to create a practical, functional universal healthcare solution within the United States without the costly and inefficient intervention of government.

This will be achieved by creating an online “Medical Service Exchange.”  The web portal will be geographically intelligent, containing an updated database of all locally available government / non-profit free and low cost healthcare programs, as well as a database of member doctors who have signed up and agree to provide “pro-bono” healthcare for at least ten people with low or no income. The member doctors can also elect to offer tiered “Service Coverage Contracts [SCC]” directly to uninsured lower/middle/upper income patients through the online portal, in exchange for medical care. The SCC is an agreement between member doctors and patients, whereby the patient pays the doctor an agreed upon monthly fee in exchange for access to medical care. Before any Medical Service Exchange member doctor can accept a paid SCC, they must grant and fill at least ten “pro-bono” offerings for the poor, providing free healthcare through a finite number of office visits per month [derived at from RAND Health Insurance Experiment numbers to prevent the abuse of free care]. 

Every new member patient that signs up with the online Medical Service Exchange will need to answer brief questions about their net income, available disposable income, as well as demographic and other quantitative information. This information will be used to query the online databases and provide appropriate healthcare options. If the new member patient’s income is below the poverty level, then all locally available government / non-profit free and low cost healthcare programs will be displayed, as well as the “pro-bono” and low income SCC offerings from local member doctors. If the new member patient’s income is too high, or he/she is disqualified from available free care programs for other reasons [or if he/she does not wish to choose any of the government / non-profit programs] a database of locally available member doctors will then be queried for appropriately priced SCC’s that are available based on the search criteria entered by the prospective member patient.

Employers may also join the portal at no cost and enter into SCC’s with doctors on behalf of their employees in lieu of paying for expensive health insurance.

This online portal will be a kind of “medical myspace,” and will always be free to any doctor, employer, or uninsured prospective patient to become a member. The only prerequisite for member doctors is that they must grant at least ten “pro-bono” healthcare SCC’s for the poor before accepting any paid SCC.

All primary member doctors will have the capability to form coverage groups within the various specialties and their local hospital, allowing receipt of a pre-determined percentage of SCC patient revenue in exchange for the possibility of future referral treatment from the primary member doctor.

Impact:

The focal point of impact will be the 46 million uninsured Americans, who will be provided instant access to an online, centralized source of information to discover the government / non-profit health programs available to them, as well as the pro-bono and fairly priced SCCs offered through the Medical Service Exchange’s member doctors.

My project will also provide medical doctors with a more stable and predictable income per month, as they are receiving known revenue from their SCC’s as well as the satisfaction in knowing that they are helping the poor and uninsured in a very tangible way [through extension of pro-bono care and fairly priced SCC’s].

Problems Solved

My project will bring into existence a practical method to end the lack of health care coverage for a large segment of the American population, without creating additional wasteful government bureaucracies or excessive new taxes.

It will preclude those who currently have healthcare coverage from having an added tax burden by having to pay for the coverage for the remaining population of the American uninsured.

It may reduce current taxation for government health care programs, as poorer Americans may opt for accepting a pro-bono/inexpensive SCC with the medical exchange’s member doctors, as opposed to having to accept the local government healthcare provision or free clinic [if one even exists].

Ultimately, it will remove the “Universal Healthcare” ideal from the arena of politics and talk, and move it into a viable working “social contract” between doctors and patients.

Inspiration

I am a married, self-employed father of two young children. Though I am the only income earner in our family, my income is too high to qualify for any available “free care” programs, yet not high enough to be able to purchase any “decent” insurance option. Most low or moderately priced monthly insurance plans have huge deductibles, whereas the decent plans with low/no co-insurance ratios are outrageously expensive [well over a thousand dollars a month for a family of four].

My inspiration for creating this project comes from the anxiety I have felt over the years from having no adequate medical coverage for my family, the anger that I have in finding that only fifty percent of healthcare dollars actually go to healthcare, with the rest going to middlemen and intermediaries [i.e. the insurance companies], and the conviction that a streamlined, non-profit, and private universal system would increase the efficiency with which money is spent on healthcare.