Paleo-friendly naturopaths/MDs including psychologists/psychiatrists, a range of alternative practitioners such as massage therapists, chiropractors/cranio-sacral, etc

Insurance is not paleo.

How do you prove you're paleo? Do you lose your insurance if you accidentally have some gluten?

Insurance is all about numbers and actuarial tables. They have no data go go by that shows that the cost of insuring a paleo person in cheaper than a non-paleo.

I think it's a fantastic and exciting idea!

My initial thoughts would be:

• maybe have incentives where if you don't spend your allotted amount of money on medical services each year it can sit in a savings account and roll over to the next year, or you can get some of it back somehow

• I like the idea mentioned above about paying fairly high out of pocket costs initially, and then being covered 100% above 5k for example.

• Connecting it with the paleo physicians network that Robb Wolf has linked through his website seems like a good idea

• Premiums should be tied to health markers, presuming we are adopting modified markers. i.e.. Total cholesterol above 200 should not be a warning, maybe taking Total:HDL or HDL: trigs ratios, LDL particle size, etc

• I don't like the idea about not covering diseases of civilization because while we may have an 80% (totally made up random number) less chance of getting them, they are still possible.

Too soon to tell. With all these high cholesterol numbers flaoting around amongst paleos, and flying in the face of conventional wisdom and everything, who knows? Maybe we'll all keel over sooner rather than later, Art Devany notwithstanding. I'm actually kind of serious. Whack me down, that's OK.

Dental -- dentists/ oral surgeons who understand the relationship between diet, dental health, and overall health would be beneficial, especially. Going paleo/primal/whatever, from what I've read and experienced personally has a positive overall effect on oral health, but years of eating SAD has left many a mouth messed up.

Sounds like a great idea to reward people for a healthy lifestyle by saving them money. Maybe then the unhealthy ones would see the value in it. That could make an immense change.

GYNs familiar with Paleo and its intersection with perimenopause, menopause, fibroids and other female issues affected by hormones and diet

naturopaths, GI paleo friendly MDs, internists who will do Paleo bloodwork and know how to read and discuss them relatively

Paleo brochures: chronic fatigue muscle wasting - chronic cardio GI issues - Crohn's and diverticulitis especially for my family; osteo issues endo issues infant guidelines (ie, wheat, dairy, dental - as we know so far) pregnancy dietary guidelines dermatology

For a paleo person whose primary focus is wellness and pursuing health I would think a pay out of about $1000-$2000 payout for any services they (the insured) deems necessary each year followed by a large deductible (5-10,000) then coverage at 100%.

I have seen a couple of plans like this and think its a good model for healthy individuals that want enough coverage for extreme circumstances, yet allows that first 1-2000$ for your yearly "maintenance" if you will. The first 1-2000 could be paid for things not normally covered....personal trainers, fitness experts, nutrition(paleo) counseling, well visits to CAM practitioners...whatever.

I think the biggest problem is physical concentration of patients. People who eat paleo are about 1 in 500 or 600,000 people in the USA. All spread out. One way around this is get physicians to treat people over the internet. This would allow a physician to specialize in seeing paleo people.

Nope. I don't go to MDs, and rarely to Naturopaths, so not very helpful for me.

Unless you are talking life insurance?

Jeff, nicely laid out. I concur!

A Paleo insurance policy should cover nutritional counseling services rendered by Registered Dietitians. In order to filter out wanna-be models and such, perhaps require measurable diagnosis of conditions where risk factors are very high starting with "overweight". As you know, this classification is measurable and standardized in the medical community but currently means little or nothing to insurance conglomerates.

There should be coverage extended for patients diagnosed as "overweight", "obese", "morbidly obese", "pre-diabetic", "metabolic syndrome", "hypertension" and of course "diabetic".

My .02.

As someone who discovered paleo while still young and healthy, I would like to see an inexpensive policy that covers everything EXCEPT FOR DISEASES OF CIVILIZATION. I see no need to have coverage for diseases that I will not get. My main concerns are accidental injury and infectious disease.

Seems like we would need a different approach for those who weren't fortunate enough to discover paleo before incurring metabolic damage. Maybe a policy where the premiums are tied to health metrics, ie. as a person loses weight, reverses type II diabetes, etc, their premiums fall accordingly.

Edit:

Let's briefly expound on the rationale for a paleo policy. It seems there are primary two reasons for it. First is that we want different services, such as paleo dietitians, different lab panels, doctors who understand the evolutionary approach to medicine, etc. The second is that we think it will be cheaper, and that we don't want to pay for health care cost of people who eat a SAD diet or even those who eat a "healthy" diet of whole grains and polyunsaturated fat.

I'm proposing that we have 2 paleo policies. The first one for those of us who just want to insure against things that are totally out of our control, such as accidents and infectious disease. This is appealing for me as I can't afford health care, I'm healthy and I want a policy that is as cheap as possible. I'm self-employed and my line of work is extremely dangerous. I'm one injury away from bankruptcy. Cost matters.

The second policy I proposed is for those who want a greater level of insurance, primarily because they are in the process of reversing existing health problems. This would be a broader policy that rewards people for improving their health, as quantified by certain health metrics. I'm not trying to blame the victim, but it's a fact that we are all starting from a different level of health.

And yes, I do think cancer is a disease of civilization: http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/07/cancer-in-other-non-industrialized.html