A Third Way on Health Care?

I was reading a study about health care (that I didn't understand very well) that was talking about how 5% of people account for 25% of all medical expenses. Interestingly enough, it seemed to be saying that the majority of this group had private insurance and were middle-aged to senior whites. Not what I would have expected.

In any case, in thinking about health care, I again considered ways to provide health care to the poor through means that different people could agree on. In the past I've wondered what it would be like if you hired doctors specifically for different public housing buildings, making them a kind of "neighborhood" doctor for those people. Limiting the number of patients could make their care more specific and intense and deeper because all of their patients would share similar circumstances.

The problem with this method is that - because I was thinking of this doctor as an alternative healthcare system - it doesn't provide for the tests, procedures or surgeries that might crop up. It's just a GP for the neighborhood.

Maybe if such a doctor was assigned and made part of the public health system, they could be useful in the way I described. If the people in the housing are actually the working poor and have some kind of insurance, that might not be helpful.

So let's think about another way to provide a blanket of healthcare to the poor. I had an idea some years ago - an idea similar to this - that was something I thought could work as a test case to show the wealthy how the poor could be covered in a cheaper way through charity. In that instance, I suggested that a wealthy corporate developer buy basic insurance for all of the lowest-paid workers on their projects. I was thinking they would most likely be working poor and possibly recent immigrants.

I don't know if those employers automatically provide health insurance and now that I'm thinking about it, the idea may have been different. It may have been that I thought of those workers but was thinking the program should be to offer family coverage or to go into their neighborhoods and choose a small geographical area to cover.

The new idea is similar to that one. This idea involves taking a building and insuring everyone in the building. To my idea, it could be a combination of left and right ideals: on the one hand, you're providing something for people that could be provided by work.* On the other hand, if you buy them all private insurance, you're keeping the money in the private sector and supporting the system.

Of course, there is a flaw in this idea: many (if not all) of the people who are poor enough to need insurance but are not able to afford it are on Medicaid, the government's plan. In my mind, though, this plan would be a perfect argument for or against the conservatives who want charity and private enterprise to take the place of government. (To me, one way the role of government can be described is to take on those projects that are humane but money-losing. There are plenty of things that the populace needs that don't profit anyone [at least in any obvious way]. Health care is an example. You don't make money providing for someone's health care [without laying off the costs on others] but it is, I would argue, the human thing to do.

* This presumes that there is work to be found, they are qualified for the jobs available and that they have the tools to get/keep the job (transport, childcare, etc).