Med School Will Offer Health Plan

The Medical School is launching a massive pre-paid insurance plan which will provide about 30,000 Boston residents with almost all their medical needs for a set fee.

The plan, which will probably begin to operate next Fall, would be the first comprehensive insurance program run by a medical school.

Jerome Pollack, associate dean for medical care planning and director of the plan, said yesterday that enrollees would pay "substantially less' for their family's health care--in some cases $100 or more below what they pay with less comprehensive plans like Blue Cross-Blue Shield.

The Medical School, meanwhile, will get a large sample population for research studies in the growing field of public health, Pollack added.

For example, the Medical School wants to find ways of shifting many of the doctor's more trivial chores to non-medical personnel, thus relieving the doctor shortage. It will also study the effectiveness of certain preventive techniques, such as innoculations, in combatting epidemic diseases.

The enrolled families will be covered for hospital care, preventive services, diagnostic evaluations, family counseling, home care, and health education.

Patients will have one central telephone number they can call for any of these services, knowing that any help they obtain will not cost anything. "This is bound to encourage people to ask for medical aid more often," Pollack said.

Pollack said he hopes the plan will eventually include psychiatric care, drugs, and dental care.

The fee which will be paid for all this has not been established. Pollack hinted, however, that it might be somewhere between $300 and $400 per year for a typical family. This would be slightly more than a family pays for the less comprehensive Blue Cross-Blue Shield, but less than a family with Blue Cross-Blue Shield ends up paying for all the services covered by the Harvard plan.

Pollack emphasized that Harvard does not wish to complete with existing insurance companies, but "wishes to do the kind of research and teaching in public health problems" which they have not done. In fact, Pollack said he has asked Blue Cross-Blue Shield to cooperate with Harvard in its research but has not yet received an answer.

The Harvard plan will be offered to selected Bostonians in an effort to get an economic cross section of the population, Pollack said. A least 20,000 persons must sign up before the program can begin.