Ross-Loos is a group medical practice founded in 1929 in Los Angeles by two physicians, Donald E. Ross and H. Clifford Loos, older brother of writer Anita Loos. From Wikipedia:
The founders believed that health care could be improved by combining prepayment of services, eliminating the financial barriers faced by patients at the time of needed care, with the sharing of medical records and the ease of consultation in a medical group. The focus was on the improvement of medical care quality, rather than financial success, and many of the concepts in these plans built on a public health approach that encouraged prevention. These plans included prenatal care, well-baby visits, and immunizations in standard benefit packages, with small or no copayments, in an era when even the hospital costs of maternity stays were often excluded from traditional insurance.
Whatever happened to that idea?
What killed that idea was the power of insurance companies to confuse health insurance with health care and the tax-free financing of health insurance our idiotic gummint offers employees through an employer’s plan.
I don’t see any problem in concept with combining routine preventative care with catastrophic insurance coverage. You simply price in the risks, and the blended premium will reflect the two risk pools. Routine care will approach pass-through because of its high likelihood of utilization, and catastrophic premiums will be much smaller due to lower usage expectancy per individual.
However, I wouldn’t impute altruistic and non-financial motives. Just like when you pre-buy auto maintenance packages from a dealer you may prevent catastrophic losses, but its business capture for the dealer on a near pass through basis. Its maintenance vs insurance. It can all be priced.
As for this:
“combining prepayment of services, eliminating the financial barriers faced by patients at the time of needed care”
Pure, mush-brained crap.
In 1929 they had little to offer in the way of medical care. It was easy to pre-pay. Now that medicine can actually do stuff, like keep newborns alive, it costs more. (I think most of us here are old enough to remember when the 4 lb 10 oz, 341/2 week old Kennedy baby died and that was in 1963.)
The ‘altruism’ was not merely imputed the the above author. It was factual. Dr. Loos’ described the typical patient who found himself (and the man was usually the family support in 1929) both sick and out of work. When working he could prepay into an affordable fund. When sick he earned nothing and couldn’t afford medical care. So the idea was somewhat similar to today’s Health Savings Accounts except the insurance companies charge a higher premiem for those –no clue why other than ‘they can’. Dr. Loos paid a high price for founding Ross-Loos. I only know his side of the story but his wife left him because she felt Ross-Loos Foundation was ‘socialized medicine’ and his ideas were ‘socialist’ and she couldn’t be married to a ‘socialist’. La Senora Research Institute is housed in Dr. Loos’ former estate in SM. He purchased the hacienda from Opera and Film Star, the tenor Jose Mojica. And he did so well before anything resembling profits could ever emerge from Ross-Loos. Per his nurse at the time, he contributed without salary. So it’s not “pure mush” for a person to give someone the attribute of being a ‘caring’ human being…..even in these times of blatent ‘me first’.