We’ve created a local non-profit fund to pool our money to reduce our health costs, to support each other, and to make healthy living easier.
Costs of health insurance and care rose by half last decade. Thousands of Ithacans have no medical insurance, and many others are exposed by poor coverage, with high deductibles. A random poll of 125 Ithacans found 36% uninsured, and 98% without dental insurance. Many people find their preferred providers and therapies not covered at all.
So we’re building our own safety net, much as the Amish do. Their communities have created medical "assurance plans." Some Amish gather quarterly to total their community’s doctor and hospital bills, where they calculate each family’s contributions according to ability to pay (Wall Street Journal 12/22/95, p.1).
The U.S. health "industry" is the nation’s largest: over $1 trillion ($1 million million) yearly, or 14% of GDP, is fed to a system more organized for profitability than public need. Medical costs have been driven beyond our reach by medical specialization and technology, by the greed of insurance and drug companies, by bureaucratization, and by lawsuits that rise from consumer frustration.
Therefore our Fund proceeds systematically to make preventive and innovative health care more affordable, and to recapture health insurance premiums for local health purposes. The Fund is governed by a local board of directors (representing different health sectors) elected by Fund members. They adjust Health Fund policies to maximize immediate member benefits, while retaining enough reserves to build nonprofit clinics.
IHF Healthcare Benefits
Compensation through the Ithaca Health Fund takes two forms.
First, discounts for services and goods: especially those services least covered by conventional insurers but which are preferred by area residents. Most services we’re including are on the "menu of services" found on the "How it Works" page of this site. And we’re emphasizing preventive care, to reduce our need for costly acute care.
With a properly balanced discount system, benefitting all participants in a mutually satisfying way, we create general local price reductions and thus increase discretionary income. Those health providers who give discounts to Health Fund members themselves receive discounts from an additional list of support businesses.
Secondly, payment for acute care: ambulance rides and broken bones during the first year, then expanding gradually to cover emergency stitches, burns, appendectomies, and so on. We’re able to do this as we explore the supply and demand for payments. Expanding year by year with the good will of the community, the fund holds not only membership fees, but tax-deductible donations and bequests.
The plan moreover includes flexible payment options—not merely dollars, but also community service, home visit credits, barter and HOURS. These are more fully described on the web site membership forms: visit http://www.lightlink.com/hours/ for more information.
Why We Need the Ithaca Health Fund
Every year roughly $50 millions of Tompkins County income are spent for medical services, prescription drugs and medical insurance policies (1990 Census; NYS Dept. of Insurance). That’s about $500 per Tompkins County resident. Imagine if this money were dedicated directly to keeping us healthy instead. These millions could establish a series of free clinics, like the 225 free clinics in the U.S. which provide quality health care to low- and medium-income people for a fraction of typical costs. This money could provide complete health coverage locally, with the Health Fund eventually employing salaried doctors to provide free services.
Back in 1929 a farmer’s union in Oklahoma started the Elk City Co-operative, which hired doctors to provide medical care on a nonprofit basis to all members. When the AMA tried to block Co-op physicians’ access to the hospital, the co-op sued successfully (Medical Care and Family Security, p. 229). Based on conversations so far, we expect constructive collaboration with local medical providers. Several local physicians already follow the fine tradition of community doctors who charge what patients are able to pay.
We’re also compelled to create this fund to protect each other locally because Congress prefers to protect us with weapons more than by healing. Federal military spending takes 52% of the budget (past wars and war debt, plus present spending), while health gets 16%. Were $100 billion/year transferred from the military ($20 billion/year for nuclear weapons alone, etc.) toward health coverage, all 40 million uninsured Americans would have full health coverage, and all the insured would pay no deductibles (U.S. Government Accounting Office: Canadian Health Care: Lessons for the U.S.; Physicians for a National Health Program).
