[Political Junkie Too]

...you could have agreements between hospitals that each would take the others members...

Isn't that what the current insurance companies do for the hospitals now?

Imagine if each hospital had to have a department to coordinate with all the other hospitals, and to keep track of the relationships and negotiated patient fees, and to access each other's patient records.

Don't the insurance companies create networks, and broker the relationships between the network hospitals and the insurees (patients)?

Why destroy what we already have in place, and then over-burden a hospital to provide these internal B2B, non-medical services with untrained, newly hired people?

-PJ

[TexasFreeper2009]

No one is advocating the destruction of what we have now, I was advocating a system where hospitals could voluntarily opt out of taking insurance, and instead could offer their services as a perk of membership in a private club.

That club could then voluntarily (if they so desired) pick and choose which other private clubs they could partner with to offer the perks of the club to.

The key is to restrict access to only those in the club, avoiding the mandate to provide emergency medical care to any and all who show up regardless of their ability to pay. And to cut costs by eliminating the middle man (insurance companies) and the associated hassle of trying to collect from them.