Wouldn’t it be nice if health insurance companies extended their negotiated pricing to the uninsured public?
How?
Imagine a patient pays 5.00 month for a major carrier card. In return, the company provides a traditional health insurance plan with an infinite deductible (not printed on the card, and no co-pays obviously). When the insurer receives the bill for their highly discounted, negotiated price, they refuse payment due to deductible not met (like they do with millions of people everyday). The provider then sends the bill to the patient charging them the same discounted price of the service.
Such a program would be a great financial benefit to that patient, minor profit for the insurers ($5 a month to shuffle papers), and no change to the providers. Might make a good, federally-mandated, stop-gap, measure until we get our socialized medical system. Easier than fake Canadian ID’s!
Ahhh, to dream…
