Care for More People @ Lower Costs

There are 3 ways to get the benefits of Single Payer, without the price tag.

Create a people’s discount buying club” that negotiates on behalf of the 99%.
Use the savings to create jobs that collaborate with safety nets to improve population health
Coordinate care for high-need, high-cost patients using “local/connected care teams“

Unlike profit-driven insurance companies, PHIERS will operate as a public benefit co-op that will use proceeds to strengthen the safety net and pass savings through to Medicare/Medicaid. This will protect them from monopolistic practices and give them the benefits of negotiated prices, without requiring new legislation. This will also increase the solvency of entitlement programs.

As a result, PHIERS will reduce drug cost to taxpayers, insurance companies, etc. which will reduce premiums, deductibles, and co-pays for consumers and those in the Obamacare exchanges. It will also reduce costs for employers so they have more money to give raises without hurting their bottom line.

Volume discounts combined with 3 Pilots (infrastructure, training and coordinated services), will deliver many of the same benefits as Single Payer, but without the price tag.

Click HERE to learn more about our membership drive.

Benefits

In addition to protecting our members from price gouging, we will use part of the proceeds to make sure everyone who needs medication can afford them while using the remainder to improve population health. In this way, we can help cities and states meet rising demand as the population ages and as inequality/climate change take their toll. Since PHIERS has zero corporate ties, no overhead or shareholders, more funds can be directed toward providing better quality, local care for more people:

In less than 3 months, every job we create and every patient we serve will have a positive cost impact on society
In less than 6 months, every job and program we support will be 100% self-sustaining
In less than one year, we will be saving taxpayers billions by competing in the free market and winning!

Call to Action: The entire program can be up, running and delivering measurable positive results between now and the 2018 election, provided we get started soon. This will give the Resistance teeth to back their demands and insurance companies a reason to contain rate hikes in 2018 given the cost of the People’s plan. Volume discounts can save patients and taxpayers hundreds of billions annually, without an act of Congress – and breathe new life into the American Dream.

This is how PHIERS will deliver on the goals of Single Payer, without the price tag or requiring legislation.

Fixing Obamacare

Since Obamacare is the law of the land – we must find ways to fix what is broken with it while reducing the per capita cost of healthcare spending. This will enable cities and states to better prepare for the long-term care crisis that will soon engulf our nation, while creating millions of jobs to fulfill this important social mission.

PHIERS is an effective response to the challenges facing an aging population and the safety net programs that serve them. To learn more, keep reading, watching and sharing your thoughts! Thanks!

The Challenge: Long Term Care

The Government’s response

To hear the panel’s complete response, click HERE.

Our Response

PHIER-powered Health Homes are the perfect way to use existing resources to improve the health status of vulnerable populations.
How? By training un(der)employed health/social workers to coordinate care for high need, high-cost patients in the local community.
It all starts with the PHIERSale, which will generate savings needed to cover the cost of the jobs we create that pay $15/or more.

What IS PHIERS? A simple idea that connects American job seekers to safety net programs to fill unmet needs facing society, promptly. By helping community organizations collaborate on behalf of shared patients, PHIERS can provide personalized, sustainable and lasting relief in a timely, cost-effective and sustainable manner.

PHIERworks is a sustainable jobs plan that strengthens the safety net and economy, so cities and states can better meet rising demands.
A provider of tools, training, resources and support networks that enable safety net programs to collaborate on behalf of high-risk populations with complex health and social issues.
A bulk buying club, that negotiates for and shares lower drug prices with patients and payers – like Medicare and Medicaid – to help increase the solvency of care.

By training un(der)-employed health and social workers to coordinate care and transportation for veterans and dual eligible beneficiaries (PHIERworks), enough savings can be generated to provide each patient in our network with a low cost, personalized medical home. We will accomplish this goal by creating jobs which do just that by training and certifying job seekers and the un(der)-employed in using VistA to coordinate care for patients living with one or more chronic or infectious diseases.

PHIERworks is a sustainable jobs plan that strengthens the safety net and economy, so cities and states can better meet rising demands.
A provider of tools, training, resources and support networks that enable safety net programs to collaborate on behalf of high-risk populations with complex health and social issues.
A bulk buying club, that negotiates for and shares lower drug prices with patients and payers – like Medicare and Medicaid – to help increase the solvency of care.

To accomplish this goal, our program will enable public health and social workers to:

Keep the patient’s secure health record up to date and in sync, yet easily accessible – with the patient’s consent.
Coordinate care and transportation for patients with complex health and social issues.
Leverage the strengths of the community and its bulk-buying power to improve care plan adherence while negotiating for lower drug prices on behalf of patients; this will reduce costs to Medicare/Medicaid while simultaneously increasing its future stability.

Follow the math:

In the United States, chronic illnesses such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, stroke, and chronic lung disease account for 70% of deaths and 75% of health care costs.

According to a recent Health Affairs[2] study, “health care spending in the United States is widely deemed to be growing at an unsustainable rate. A key target is eliminating waste–spending that could be eliminated without harming consumers or reducing the quality of care that people receive. According to some estimates, this may constitute one-third to nearly one-half of all US health spending”. They stated in another report[3] that “the US wastes roughly $1 trillion each year because the health care system is inefficient”.

The American Journal of Managed Care[4] states that “chronically ill patients whose primary care providers offer highly fragmented care more often experience lapses in care quality and incur greater healthcare costs”. Furthermore, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) [5] states that more than 30% of care is wasted on spending that does not contribute to better health outcomes. Moreover, a panel of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) estimated in a September 2012 report that $750 billion was wasted in US health care annually, not including fraud, These studies, taken together, present a huge opportunity to coordinate care for high need, high-cost patients.

In fact, numerous studies suggest that by coordinating care, savings in the range of 50-75% for dual eligibles living with complex chronic diseases can be accomplished. This alone will result in hundreds of millions of dollars in savings every year.

For these reasons, PHIERS.org strongly believes that the resulting savings are more than enough to create 1.5. jobs for every dual-eligible who participates fully in this program. (Click HERE for details.) Learn more about PHIERworks, our sustainable jobs plan, by clicking HERE. Since PHIERS automatically tracks encounters and outcomes (using widely adopted quality and performance measures), it will increase the eligibility of participating organizations for performance-based grants and impact bonds, to cover ongoing operating costs of participation and expansion.

This positive reinforcement loop will reduce federal healthcare spending enough to create jobs that can help safety net programs expand, and better keep pace with rising demand. It is also designed to help weather funding cuts and efforts to privatize and/or voucherize Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Register HERE for updates, webinars and more.

1. Uncoordinated Care Harms Patients and costs $240B Annually (2014) http://www.ihis-health.org/about/uncoordinated-care-harms-patients-and-costs-240b-annually

2. Reducing Waste in Healthcare, Health Affairs Policy Brief (2012), from http://www.healthaffairs.org/healthpolicybriefs/brief.php?brief_id=82

3. Provider Consolidation in Healthcare, Iglehart (2014), from http://www.healthaffairs.org/events/2014_05_19_provider_consolidation/media/slides.pdf

4. Care Fragmentation, Quality, and Costs Among Chronically Ill Patients – See more at: http://www.ajmc.com/journals/issue/2015/2015-vol21-n5/care-fragmentation-quality-costs-among-chronically-ill-patients#sthash.LHRTd9yf.dpuf

5. Institute of Medicine, “Best Care at Lower Cost: The Path to Continuously Learning Health Care in America,” September 6, 2012.