My wife's doctor went this route and now we pay that annual fee so she can see him.
If we get HillaryCare, or ObamaCare, expect a lot more of this. Unless the legislation bans it.
(It won't. Our rich politicos will always want to insulate themselves from the consequences of their benevolence - they'll make sure they get to keep their own private doctors for a price. The rest of us, well we can sit in the waiting room for two hours in order to have a quick five minutes with the harried government doctor.)
Ping for later - since my doctors are heading down this path.
"Both he and O'Brien anticipate they may lose money during the first year of their new practice, but say the change will be worth it.
Hmmmm....600 patients times $1000 equals $600,000, plus what they collect from the insurance companies. How high could malpractice insurance and office rent be?
This is going to infuriate the Socialized Medicine types. People are paying for superior service. This is not acceptable, since an equally bad level of service is an inalienable right to all Americans (and people who happen to be in America), don'tcha know...
If this cost could be paid with a HSA, it might be a cool alternative, given the taxes savings that occurs on the final $1500 or $2000 of income.
I wonder how he'll lose money. He's going to have 600 patients. He's charging them $1500, of which he gets $1000, for a total of $600,000. But the coverage doesn't include standard medical treatment like physicals, so if each patient came in once a year for a physical, the insurance companies would pay him another 50 bucks per patient for that, or around 30,000 a year.
He'll probably only need one nurse becuase business is slow. Probably only needs one administrative person, because there will be few forms to fill out.
Seems that he should be able to make money. Maybe the first year he loses because it takes him that long to get up to 600 patients and he has expenses he has to unwind.
Kaiser Medical essentially does this by hiring their own doctors. Kaiser costs 1/3 of other insurance, and people I know who use them love them (I don't use them because my doctor is not part of their plan).
Oh, give it a rest! I am so tired of radical egalitarians who insist that everyone be tied to the lowest common denominator.
Besides, how many people could not afford $1500 a year for health care? I daresay that most of the so-called poor in this country spend more than that on luxury items. For those who are truly needy, charities could pick up the tab.
Sign me up, I have Type 2 Diabetes and would love this level of service.
Thank you for posting this article. I am currently a Family Medicine Resident after workig for the Army in Primary Care for 15 years. I am seriously thinking of starting such a practice when I finish and am very interested in this kind of information.
What now needs to be done is to keep track of medical errors made in the course of day to day practice and compare the performance of the concierge practice with other practices in the area. If there is a statistically significant error reduction, then that would speak volumes. In any event, what I've observed is that annual insurance premiums rise, copays rise, reimbursement to physicians decreases as the copay increases to keep totals steady. The costs to patients and employers are not explained by reimbursement.
Where is the money going?
/sarcasm