A Free Health Insurance Card? It could be coming your way

The concept of a free healthcare discount card is being pioneered by Jonathan Edelheit’s Florida based company, Free Health Inc. It sounds like it is not offered independent of group health insurance such as that bought by employers. Rather, it is an extra sweetener to a deal with the employer to make the insurer stand out when bidding for the company’s business. The employer may have employees who cannot afford to enroll themselves or their families -- so they are simply given a discount card (rather than a regular insurance card) so that they can at least access specialized health care services.
Such a plan appeals to employers because it helps them retain employees. Employees like it for obvious reasons, which includes access to online medical advice and discounts on prescriptions.
Free Health has a network of 285,000 providers across the country, and the free cards promise discounts of anywhere from 10% to 50% on a wide variety of services. Providers include family physicians, specialists, surgical facilities and hospitals. Blood work and MRIs, for example, are half price.
The 53,000 pharmacies in the network give discounts of 20% to 50% on generic and brand name drugs, while vision services include LASIK surgery (40% discount) and eyeglasses.
The online medical advice website is eDocAmerica.com. It charges a one-time fee of $8 and no copay.
It sure seems like a promising avenue for working people in low-paying service jobs to get any access at all to medical care. Workers in the food and beverage, and retail, sectors tend to have the lowest rates of insurance coverage.
Right now there are only a few hundred agents signed up with Free Health Inc. so finding someone to explain the whole program may be difficult. On the horizon are plans to add dental discounts and some free prescriptions.
Edelheit’s company is getting inquiries from large corporations interested in his plans, so it may be only a matter of time before this approach becomes an everyday thing.