Hospitals must establish new outreach clinics funded by the government

Emergency room loads will decrease while providing care for all

Outreach clinics will provide only non-urgent care along with all the specialties of the hospital. They will provide care for all people, with or without insurance. Co-pays will only apply if the patient has insurance and a uniform means test will be administered to those who don’t. Providers will earn the same fees (posted for all to see) as those that they would earn in their private practices.

The federal government will pay half of the funding for clinics. Private insurance companies, charitable (tax deductible) contributions from individuals and organizations and state governments will cover the remainder. Serving these clinics will be a desirable and profitable business for hospitals. It will promote competition between them and push them to provide better care.

Additional details of hospital’s part in the plan include:

• Hospitals will collect only half of the patient selected co-pay for all inpatient care
• No more than half of the co-pay for insured patients for non-urgent care will be billed for all in-house care
• Hospitals will bill all uninsured patients for in-house non-urgent care based on a universal means test (the same used by outreach clinics)
• Hospitals will bill all catastrophic care to the “catastrophic pool” setup for such care
• The structure of hospital’s part of plan will greatly reduce the waste of resources
• All Revenue sources designated by federal and state governments, clearly identified and transparent