Free Choice in the Health Market
Ithaca’s medical doctors and technologies have saved many lives and relieved much pain, yet many area residents feel the need to explore beyond conventional treatments when these have not cured. Even many medical doctors now believe that there’s an important role for responsible, credentialed alternatives. Several local physicians are members of the American Holistic Medical Association. Today, former U.S. Surgeon General C. Edward Koop, M.D. is developing an alternative medical center at Dartmouth College.
Preventive care and lower-cost innovative therapies will also save us money because low-income patients otherwise wait until symptoms are acute, then resort to expensive pills and surgery at public cost. In New York state, the Foundation for Advancement of Innovative Medicine has successfully lobbied to pass an "Alternative Medical Practices Act" which gives physicians broad powers to prescribe any care that "effectively treats human disease," which includes many complementary therapies. Thus insurance companies are required to cover chiropractic and other treatments having standard protocols (see FAIM’s web site).
The NYS Dept of Insurance has a "special complaint unit" which enforces payment of such claims. NYS Senate Bill 5232 would mandate reimbursement for off-label and experimental drugs. Some insurers have opposed such coverage, fearing an overload of claims and cost increases. However, Mutual of Omaha has found they save $6.50 for every dollar spent covering nonstandard ‘holistic’ treatments. That’s because, according to Marc Micozzi, M.D, "effective use of alternative care can increase member health, reducing premiums." Moreover, says Barry Jacobs, M.D., "In the course of complications of drug therapy, patients who haven’t been offered alternatives have started to sue for negligence" (Vegetarian Times 10/95).
Alternative Healthcare Traditions
Sixteen states now allow insurance companies to cover alternative therapies, ten states license naturopaths, and the state of Washington also requires coverage by insurers of such complementary health care as acupuncture, and massage. Says Merrily Manthey, trustee of a large Seattle hospital who supports naturopathy, "people want to get well in a world where costs and an obsession with high technology are forcing cutbacks in conventional medicine" (NYT 1/2/96).
While alternative therapies have already proven to be powerful healers preferred by millions (one third of Americans have used them, according to the New England Journal of Medicine), the medical industry has until recently dismissed most as "unstudied and unproven." The AMA and the American Cancer Society have, however, historically opposed clinical testing of alternative treatments, to keep them marginal.
The AMA has dismissed alternative therapies as "a kind of ecofeminism that extols women’s intuition and mysticism as superior to male-dominated medical science" (Alternative Healing Methods, 1993). Nonetheless the Department of Defense allocated $355,000 to study the benefits of Therapeutic Touch on burn victims (Time, 11/21/94), because independent double-blind tests have already proven the efficacy of this and related care. For example, Discoveries in Medicine, a publication of Mutual Benefit Life, featured "Nutrition & Cancer: the Gonzalez Study," which found that of 455 "terminal" cancer cases, most were cured by the nutritional therapy of Dr. William Kelley. This study, "widely regarded as the finest case review ever conducted concerning an alternative therapy," was led by Nicholas Gonzalez, M.D., of Columbia, Cornell Medical.
Getting Better Care
Most medical doctors are hardworking, capable and considerate, and their skills when we are seriously injured are worth any price, but there is more to good heath care than pills, machines, chemicals and blades. Dr. Christiaan Bernard, first to successfully transplant a human heart, has said, "Today’s doctors have been blinded to reality by technological gimmicks. Medicine’s real foundation has been obscured under its fixation with space-age technologies" (One World: Health & Human Survival).
Ithaca’s physicians are highly valued, especially for urgent cases, but today Ithaca has also hundreds of skilled practitioners of alternative or complementary medicine whose prices are affordable, whose sincere caring is part of healing, whose skill is proven to the satisfaction of thousands of area residents. These therapies are the first choice for many, and the Ithaca Health Fund will help more people to keep healthy by selecting their own preferred treatments.
We can forsee a system which brings together the best of all these healing traditions, cooperating respectfully to keep us and our children healthy at prices we can easily afford.
If you’d like to help establish the Ithaca Health Fund, either as a health provider, general member, support business, donor or lender, visit http://www.lightlink.com/hours/
Source: Ithaca Health Fund
