Tuesday, January 8, 2013
© Copyright 2013
Gwinnett Daily Post
Insurance industry will ensure direct pay doc idea fails
The direct-pay doc idea mentioned in Nate McCullough's column has come and gone many years ago ("Direct-pay doc an idea whose time has come," Jan. 4, 6A). In the 1950s, my mother would bring me to the doctor's office or the doctor would come to my apartment to give medical treatment.
My mother paid the doctor directly. No insurance companies interfered with physician-patient decision-making. For many reasons,
this practice faded decades ago.
Of course McCullough's direct-pay doc idea makes a lot of sense. But how many physicians can earn a living seeing patients at $35 a
month and $15 per visit? Very few.
Let's face it: insurance companies have mightily profited by the current health care system and do not ever want to change it. Our country has the highest cost of health care in the world yet ranks 37th in health care indices according to the World Health Organization.
Yes, let us minimize health care costs for everyone. But the direct-pay doc is not likely to become the primary means of receiving health care again.
-- Torin Togut
Lawrenceville
More like this story
- LETTERS: Loss of principles leads to moral decline ( January 8, 2013 )
- MCCULLOUGH: Direct-pay doc an idea whose time has come ( January 3, 2013 )
- What's your life worth? ( August 14, 2009 )
- Legacy on health care will live on ( February 14, 2007 )
- McCULLOUGH: Change is coming, for better or worse ( March 18, 2010 )
Comments
kevin 4 months, 2 weeks ago
You missed reading the other half of the story! The doctor will also be making money by providing other services like x-rays, etc. The only reason the fact the doctors making house calls has failed was because doctors were getting too busy and couldn't "make the rounds" anymore. If enough do this, and they are starting to, it will not fail because this may be the last resort to seeing a doctor without waiting in line with the rest of the folks. Remember, Obamacare will be providing low income folks with free medical insurance policies. Not everyone will be paying for "his" plans, thus compounding the problem of so many people looking for so few doctors.
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