Copley guarantees every resident a fire truck, a plowed road, and a police response. CopleyCare is a plan to add one more guarantee: access to a primary care doctor, for all 18,400 of us.
Copley looks healthy on paper. Look closer and the gaps are real, and they fall on the people least able to absorb them.
Nationally, more than 30% of adults now lack a usual source of care, the worst in a decade, and 45% of adults under 30 have no primary care doctor at all (Milbank Primary Care Scorecard, 2022 data). When people don't have a doctor, they use the emergency room: the same condition costs about $2,032 in the ER versus $167 in a doctor's office (UnitedHealth Group, 2019).
No new hospital. No government-run medicine. A township that connects its people to care the same way it contracts for other essential services.
A health navigator plus a membership fund. Find every resident without a doctor, connect the insured to practices taking patients, and sponsor Direct Primary Care memberships for those who fall through the cracks: uninsured, underinsured, and seniors without a reachable doctor. First 250 members, means-tested.
Use Phase 1 enrollment as proof of demand to bring care inside the township: a community health center satellite (AxessPointe has five sites in Summit County, none on the west side), or a recruited practice drawn by township-provided space. Havana, Florida did exactly this: the town supplied the building, the doctor supplied the practice.
Convert the grant-funded pilot into durable local funding: multi-year foundation support, a senior services levy for the senior half of the program (an authority Ohio townships clearly hold), and JEDD revenue. Then publish the playbook so any township in Ohio can copy it.
When Summa Health sold to a for-profit buyer in October 2025, the proceeds seeded the new Trailhead Community Health Foundation, a health-only funder for our region. Its first grants go out in late 2026 and early 2027. Programs like this one are exactly what conversion foundations exist to fund.
Since January 1, 2026, federal law lets HSA holders pay Direct Primary Care fees with pre-tax dollars, up to $150 a month for an individual. A township subsidy now stacks with residents' own tax-advantaged money.
Ohio law says Direct Primary Care agreements are not insurance (ORC 3901.95), so a township can sponsor memberships without becoming a regulated insurer. And Summit County voters just showed they will fund health at the ballot: the county mental health levy passed with 57% in November 2025.
Cities and counties across the country buy primary care memberships for their employees. Our research found no US community that guarantees this for all residents. The first township to do it writes the model, and gets the funders, the press, and the physician recruits that come with being first.
"Give Copley's residents the same guarantee for a doctor that they already have for a fire truck. For $17 a head."
This is a proposal, not a finished program. Three things get checked before anything goes in front of trustees or funders:
The next step is a steering group of residents, a conversation with the trustees, and grant applications ready the week the funding windows open.
Add your name. A steering group of 10 to 15 residents, including seniors, parents, and anyone who's struggled to find a doctor, is the first thing funders ask about.
If you practice primary care in or near Summit County, or run a DPC practice, we want your read on the membership design before anyone buys one.
The full deck, budget, and 40-source research appendix are ready for review. Thirty minutes is all the first conversation takes.