Universal Health Coin

"Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize itself into an undercover dictatorship." Benjamin Rush, a Founding Father of the United States, physician and social reformer, quoted in 1786 “The new system should be fully consumer driven, empowering individuals to be the surveyors and purchasers of their care. Past reforms in this direction became stilted and ultimately incomplete, but the current moment offers a chance to truly rebuild from the ground up.” Scott Gottlieb, MD, Commissioner-Elect of the FDA, 2016 “When the incumbent industry is making statements [fearful of cryptocurrencies] yet acknowledging you... it’s a sign that what we’re doing is working...it’s a huge validation.” Brock Pierce, Chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation   Universal Health Coin (UHC), as a public benefit corporation, is an anonymous, token based health finance system that utilizes blockchain technology to arbitrage, decentralize, fund and provision the fair payment of health services worldwide by leveraging artificial intelligence across a distributed network and exploiting the explosive growth of cryptocurrency as a store of value. We have never had a greater need to make drastic change like we do today. Here in the US alone… ● We spend 19% of our total GDP or $3.5 Trillion on our healthcare every year – that is $10,375 per US Citizen; ● We spend $500 Billion on administration of healthcare; ● $875 Billion duplicating services because doctors and hospitals don't talk to each other; and ● We spend billions more trying to secure our health data from hackers. There must be a universal solution for healthcare, one that is elective, expansive, fair, and efficient—one that leans toward the future. This means ridding ourselves of the wasteful spending mentioned above. It stems from two big problems in healthcare, namely, the lack of market economics and the excess of middlemen in the healthcare industry. 1.1 No free market economics in healthcare Because healthcare is such a strictly regulated business by Federal and State governments, councils, and agencies, along with the employers and insurance companies who are only working in their own interest and not that of the individual patients or health service providers, there exists no free market economics in healthcare. There is no true mandate by the patient as a would-be consumer to hold health service providers responsible for improvements in quality or cost of their service. Additionally, there are little to no financial motivations for individuals to take personal responsibility or “buy-in” to manage their own health. 1.2 Excess of middlemen These third-parties (payers, brokers, employers, insurers, governmental) siphon off much of the funds that could otherwise be designated to providing health services to people in need. Creating a health system that removes all unnecessary third-party administrators from the equation must be a primary goal of everyone working to solve the healthcare crisis. Healthcare is failing us here in the United States and it is not less disappointing in other countries either. Healthcare today is set up just like a mechanics shop that works on the principle of providing short-term “fixes” only until people must come back for more. 1.3 Problems in the Current Health Systems 1.3.1 Low Value for High Cost How do you see the value of your healthcare dollar? Is it going up or going down? We see its overall value dropping every time another person joins the ranks of the: ● ~2 billion people in the world who are obese ● ~411 million who are diabetic with another billion pre-diabetic ● ~1 in 3 adults around the world who are hypertensive, burdened with high blood pressure, or afflicted with full-onset Congestive Heart Failure 1.3.2 High Cost of Administration We are not talking about the health service providers here, they are actually very good at what they do and they do it so well because the financial incentives motivate them to be the best at “fixing” symptoms. We are talking about the way healthcare is financed and administered. From an administrative standpoint, 15% of our healthcare dollar goes to pushing paper and bureaucracy rather than actual care – in the US alone that is $500 billion of the $3.35 trillion we spent in 2016. From a financing standpoint, not only are the incentives wrong, but the inflation in costs of health services is outrageous. While they have dropped slowly over the past decade, from 16% in 2008 to 6.5% per year in 2016, this has been directly attributed to the fact of being more consumer-paid as opposed to policy. 1.3.3 Temporary Effect of Cost Shifting As PriceWaterhouseCoopers illustrates in their latest report on healthcare inflation, cost shifting from employers and government plans to making consumers pay higher deductibles and co-pays created cash paying customer demand for lower cost higher quality services. This demand and consumer realization of cost is what has led to slowed inflation of healthcare prices. PWC also points out that this model has run its course and they expect higher rates of inflation to return to the cost in healthcare. The Accountable Care Act’s attempt to create efficiencies and financial stabilization through mandates of adopting information management technology and realigning some of the incentives for providers through “Value-based Care” were admirable. The problem is that it has been a complete failure in execution—as most government programs and mandates do. We believe that changing the motivations of both the population and the health service providers can contribute to people getting healthy faster and staying that way. 1.4 How UHC offers a Solution to our Healthcare Crisis Let us be emphatic, UHC is a solution for healthcare worldwide. While we are based in the US and discuss the problems in healthcare in US terms, upon launching the UHC the system will be able to be used Worldwide. All we need is a member who wishes to buy health services using our system, potentially even sharing in the health cost program, and a willing health and/or wellness service provider to accept a cash payment for providing that service to the UHC member. A universal health currency solves the problems outlined above by taking existing payment models and adding the efficiency and fairness that cryptocurrency and the blockchain provide. The Universal Health Coin calculates cash payments across a blockchain distributed-ledger-system based upon proprietary algorithms and artificial intelligence embedded within the system. Health services are validated as Health Care Events and converted into Neo’s [NEP5 Token], aka GAS, in real-time to pay the health service providers through smart contracts covering the healthcare expenses of individuals using UHC. Providers are paid at a Negotiated Cash Price built into the blockchain smart contracts. A UHC Wallet is created and funded through a system of monthly contributions by individuals to fund the payment of future health services. Wallets are pledges for future health service expenses. Wallets are debited as the system requires contribution of anonymous members. Wallet and value of coins are tied to the price of GAS. Due to the nature of the decentralized cash-based system coupled with UHC's artificial intelligence and machine learning, as UHC evolves it is anticipated there will be a 45-55% reduction in health costs for UHC members. Co-founded by Courtney Jones and Dr. Gordon Jones (no family relations), UHC is developing the roadmap to Token Sale, building the systems, and protocols for deployment of the platform. Both Courtney and Gordon are successful entrepreneurs in their respective fields with the experience, resources and a broad network of experts to launch the Universal Health Care solution through the blockchain and cryptocurrency realm.