I listened with great interest to what Tom Coburn said to the crying woman pleading for help at his town hall meeting a couple of weeks ago. I thought he would be an insensitive prick, but he said something that really struck me as truly insightful: “The other thing that’s missing in this debate is us as neighbors helping people that need our help.” Wow! He is so right!
But how could we do this in a fair and efficient way?
Follow me across the bump…
First, in order to be fair, everyone would have to contribute what they can. The wealthy can afford to give a higher percentage of their income, while the poor may not be able to afford much of anything.
Now, we need some way of collecting this money, and someplace to put it until it’s needed. Maybe we could create a non-profit organization to collect and hold the money. We could elect neighbors to oversee the organization. And we would need transparency to make sure there was no corruption.
When someone needed to see the doctor and couldn’t afford it, the central neighborhood fund would pay the bill. And people who wanted to could pitch in a little extra to also be covered by the central fund instead of buying a super-expensive health insurance plan. And the doctors in our neighborhood would also be good neighbors and give a discount to the neighborhood.
Of course, frivolous procedures like boob jobs wouldn’t be covered by the neighborhood (unless it was following a mastectomy). The rules would be decided by the neighborhood organization.
Neighbors helping neighbors. How super groovy. I like Coburn’s idea a lot.
Wait a second… isn’t this the public option?
