Master-Planned Communities Look to Innovative Future - Urban Land Magazine
"One of the notions presented to the panel was to offer health care for MPC communities. “If a company has 10,000 employees and can offer insurance to all of them, why can’t an MPC insure the 5,000 people in the community?” Cecilian asked. “When we consider millennials today, the two great concerns are health care and student loans. Why not look at the residential community to provide group health insurance? It’s a very interesting concept, especially with what’s happening in tele-medicine. You could make group health insurance part of the real estate package...Among the other topics considered: raising equity or debt through crowdfunding and providing for driverless cars. Crowdfunding in MPCs could be used to support community amenities, create retail options earlier, or construct revenue-producing venues such as golf courses. “Crowdfunding is coming and hitting real estate very quickly,” said Kaufmann. “Smaller-scale projects could be crowdfunded. There is a lot of money out there and it’s not that hard to organize. You should think about it for some pieces of the community.”
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Notice how the development industry always uses the fuzzy, feel-good word "community" instead of explaining exactly how your HOA, run by unpaid, untrained volunteers, would somehow become responsible for your health insurance. And crowdfunding instead of assessments to pay for "community amenities" means that your private streets and the pool would be dependent on people chipping in whatever they want by clicking a button on a website.
What could possibly go wrong with this bright, shiny future?
1 comment:
So when the MPC forecloses on your home you also lose your healthcare insurance.
Now consider that the management company running the MPC also owns the insurance policy. (Yup it isn't the HOA corp that owns the policies - this is part of a tying arrangement utilized by HOA management companies). Are the management companies going to invent "enforcement actions" against homeowners in order to get them off of the named insured list?
The HOA management company contracts typically provide that the HOA management company gets 10% of any payout on a property or casualty insurance policy (even the ones where the management company sold coverage to the HOA under a policy the management company or its parent owned). What cut of your health insurance is the HOA management company going to try to claim? Is the management company going to be your impediment to getting healthcare? Is the management company going to proclaim an entitlement to all your healthcare information? Does the management company become the "program administrator"...?
This whole plan sounds like a really, really bad idea. It's already bad enough that your house is security for payment for all sorts of "amenities" that you do not want. At least you can see the amenities. Now your house is security for payment for healthcare insurance for everyone else in the subdivision - except you can't even see the performance of the insurance (can't measure "community health" because it isn't a "community" attribute). If you don't like the policy do you have to move? If you don't like the policy do you have to pay for coverage anyway (like the forced purchase of bulk cable services in many places)?
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