What if, instead of paying hundreds — or even thousands — of dollars each month for health insurance that you may not even be taking advantage of, you paid a retainer of somewhere between $39 to $79 a month to your primary care physician? Some doctors say this kind of service can work out to the benefit of both caregiver and patient.
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3 comments:
This sounds like it has some merit. If you couple this retainer concept with a high deductible insurance plan this might be a good solution for some people. For a couple of years our company provided Health Savings Account (HSA) insurance with a high deductible and this is the first time that our employees acted like real consumers. Because there was a high deductible they had to pay out of pocket until they reached the deductible threshold (even though the company gave them a monthly payment to offset this). When the insurance company pays everything except a co-pay no one was interested in even reading the Explanation of Benefits statement from the insurance company. With the HSA our employees actually asked their doctors how much procedures and tests cost in advance. This is the rarity in health care. Normally there is no discussion of price before hand only billing after the fact. This extra surveillance and scrutiny also acted as a quality control check and better protection against fraud or unethical billing practices (which unfortunately we did see). I hope this retainer concept gains some traction.
This is what medicine is going toward. My son pays his internist $1,500 per year (doctor no longer accepts insurance) who will see him and his children whenever they need care. He lives on the west coast.
Most of the treatment people receive is not even needed especially all of the pharmaceutics prescribed.
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