Organizational Spotlight – PhilaHealthia

Interview with PhilaHealthia Founder, Paul Glover

 
PhilaHealthia is a progressive organization working to bring democracy back into healthcare. They have established a co-op that is member funded and aims at providing those in need of assistance, with health insurance wherever state and federal or corporate sources fail to offer solutions. Known as a Mutual Health Organization (MHO), they actively address public health issues and “endorse universal health coverage and seek to promote, by example, a health care system exemplifying efficiency, generosity and humanity.”

 What deep or profound questions about life and the world are currently influencing the work of your organization or initiative?

 PhilaHealthia is part of a constellation of local initiatives seeking to connect spiritual and material urgencies, by transferring real power to the poor.  We believe that children deserve cities as beautiful as they are, that the economy should be fun, that basic needs can best be met by releasing the creativity of average people.

What draws people to your organization?
As the economy crumbles, more people realize that we can’t rely on Congress and Wall Street for jobs, housing, health care, nutrition or sound money.  Desperate for change, the public finds refuge in regional grassroots efforts.  PhilaHealthia is modeled on the Ithaca Health Alliance, in Ithaca, New York, which I founded in 1997.  For $100/YEAR, anyone in New York state can be secure from costs of 12 everyday emergencies (like broken bones, stitches and burns), anywhere in the world.   Members living near Ithaca have access to their own free clinic, providing holistic and conventional care.  We’re seeking to set a far more powerful example in Philadelphia, a city 50 times as large.

How would you define social renewal and what role does it play in your organization?

Cities need to be rebuilt toward a balance with nature. To do this, neighbors need to have power to manage housing and land for maximum fuel efficiency, to generate electricity with gentler technologies, to grow clean food, to move without cars, to finance with local currencies, to own their own health systems, to create their own schools and jobs advancing these.

PhilaHealthia links to all such initiatives.

Describe how your organization strives to make the world a better place.  What impacts do you see it making in the world?

Providing health access on a genuinely nonprofit basis, as was common in the United States 90 years ago, relieves people of the worry and waste of depending on corporate insurers.  The federal government, owned by multinationals and insurers, will not do what the people must: create independent health systems.  PhilaHealthia and the Ithaca Health Alliance are becoming models upholding this alternative.

When people are liberated from health insurance we are liberated from jobs we don’t like.  We’re able to do the work we enjoy which benefits community, nature, civilization, the planet.

Grassroots co-op health plans are also environmental organizations, promoting and funding the public foundations of personal health: clean air, fresh water and healthy food.

What and where is the future beckoning your organization to move toward?

Our intent is to set an example of health democracy by expanding a member-owned health financing system with discount network, Philadelphia MediCash and free clinic system.  The clinics will be owned and operated by members.  Many years ago, fraternal benefit organizations built their own medical centers, old folks’ homes, orphanages and sanatoria.  We could eventually establish our own medical colleges featuring preventive care and holistic healing.  While permitted to operate in New York state, we face a bureaucratic blockade in Pennsylvania.  So our immediate challenge is to push beyond with civil disobedience if needed.

How does your organization maintain the integrity of the mission when faced with difficult world ethical and moral issues that run counter to your values?

Most American institutions are more dedicated to greater power and pay than to their founding missions.  Even nonprofit groups become staff-driven and top-heavy.  Grassroots co-op health plans meet the highest standards of transparency and accountability.  Administrative pay is capped at twice the livable wage and we seek talented people dedicated to healing.  All medical payments and denials of payment are listed on the web.  Board meetings are public.  For a list of our standards please visit healthdemocracy.org

Paul Glover is founder of Ithaca HOURS local currency, the Ithaca Health Alliance, Philadelphia Orchard Project, Citizen Planners of Los Angeles; author of Health Democracy, Hometown Money, A Crime Not a Crisis: Why Pennsylvania Health Insurance Costs So Much, and Los Angeles: A History of the Future.  He teaches urban studies at Temple University.  paulglover.org

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Paul Glover

(215) 805-8330

http://www.paulglover.org