What Is PHIERS?

 

The Public Health Information Exchange & Referral Service (PHIERS, pronounced ‘fires’) is an idea worth spreading!  It is a grassroots movement and a viable response to the challenges facing healthcare, caregivers, job seekers, small businesses with a social mission, and payers in the U.S.  As such, PHIERS is a catalyst for positive change that will provide participants with a reason to be hopeful for the future, once it launches.

When is that?   Once enough people join our 100% free membership drive,  to show support for a not-for-profit, yet sustainable, approach to health reform that will solve the affordable and access problems that the U.S. government appears unable to solve.  That is, until now.

By organizing, mobilizing and using our collective buying power to negotiate for better deals on health-related goods and services, we believe we can influence markets and contain costs better than other plans under consideration.  Since we are 100% owned, operated by and accountable to our members (as a co-op), we will prove that less costly care can yield better outcomes for more people at lower costs.  These are essential first steps toward making proposals like Medicare for All (or something better) a viable and sustainable proposal.

We will compete in the free market against the health insurance giants and expect to win since we have no corporate ties or conflicts of interest with the public good.  Group purchases of health-related goods and services will make them more affordable and accessible to our members – without waiting for legislation or charging our members premiums, deductibles or co-pays.  Once we meet our membership goal, we will leverage our strength as a group to negotiate for better prices while passing the savings on to our members, saving hundreds of billions of dollars annually.  

Although Medicare is prohibited by law from negotiating for lower drug prices, PHIERSale will give them the same result since, regardless of a person’s insurance status, they can purchase medications from anyone they choose.

If Medicare beneficiaries shop through the PHIERSale marketplace, Medicare will get the benefits of negotiated prices without regard for the law, which will increase their solvency by decades.

Specifically, PHIERS will:

  • Help keep hard-earned cash in the pockets of our members while increasing the solvency of safety net programs, a benefit to all Americans. 
  • Reduce (or cover) the cost of medications for those who cannot afford them, which will increase adherence and improve outcomes.
  • Use existing tools, training, resources, and support, to strengthen the safety net and prepare the workforce for the jobs of the future.
  • Create millions of meaningful, local jobs in communities across the nation to help even more people adhere to their care plans, get to the doctor’s office or take their medications properly, which will improve population health and cover the cost of operation and expansion.

Once people are trained to use VistA-based resources, we can eliminate data silos and fragmented care while delivering many of the benefits associated with a good insurance plan, for a fraction of the cost.  Savings attributed to this program will enable community organizations and safety net programs to leverage the strengths of the local community to better fulfill their collective and respective social mission(s).  Together we can improve population health by expanding access to primary care and coordinated support services for high-risk patients, close to home.

When all is said and done, our plan will save more than enough to cover the cost of Single Payer (Medicaid for all), by creating jobs that will strengthen the safety net and tax base needed to finance programs important to our future.  Together, we can increase the solvency of entitlement programs, while reducing the cost to taxpayers and healthcare consumers without regard for insurance status or the patient’s ability to pay. 

For these reasons, the acronym PHIERS also stands for the People’s Health Insurance Endowment & Referral Service, because healthcare is a human right.  This plan is proof that once the profit-motive is contained, we can augment and complete what is left undone regarding health reform.

3 Tools

3 tools are all it takes to create a robust and uniformly-trained workforce that can add value for the foreseeable future… making it a smart and sustainable use of public/private investments.  This plan uses existing and underutilized resources smarter and in a manner consistent with the goals of Health and Human Services to protect the health, safety, and well-being of the American people.  most importantly, savings will increase the solvency of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and safety net programs across the nation.

Once operational, these self-funded programs will deliver many of the benefits of universal coverage and a public alternative to profit-driven healthcare and more.  By working smarter and not harder, we can use existing resources to assist high-risk, high-cost patients and their expanded care teams improve population health for a fraction of projected costs.  The best part is that this nonpartisan, apolitical plan will pay for itself without increasing taxes, raising the deficit or requiring legislation.

PHIERS.org can deliver on its goals through the use of 3 simple tools:

  • PHIERSafe:  Is based on VistA, a government-approved case management tool and electronic health record that was paid for by taxpayers and designed by the VA to fit the needs of veterans, who often have the most complex and life-threatening health issues on the planet, and deserve better quality and more continuous care.  PHIERworks will train health and social workers to use these tools to serve the needs of more than 9 million veterans living in communities across the nation.
  • PHIERplace:  A publicly-focused directory, resource matching and referral service that raises awareness about PHIERStations, (local providers that use PHIERS to coordinate care and transportation for enrolled patients) as well as free and paid services that improve the lives of people in need of assistance
  • PHIERStations:  Community organizations use PHIERS to collaborate on behalf of shared interests (patients, families, communities and safety net programs and facilities) with the goal of leveraging the strengths of the community to improve population health while creating jobs that strengthen and expand the safety net.

 

It is in this way, that we will protect the collective best interests of “We the People”… by giving candidates something to stand for to earn our votes in the 2020 election.  

 

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