Dr. Brian Forrest, at Access Healthcare, runs an unusual medical practice. They don't file…read moreinsurance or deal with Medicare or Medicaid, so they have much lower overhead, and they can charge much lower prices than other docs. In fact, they list their prices on their web site! What other doctor does that?? www.acchealth.com
Doctor Forrest is a fairly young (40-ish) doctor, but he does medicine the old fashioned way. They give you your care, and you pay them (cash or plastic), and they give you a receipt. Period, that's all. No paperwork (other than your medical history for your first visit).
You get a receipt, so if you can get an insurance company to reimburse you, that's great, but it's your problem, not theirs!
The result is that they charge much less than other docs. In fact, their charges are often not much more than the insurance co-pay elsewhere! A standard office visit is $49, and that gets you a half hour with the doc or nurse practitioner, not the 10 minutes or so that $100 or $150 will get you elsewhere.
What's more, Dr. Forrest has lined up cash-discount deals with many local medical specialists for his patients, for services that he doesn't provide himself, like radiology. He promises the specialists that the patients he sends them will pay immediately with cash or credit/debit card, and zero paperwork, and in return they give his patients steep discounts.
The resulting savings can be amazing, as I discovered in August, 2008, when I fell from a ladder and injured my wrist. X-rays showed a non-displaced acute distal radius fracture (i.e., I broke the end of the big bone in my forearm).
I got a fancy brace, a prescription analgesic, and three office visits, each with x-rays and radiologist's report. I paid for it all with my HSA debit card. Guess what it cost?
Most people guess $3000-$5000.
It was actually $270.
When I tell people that, most don't comprehend it. They assume $270 was the sum of my insurance deductibles.
Wrong. Insurance paid nothing. (My low-cost HDHP insurance doesn't kick in until I spend about $5000.) $270 was the total cost. (Note: that was 2.5 years ago, so it would probably be a little over $300, now.)
With traditional insurance and a typical doctor, my out-of-pocket cost would have been similar, plus the insurance company would have paid thousands. That money, in the final analysis, would've mostly paid for bureaucracy and paperwork, rather than medical care. At Access Healthcare, all you buy is the medical care.
THIS is how real medical reform should work! It is encouraged by President Bush's HSA/HDHP-based reforms. Sadly, ObamaCare (unless it is repealed) is going to gradually squeeze this kind of practice out of existance. It will require that everyone have insurance, and that every insurance policy pay for 100% of routine checkups and other preventive care. That will not only jack up the cost of insurance, and add the insurance company overhead to every minor office visit, it will also mean that medical practices which don't accept insurance won't have any customers for routine checkups. And, since everyone goes to the same doctor for illness & minor injury that they go to for checkups, the no-insurance docs won't have customers for those things, either. They won't have any choice but to start taking insurance, and hire the staff to handle the paperwork. Then, once they DO accept insurance, they'll not only have the same additional overhead/cost that other docs have, ObamaCare will require them to comply with every regulation issued by the Secretary of HHS, or else the insurance companies won't be allowed to contract with them. The bottom line is that unless ObamaCare is repealed, government will be in charge of your medical care, instead of great doctors like Dr. Brian Forrest of Access Healthcare.
Dave
