When we interviewed David Balat, Director of Right on Healthcare, Texas Public Policy Foundation, it became beautifully apparent that he is fighting against a zeitgeist in which big healthcare and insurance have no intentions of lowering costs.
You may have thought that health insurance companies make more money by lowering their payouts.
Ironically, they make more when healthcare is expensive. A rule called the Medical Loss Ratio allocates only 20% of every premium dollar to pay overhead expenses, such as marketing, profits, salaries, administrative costs, and agent commissions.
Therefore, they need to collect more premiums to make more profits. They are not incentivized to make healthcare affordable or care about high costs because policyholders pay for it via their premiums.
Nonetheless, many people want to make healthcare affordable and accessible again. Quite a few of them bravely come together within the Free Market Medical Association (FMMA).
The FMMA encourages everyone to shop for healthcare as they shop for everything else in life – as a critical buyer who analyses and compares prices and quality of the goods and services they buy.
Two pioneers in that space in San Antonio are valued clients of ours. Direct Med Clinic offers primary care for an affordable monthly membership.
Health Insurance Broker Harlon Pickett offers innovative solutions that combine clinics like Direct Med Clinic with health cost-sharing programs such as Zion Health.