Posted on 02/01/2007 12:58:57 PM PST by SmithL
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...
Most of these types of docs do NOT deal with health care....you pay up front.....YOU get any insurance bennies.
Rest assured that it will be banned. As you may recall, one of the provisions of Hillary! for President!!!'s 1994 Health Care scheme was to make it a crime for doctors to perform medical service for a fee outside of the government plan.
The rich and powerful will protect their access in other ways, like they do in Canada and the UK. If you are on a special list, you get access to the best doctors with no wait. Everybody else must get in line.
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.
I'm fairly certain that the $1,500 only puts you on the doctor's list. Actual services are over and above that amount.
People have been accustomed to paying zero for healthcare for awhile. I saw that in PA the teachers went on strike to avoid a $20 co-pay.
Also when talking about how much money this brings in - do not forget that most doctors have med school bills of $250,000.
Sign me up, I have Type 2 Diabetes and would love this level of service.
My current contribution is $98 a month for my insurance, so $1500 isn't so bad to me.
You are right. The two-class concept is carp. This is a new concept. Depending who gets in on it, rates could drop. Add this to the medic stops or whatever they are called that have set up shop in Wal-Mart and Target and I think we will see better quality and more affordable health care. I would love a health savings account that would let me shop for a fee-for-service or retainer doctor and fee-for-service or retainer specialists and do away with anything but catastrophic insurance.
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
Yeah, I'm wondering how high his overhead must be given the simplifying circumstances, but I'll take his word on it.
If you're an OB/GYN in the west, malpractice is upwards of $200k per year. You MUST REMEMBER THAT REIMBURSEMENT FROM INSURANCE DOES NOT INCLUDE SUPPLIES. So, everything your doc uses on you to sew you up may cost him $1k and he gets reimbursed only for the vist (say 20-30 dollars for 15 minutes for medicare).
YES!!! And by the time docs are in practice their interest on the $250k loans has accrued and its closer to $300-$400k.
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