Was just thinking that there should be doctor clubs, where a bunch of people pool their money to hire a dedicated general physician. Or to have a shared tailor, or group cafeteria, or whatever.
The ratio of people covered to specialists would probably determine whether it’s feasible. You’d want the specialist to still get paid a healthy (and guaranteed) salary and to have a more satisfying relationship with customers. And the members of the club to get better service / product than they would otherwise with middlemen taking a cut.
I think if it started to get bigger the other factor that would come into play is the entity could be democratically controlled, which is another thing we don’t get with typical insurance.
Yeah, definitely some benefits to it, even without extending it to communism. The usual term for these is an insurance cooperative, if you wanna research them more. A lot of unions do this, too.