...a little background into my perspective. as soon as I started painting, around the turn of the century, the time had come for Samaritan Ministries. this is a group of 'born-again christians' who voluntarily join together to help one another with health care costs. there are several stipulations, if I am remembering correctly...such as, I believe, living a non-alcoholic lifestyle...I think...I was a member for several years during the first decade. my monthly share, when I left in 2007 was $109 for me as a single person. couples paid a bit more and families may have paid somewhere over $200 a month. the way it worked was that every month I would get a letter from Samaritan with the name, address and name of another member who had sent in medical bills that month that needed to be paid. I, and other members had two responsibilities.
First, to pray that the Lord would heal the person whose claim I was joining with others to pay. Second, to send a letter and a check for $109, made out to this person, to this person's address. (having received all that they needed they would then pay all the medical bills they currently owed.)
during the summer of 2007 I hit an car door opened inadvertently in the path of my bike on Main St. in town. unfortunately I was not wearing a helmet. I was medivaced to a hospital 40 miles away where I received a number of helpful medical procedures and convalesced to the point of being able to come home. I then needed some medications, went to a hospital in Philadelphia for a (thank the Lord!) a successful shoulder operation. out of a total of 30 different health providers, only the practice that would have helped with my vertigo from the concussion denied my self-pay privilege. after some prayer, I decided to deny them the privilege of helping me and sought the help of the Lord.
the total cost of everything was just over $70,000.00 which was all paid to the providers within a month of when they provided me with medical help. (my out of pocked expenses were about $100..only because I did not understand how to properly deal with them..if I had I would not have had to pay $1.
after 3 months out of work I found that my $ was, almost to the $1, the same as when the accident happened. My God shall supply all our needs according to His riches in glory.
soon after returning to work, my boss told me he would provide all the basic paint equipment and that he was putting me in my own paint business. I decided to drop out of Samaritan ministries at the end of 2006 and have not had any since.
....that is until May of this year when, yielding to the encouragement of my wife and her financial adviser, I joined Medicare.
I paid $566 ($134 a month...that is in addition to the thousands of dollars I-paid-in-but-now-gone-into -the-deficit ) for the first four months of Medicare (my supposed retirement health care supplier in my time of increasing need...with those I had elected to office to do what they would have done to themselves NEVER PUTTING all that I had paid them out of MY HARD EARNED $ FOR THE LAST 52 YEARS O-U-T T-O I-N-T-E-R-E-S-T so there would be enough of MY $ to pay for MY medical needs in MY old age...not to speak of passing any I did not use in my old age onto worthy causes to meet the needs of the needy who had no one to help them. (I vote for regular, mass impeachment until we each start taking care of ourselves again.) after 4 months of a steady, snarled and nearly incomprehensible barrage of government mailings (how much did the time and money to prepare and send these cost?...and, more indicative, Non-government mailings(!) concerning Medicare, I cast a lot before making out the second check covering September thru November and (OH LORD YOU ARE MERCIFUL!! thank You for hearing my cry, the desire of my heart to PUT MY TRUST IN YOU COMPLETELY FOR ANY 'HEALTH CARE' I MAY EVER BE IN NEED OF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)...the lot said, No (that is, no more being entangled in the government's web. Oh for the joy of committing myself Completely to the Lord and being Ever Ready to Be With Him...as soon as He wants me!)
...anywho..Samaritan Ministries is joined by another similar organization, Medishare, both of which operate under principles of self pay etc. Would That Obamacare Could Be Replaced Permanently With only 2 choices for every American citizen.
just read the following in World Magazine (10.17.2017)...
under Notebook/Medicine, 'Doctor to Doctor'; a discussion on diagnosing and fixing healthcare by Marvin Olasky (go to ddevine@wng.org to share any feedback)
1. from Dr. Robert Berry, Greeneville, Tenn.
eliminating the tax exemption for employer-based health insurance and replacing it with something like a universal tax credit for health savings accounts would make healthcare fairer for all Americans especially the 'forgotten' fold...putting more healthcare dollars into the hands of consumers instead of employers and insurance companies will enable us to choose our own way of sharing risk for catastrophic care while purchasing elective medical car directly from providers we select.
more importantly, PAYING DIRECTLY for everyday medical care DRASTICALLY REDUCES COST. I know this because I have witnessed it firsthand for the last 16.5 years in my own direct-pay primary car medical practice. my fees are one-third to one-half of those charged by insurance-based practices...the third party payment system for non-catastrophic care is a major reason for healthcare's uncontrollable costs.
2. from Dr. Charles Horton, Pittsburgh, pa.
Dr. Berry's argument is most applicable in primary-care fields like internal medicine and pediatrics - who's going to shop around for an ER while having chest pain? but in those primary-care fields, as in ancillary services like lab testing, entrepreneurs are experimenting with charging a cash price lower than insurance 'co-pays'. he's absolutely right that those entrepreneurs are driving costs down...
for this to affect costs in the broader market as much as Dr. Berry hopes, a few more changes need to happen. foremost among them, anti-competitive behavior among hospitals and insurers needs to end: EACH FACILITY SHOULD CHARGE ONE PRICE FOR A GIVEN PROCEDURE regardless of insurance (or lack thereof), PATIENTS SHOULD BE FREE TO CHOOSE ANY FACILITY WITHOUT PENALTY from their insurers and any given insurance product should be for sale to anyone who chooses to buy it.
3. Response from Dr. Berry
Obamacare practically forced both insurance companies and hospitals to consolidate and medical practices to sell themselves to hospitals just to survive, creating a cartel (def - means of regulating output and prices)where hospital practices can get away with charging patientts $502 for a B12 test, when it costs the patient $25 at mine.
perhaps a better and fairer way to do this would be to ALLOW AMERICANS TO DEDUCT FROM THEIR INCOME AND 'LEGITIMATE' HEALTHCARE EXPENSE (which includes out-of-pocket expenses to doctors, pharmacies, hospitals, etc.) instead of starting at 10% of adjusted gross income as the law currently stipulates.
4. Response from Dr. Horton
PRICES SHOULD BE PUBLIC (COMPETITION...WHAT A NOVEL CONCEPT) hospitals know what they plan to charge, but most currently keep those pries a secret until they send the bill. President Trump could mandate that all hospitals publish that information online and keep it current. hospitals will likely protest that those numbers are 'proprietary', but in what other business is it considered optional to tel customers what they'll pay? we've already seen the benefit that internet-based price comparison services bring to prescriptions. let's extend that to hospitals.
the should also be ONE PRICE PER SPECIFIC PROCEDURE at each hospital, with no discounts for anyone -including insurers. what this means is not that insurers will pay more, but that self-pay patients will now tget the same effective price as the insurers do.
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