The GNU Reform: Open Source Healthcare

It has been nearly a year in the making, but at the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not tenacious, which is why we have finally unveiled our plans for an Open Source Healthcare system that will take care of all of our health needs at a fraction of the cost of the current model. This idea had its genesis at a conference we held in Seattle last year, and since then we have been consulting with the best minds in health care to create this plan, which has already been picked up by several high-ranking officials in the Obama administration and several influential members of Congress*.

Everyone knows that the biggest problem with the care system is the out-of-control cost of delivering health care. Why is the cost spiraling out of control? Some blame the insurance companies who, for some reason, want to make a profit. Others blame lawyers who encourage patients to sue their doctors for malpractice and thus require doctors to purchase malpractice insurance and pass the cost of that insurance back on to the consumers (or, more precisely, to the insurance companies backing the consumers). Others blame other harder-to-explain problems for the uncontrollable costs, but whatever your object of blame is, it is clear that the system is too opaque. An individual consumer of health care cannot possibly understand why he or she may be charged a ridiculous amount of money while in a hospital for some Tylenol he could have bought for himself at a fraction of the cost, nor can he or she understand why the insurance companies convince doctors to charge them less, and the list goes on.

The solution which is gaining momentum in influential government circles is to move to a revolutionary Open Source Healthcare system, wherein the empowered groups are not lawyers, doctors, or insurance companies, but individuals. The recent health care reform bill lays the foundation for this change by creating "Alternate Certification Requirements" for medical care providers and "Insurance Class D Licenses" for individuals interested in becoming small insurers. These reforms are, as we said, merely the groundwork for the real reforms. Rather than rely on Universities and medical boards to decide whether a person is fit to be paid to remove an ingrown toenail the individual can now review the potential provider's history and read reviews from prior customers, much as he or she can do on web merchant sites such as eBay and Amazon. Based on a review of this information, or, as is certainly more common in web merchants, a quick glance at the rating of the provider, the individual can choose whether to entrust his or her well-being to the provider. This reform alone will save us millions of dollars by relaxing the burdens of evaluation of providers for medical boards, universities, and hospitals. It will also create more jobs in the medical field as the barriers to entry for doctors are significantly lowered.

This same sort of ratings system will also be used for insurance providers (and individuals with Insurance Class D Licenses). Rather than paying out exorbitant amounts of money to a company who uses your money to offset their own costs of doing business you can choose to give your insurance money to any provider. This will, of course, create some situations in which unruly insurers will take people's money and not provide the services, but negative feedback on their ratings will discourage this sort of behavior and make it difficult for them to make much money off of deceit. In addition, the government has agreed to completely resolve disputes for every consumer of health care up to three times in their lives without asking any questions.

The same system will be used by insurers and providers to rate the individuals seeking health care so that, for example, a provider won't get stuck providing a fourth MRI to an individual who didn't pay for the first three.

Emergency care will be handled differently from regular, preventative care. Because people sometimes need emergency medical attention and won't have time to study the ratings of their alternatives when they need the care each individual will choose his preferred emergency provider beforehand. When the need arises they will call for emergency services from their favorite provider and, assuming they have kept their service subscription active, they will be treated to emergency support.

The beauty of this system is in its simplicity. Rather than using a heavy-handed approach that requires a lot of oversight and regulation, the market simply takes care of health care by itself. Providers who don't do a good job will receive negative feedback, and insurers who charge too much will be replaced by more reasonably-priced alternatives.

We are hoping that these reforms will satisfy the conservatives and the liberals and will create a truly bipartisan effort to solve the problems with the current health care system. There are still some challenges, but with the groundwork laid by the initial bill and the rising levels of support in government circles we are sure that soon the medical world will be rejuvenated beyond our wildest dreams!

*While we know that Congress already passed a reform bill and that we are a little late to get our ideas into it, we also know that in the 1,000+ page bill we were able to insert a lot of provisions that make our plan the next logical step. We just need to wait until people start implementing the bill and then we'll be able to get our plan implemented.