Page 9 - C.A.L.L. #38 - Summer 2014

PEACH and DRMIA

From Communities Magazine #158

By Ma’ikwe Schaub Ludwig

PEACH was created over 25 years ago by a group of income-sharing communities, the

Federation of Egalitarian Communities. The intention was to pool resources in order to
help communities handle larger medical bills, partly to protect a community from folding
financially under the weight of a member’s health crisis.

Five years ago, Dancing Rabbit joined
the fund as the first non-income-
sharing group, forming the Dancing
Rabbit Mutual Insurance Association.
DRMIA covers health claims of us to

$5,000 and then PEACH takes over from there. Both organizations operate by
consensus.

Essentially, any 20 or more people can get together and form an MIA. The basic model
is that you pool your money over a period of time and provide partial or full coverage
for members’ needs at the time they arise. What we now think of as insurance
companies were originally MIAs. I first heard the term in a college African American
studies class, because the model was used heavily in the early 1990s by the African
American community to help them weather the harsh realities of life as a group, rather
than having to fend for
themselves. (Gotta love
historical examples of
community.)

The biggest challenge for a
bouncing baby MIA is getting
together sufficient capital to
provide a real sense of security
for their members. Part of why
insurance companies have gotten
so huge is that larger groups of
people pooling money is more

financially sustainable than a
small group. However, it can be done, and there are a number of interesting examples
out there of community-based mutual insuring, including the Ithaca Health Fund (see
www.ithacahealth.org/healthfund.html).

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