Learning the hard way

Everywhere we turn, we are confronted with rising healthcare costs. My son, who has some history of Asthma, was denied coverage with us on the family plan when we had to switch coverage (after expiry of COBRA benefits). Naturally, the carrier offered separate coverage for him at a substantially higher cost. I chose the high deductible option making the coverage I have almost like a stop-loss insurance. In other words, I am for all practical reasons carrying my own insurance.

You will most likely contest any hypothesis I may make, so please permit me to dream. Assume a million like me formed a virtual social enterprise. That would give us a budget around 12 billion USD. Suppose further that we were able to carve out volunteers who would work a specified set of hours for reduced premiums (almost like a renter-manager in small apartments). Suppose further that we created a vast social network (no major investments: facebook will do fine, thank you). Since I am dreaming, nothing will stop me from assuming that a few amongst us are more inclined to contribute more time, experience and energy to this noble enterprise. These selected few negotiate contracts with physicians (my dream physicians are honorable and charge ethically), develop a global drug network (I mean the good kind of drugs – even in dreams I cannot think of evil), develop a self-claims process (I can do this – so this part of the dream is real), and reduce the administrative costs to near zero. We of course initiate health awareness programs (yoga is not a dream), we propagate that eating right, thinking right, and stress free life is essential. Needless to say of course that none in our network will be called to put in long stressful hours of work.

If I achieve this, what have I established? Have I made a dent or set a trend at least? Have I shown a way for all of us to think of healthcare differently? Or even to dream this is a dream?