Was just thinking that there should be doctor clubs, where a bunch of people pool their money to hire a dedicated general physician. Or to have a shared tailor, or group cafeteria, or whatever.

The ratio of people covered to specialists would probably determine whether it’s feasible. You’d want the specialist to still get paid a healthy (and guaranteed) salary and to have a more satisfying relationship with customers. And the members of the club to get better service / product than they would otherwise with middlemen taking a cut.

  • @LesserAbeOP
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    51 year ago

    Well, fair criticism aside, I didn’t say money would be useless. The idea is if one doctor can see a thousand people a year, then a thousand people pool their money and hire their own doctor. Not an infinite service for finding a doctor. (Of course you’re right they still need to find each other and then find that one doctor, which sounds like real middleman stuff) But sort of this less abstract relationship - as it is you pay thousands to health insurance, not a specific doctor, and then when you go to see a doctor they pop in for 5 minutes then off to the next patient.

    Wasn’t saying farmers would hire the doctor, was throwing out examples of services. Another one might be a neighborhood cafeteria - how many people can one or two people prepare lunch for everyday, then pool that many guests. Kind a very specific consumer coop.

    If you see my other replies here I’m interested in universal healthcare. More was thinking about options because doesn’t seem to be an intermediate step for how far away the U.S. at least is from universal healthcare.