There are so many advantages for doctors to switch to cash only practices and few disadvantages. Two of the biggest advantages? Lower cost health care because it costs less to provide. The usual overhead associated with the regular medical practices doesn't exist in cash-only practices. Hence, it costs less to provide the same, if not better care.
Under direct primary care, doctors contract directly with patients to provide all of their primary care needs free of insurance interference at a price generally between $50 and $60 a month per patient.Looking at the numbers, I would prefer to pay a concierge practice for my health care and keep insurance for catastrophic care. The fact that the insurance industry is opposed to such a system makes it clear to me that they don't want the competition, making concierge service that much more attractive. After all, the insurers won't get their 'cut' of the money we pay for health care, something to which it appears they feel entitled.
“It’s not just for the rich and famous anymore,” Merritt Hawkins’ Smith said of concierge medicine and direct primary care practices. “If you can afford a gym membership, you can afford this kind of care.”
The direct primary care approach provides unlimited visits to a physician’s office plus 24-hour access to doctors through e-mail consultations. The primary care model has drawn insurance industry opposition in part because the health insurer middleman is cut out of the equation as doctors are no longer paid by the likes of Aetna, Humana or a United Health Group.
If nothing else the economics of cash-only medical practices prove that one of the major driving forces causing health care costs to skyrocket has been health insurance, something I've been saying for years.