Will those doctors give me a good rate for burned soles?
Posted on 06/15/2013 6:25:26 PM PDT by grundle
"The paperwork, the hassles, it just got to be overwhelming," Nunamaker said. "We knew that we had to find a better way to practice."
So Nunamaker and his partner set up a membership-based practice called Atlas M.D. -- a nod to free-market champion Ayn Rand's book Atlas Shrugged.
By cutting out the middleman, Nunamaker said he can get a cholesterol test done for $3, versus the $90 the lab company he works with once billed to insurance carriers. An MRI can be had for $400, compared to a typical billed rate of $2,000 or more.
Nunamaker encourages his patients to carry some type of high-deductible health insurance plan in case of an emergency or serious illness. But for the everyday stuff, he said his plan works better for both doctor and patient.
"It would be like if car insurance paid for gas, oil and tires," he said. "It would be very expensive, and you'd have to get pre-approval for a trip out of town."
Kevin Petersen, a Las Vegas-based general surgeon, stopped taking insurance in 2005. Petersen named the same reasons as Nunamaker: too much paperwork and overhead, declining payments from insurance companies, and a general loss of control.
"The insurance industry took over my practice," he said. "They were telling me what procedures I could do, who I could treat -- I basically became their employee."
Now Petersen does hernia operations for $5,000 a pop, which includes anesthesia, operating room time and follow-up visits. He negotiates special rates for the anesthesiologist and the operating room, and is able to provide the service for about a third of what a patient might pay otherwise.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
This is great news. But I’m sure the government will soon step in to stop it.
I wish there were a national registry of some sort for these guys so we could find them more easily.
Optometrists and dentists, too.
I’m sure some FReeper could create a website for that!
Yes, leftists want this banned I bet
The benevolent dictators in Washington will put a stop to this.
My niece got a back MRI - after hours - for $350 in cash
The doctors need to start advertising so we know where to go to stay away from zerocare nuts.
Can anyone say why that is, and/or how the lab got away with it, and/or why the insurance companies don't do a better job of trying to keep prices down?
I thought collectivists loved choice!/s
If you take your car to a body shop to repair damage, the first thing asked is if it is insurance or self paid. Same reasoning.
Isn’t this how it used to be many years ago?
my thoughts, precisely!
I had a doctor tell me he couldn’t take cash patients. Apparently someone sued him on the grounds cash patients received better care.
Not me. As soon as there's a "registry", these guys will be in jail.
I'll stick to personal reference.
We go to a doc that works out of his house. Been going to him for about 3 years now. He charges by the minute. He told me an MRI shouldn’t cost more than a $150.
Yes. During WW2 there were wage controls put on by the fedgov, and companies began to offer "medical insurance" to employees as a way to increase compensation without violating the rules.
This was the beginning of severing the financial link between medical consumer and medical provider. The rest is history.
did you actually get one for that price? of a back?
The Brown Clown and his lackeys ( Pelosie, Reid, and all the other A$$hole self serving Socialists) won’t like that one bit.
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