[PLUG-TALK] PPC (was [PLUG] health insurance plans )

[Keith Lofstrom]

Moved to plug-talk ...

> Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Oregon is putting pressure on individual
> (non group) health insurance plans and they're probably not alone. In
> addition to the usual drop in percentage of coverage, this time they are
> dropping entire doctor networks from the plans and channeling everyone
> to groups that no one I know has ever heard of.

> I recall LOPSA (https://lopsa.org/) having a group insurance plan but
> there site only seems to mention group liability insurance.
>
> Is anyone else facing this? Can you think of any group plans out there
> that might suit independent contractors?

Whichever plan you choose, you should check the insurance company
behind the plan.  Some are slow pay / no pay, which means your
doctor may stop answering your calls.  The State of Oregon keeps
excellent statistics on insurance companies.

I have an individual plan with ODS.  It may go away.  Then I will
be back on the IEEE plan (backed by a company that spends a lot on
advertising and schmoozing IEEE executives, but also slow/no pay).

At the big picture level, you can reduce your risk of needing
medical care by up to 5x by healthy choices.  Which means it is
better to live right with no insurance than to have insurance
and major behavior-caused health risks.  Of course, it is better
still to have both good habits and catastrophic medical insurance.


There is very good news regards insurance, and it relates to
open source.  Tony McCormick (who made a presentation to PLUG
about OpenEMR) is working to establish a Portland area branch
of PPC, the Patient Provider Cooperative.

This is low cost subscription medical care, and based on building
health rather than doing procedures.  Tony's father built PPC in
Houston.  Friend Sam Bowen has built another PPC around Hickory,
NC.  They use OpenEMR and other open source software, a lot of
volunteers, and group training in healthy habits and other low
cost life-style interventions.  The expensive stuff still needs
catastrophic insurance coverage, but the cooperative can help
with that, too.  Arguably, since they work to keep their members
healthy, enlightened insurance companies will compete for those
less expensive members, either on price or extended coverage.

Tony would appreciate all the help he can get to get PPC running
in the Portland area; recruiting, coding, volunteering  PPC isn't
for everybody, but it would be great for many of you.  If you
think collaboration and F/OSS are Good Things, and you are
bummed out by insurance, then please help Tony make this happen.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs