Combs: To find health care solutions, some sidestep government

It's a good rule of thumb that government ruins everything it touches. Success in life usually means finding a way to circumvent the government. While many are driven to utter distraction about Washington's so-called "health care reform," some Americans are taking matters into their own hands and solving their own problems.

As reported on National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" on Monday, some "evangelical" Christians have launched their own cooperative efforts to cover members' health care costs. An alternative to health care insurance, it's called "health care sharing."

Samaritan Ministries, according to the NPR story, is some 14,000 member strong. Its members each pay an annual $170 administrative fee, and $285 a month to cover other members' medical expenses.

That's all they pay. For a whole family.

Samaritan member Carl Bobb explained the process to NPR. He goes to the doctor, then pays the co-pay at the end of his visit, just as with conventional insurance. He submits his bill to Samaritans, and Samaritans instructs members to send their monthly $285 or a fraction of it to cover the bill.

Here's the really nifty thing: The money does not pass through the groups' administrative hands. It goes directly from member to member.

There are a number of advantages beyond the clear financial savings. Being a private club, Samaritans are able to make and adhere to rules that suit their members. For example, the group will not pay for an abortion or to treat a sexually transmitted disease.

So while the pigs in Washington wrangle over whether or not the latest health care reform bill pays for abortions or creates death panels or whatever other silly obsession has captured Olbermann's and Beck's imaginations this week, the members of Samaritans make and live by their own rules according to the dictates of their own conscience.

No force, no threats, no violence or coercion. And they save an enormous amount of money in the process. As it turns out (Surprise!), it's cheaper and easier to do it yourself. Adding tens of thousands of insurance executives and whole city blocks of over-paid government employees actually makes health care more expensive than it needs to be.

If expenses begin to exceed members' monthly payments, they can vote to increase their dues. Or not. The group caps benefits at $100,000.

That's a strange story coming from NPR, a notoriously statist, big government apologist inside-the-Beltway news organization if ever there was one. But the story goes on to quote Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner Joel Ario's dire warnings about the risks of health care sharing.

"The insurance product is a legal obligation of the insurance company, and it will be there even if the claims you have turn out to be very large in nature," Ario told NPR.

Of course, your insurance provider may well decide to "drop" you -- cancel your coverage, if you get a lot of expensive diseases. Ario didn't address that. No, his is a knee-jerk reaction you'd expect from a bureaucrat faced with the very real possibility of people opting out of his oversight -- and his employers' taxing jurisdiction.

In Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," when McMurphy was signing up the patients to go on a deep sea fishing trip, the Big Nurse countered by posting lost of news stories about men drowning at sea, and how terribly dangerous the ocean can be. No, men, you'd better stay here in the hospital, where it's nice and safe.

Rest assured, if this movement begins to seriously cut into insurance profits or tax revenues, we'll be inundated with wild tales of bizarre midnight cult rituals perpetrated by groups like Samaritans. We've said it in this space before, the one thing government cannot tolerate is being ignored or relegated to the sidelines.

But no matter; those fools are as predictable as the sunrise. Meanwhile Samaritans members are solving their own problems. James Lansberry, a spokesman for the group, said he is very concerned about Washington attempts to force everyone to buy into the government's insurance scheme. He said his members are paying their own medical bills without asking for insurance or government help and should not be punished for it.

Some states' legislatures are considering 10th Amendment-based bills to protect their citizens from being forced by the federals to buy insurance. But the federals are not well known for tolerating any suggestion that the 10th Amendment limits their vast, god-like power. With the big push on in Washington right now to force the health care reform bill through and force every American to start paying for insurance that many don't want, Washington has clearly chosen sides -- for the insurance companies and against the American people.