Many of us are covered by health insurance through our employer, others through Medicare and Medicaid, but there is a sizeable group that isn’t covered at all. In comes a local health cooperative that says it’s had success in filling that gap and it may provide a model for health care reform elsewhere.

Both Renown and St. Mary’s Medical Centers are part of this community partnership along with 300 other providers. Their aim is catching people that fall between the cracks in our health care system: The working poor or uninsured.

A year ago, Robert Mahoney was one of those uninsured. Today she's just started work at Sky Peak Retirement Community in northwest Reno. Back then she was working part time, recovering from radiation treatment for colon cancer, needing follow up care and losing her Medicare coverage. "When I went on disability I was making too much," says Mahoney, "so once again I was without coverage. Between a rock and a hard place."

She eventually found and joined the Access to Healthcare Network. It is not health insurance, but a partnership of providers, businesses and members. A monthly payment of $40 dollars, often with a business paying half, gets you access to health care at a big discount. It's not insurance. You pay in cash, in advance of treatment, but the savings are big and it reaches a population often left out of our health care system.

The flip side of those big discounts, $400 dollars a day in the hospital instead of $2-thousand to give one example is a financial sacrifice on the part of the provider, but prepayment and prescreening make it easier for all concerned.

"Many doctors have done this on their own for years," says Reno gynecologist Dr. Harry Huneycutt. "This is more organized. You don't have someone coming in and saying I don't have any money, don't charge me. They've been prescreened."

And Roberta Mahoney would tell you, because she is paying up front, it also restores the member's dignity. This is the first network of its kind in the state, some say in the nation and it's getting some interest from elsewhere...even the presidential campaigns. Some have suggested it may serve as a model as we move toward some sort of universal health care.

"I don't have a clue," says the network's designer, Sherri Rice, "but I do know it's working."