The great doctor Timothy Wong and direct care clinics
Let's talk about something uplifting for a change.
My dad asked me about my position on healthcare a little while ago and shortly after, a video about Dr. Timothy Wong, an MD in Pittsburgh, popped up in my feed. He is a doctor that utilizes the direct care model, where insurance is not taken.
He charges a flat rate to his patients for a visit. Get this. It's $35. For one visit. How many people out there have co-pays that are that much? My HMO doctor office charges around $350 for a visit for which they are compensated around $200. Plus my $25 co-pay.
People often complain about the "free market" healthcare system that the United States has. That's a complete misunderstanding of the US healthcare system. By law, health insurance must provide for certain services, cannot perform certain actions, and has completely obliterated any price signals in the industry. Any such market cannot, in any sense of the word, be considered a free market.
However, there is a system in the United States that is free market. And it's a system that barely anyone in the United States knows of, except libertarians, who have been pushing for this form of healthcare to be greatly expanded for years. Looking at the YouTube comments in the above video as well as news articles about Dr. Wong, it's plainly obvious that very few people still know about this system even though it's nothing new.
Even though I have health insurance provided by my work, I still like to visit a local direct care clinic. He charges much more than Dr. Wong, but it's still way less than my insurance gets charged for a routine doctor visit. However, it still does cost more out of pocket to visit the direct care because my co-pay is lower than the total visit cost of the direct care visit. Plus, my health insurance premiums are built into my paycheck with no option to opt out, which I totally would if possible. Believe me, I asked HR.
So why do I go to the direct care clinic? Because one, I believe in this system. And two, the care I get from the direct care clinic is much better than my HMO doctor. In order for the HMO doctor to make money, he has to churn through patients like crazy. The nurse does my vitals and the doctor spends about 5 minutes talking to me before herding me out. The front desk people are also not particularly pleasant to talk to, probably because they also do billing, which in healthcare, would make anyone go crazy. I posit that DMV workers are former healthcare billing agents that buckled. The direct care clinic doctor spends a much longer time with me and the front desk lady is very nice and doubles in doing vitals. Probably because the only billing she does is to ask me for my credit card and doesn't have to spend a single minute in bureaucratic hell on the phone with an insurance company.
This relatively free market system has a long track record of being higher quality and drastically lower cost compared to the insurance based model. Even Walmart, of all companies, has started a pilot project offering low cost doctor visits at $40 per visit. What happened, CVS and Walgreens?? Also, Dr. Wong beat Walmart! Take that, Always Low Prices!
This isn't limited to primary care. The Surgery Center of Oklahoma has been posting prices online for years in a direct care model. As an example, they post $15,499 as an estimated cost for a total knee replacement. Meanwhile, the US average for knee replacements are $50,000!
Of course, this isn't a replacement for insurance. The best model is to utilize these free market tools and purchasing high deductible catastrophic only health insurance. Insurance that only covers major unforeseen heath costs. You know, real insurance. Insurance that I paid $35 for one month's coverage for when I was between two jobs. But the Affordable Care Act has made that illegal. Yes, the Affordable Care Act made affordable health insurance illegal.
We can have low cost free market healthcare. We just need to be able to identify what a free market actually looks like and act accordingly. Thankfully, it seems like direct care is slowly gaining steam.
My dad asked me about my position on healthcare a little while ago and shortly after, a video about Dr. Timothy Wong, an MD in Pittsburgh, popped up in my feed. He is a doctor that utilizes the direct care model, where insurance is not taken.
He charges a flat rate to his patients for a visit. Get this. It's $35. For one visit. How many people out there have co-pays that are that much? My HMO doctor office charges around $350 for a visit for which they are compensated around $200. Plus my $25 co-pay.
People often complain about the "free market" healthcare system that the United States has. That's a complete misunderstanding of the US healthcare system. By law, health insurance must provide for certain services, cannot perform certain actions, and has completely obliterated any price signals in the industry. Any such market cannot, in any sense of the word, be considered a free market.
However, there is a system in the United States that is free market. And it's a system that barely anyone in the United States knows of, except libertarians, who have been pushing for this form of healthcare to be greatly expanded for years. Looking at the YouTube comments in the above video as well as news articles about Dr. Wong, it's plainly obvious that very few people still know about this system even though it's nothing new.
Even though I have health insurance provided by my work, I still like to visit a local direct care clinic. He charges much more than Dr. Wong, but it's still way less than my insurance gets charged for a routine doctor visit. However, it still does cost more out of pocket to visit the direct care because my co-pay is lower than the total visit cost of the direct care visit. Plus, my health insurance premiums are built into my paycheck with no option to opt out, which I totally would if possible. Believe me, I asked HR.
So why do I go to the direct care clinic? Because one, I believe in this system. And two, the care I get from the direct care clinic is much better than my HMO doctor. In order for the HMO doctor to make money, he has to churn through patients like crazy. The nurse does my vitals and the doctor spends about 5 minutes talking to me before herding me out. The front desk people are also not particularly pleasant to talk to, probably because they also do billing, which in healthcare, would make anyone go crazy. I posit that DMV workers are former healthcare billing agents that buckled. The direct care clinic doctor spends a much longer time with me and the front desk lady is very nice and doubles in doing vitals. Probably because the only billing she does is to ask me for my credit card and doesn't have to spend a single minute in bureaucratic hell on the phone with an insurance company.
This relatively free market system has a long track record of being higher quality and drastically lower cost compared to the insurance based model. Even Walmart, of all companies, has started a pilot project offering low cost doctor visits at $40 per visit. What happened, CVS and Walgreens?? Also, Dr. Wong beat Walmart! Take that, Always Low Prices!
This isn't limited to primary care. The Surgery Center of Oklahoma has been posting prices online for years in a direct care model. As an example, they post $15,499 as an estimated cost for a total knee replacement. Meanwhile, the US average for knee replacements are $50,000!
Of course, this isn't a replacement for insurance. The best model is to utilize these free market tools and purchasing high deductible catastrophic only health insurance. Insurance that only covers major unforeseen heath costs. You know, real insurance. Insurance that I paid $35 for one month's coverage for when I was between two jobs. But the Affordable Care Act has made that illegal. Yes, the Affordable Care Act made affordable health insurance illegal.
We can have low cost free market healthcare. We just need to be able to identify what a free market actually looks like and act accordingly. Thankfully, it seems like direct care is slowly gaining steam.
