The Way Healthcare Should Function

This article from the Weekly Standard almost makes me want to cry with frustration. It shows how the healthcare system generally would function in the absence of government-imposed distortions such as Medicare, Medicaid, and (especially!) the tax loophole for employer-provided insurance. Sadly, Obamacare will push the system even further in the wrong direction. And when those bad results become obvious, I can safely predict politicians will blame the free market and use the mess as an excuse for even more government intervention. This is "Mitchell's Law": Bad policy begets more bad policy.

On a wall inside Dr. Brian Forrest’s medical office in a suburb of Raleigh, North Carolina, is something you won’t find in most doctors’ offices, a price list... Forrest doesn’t take insurance. If he did, the prices would be far higher and not nearly as transparent. He says listing prices up front is about trying to do business in a straightforward way, “like a Jiffy Lube.” Forrest’s practice, Access Healthcare, was born out of his frustration with the bureaucratic system run by major health care providers and insurance companies. His epiphany came about 10 years ago, as he was completing his family medicine residency at Wake Forest University. “I was basically being told I needed to see 30 patients a day every day, and that’s what we had to do,” he recalls, speaking with a soft drawl. He didn’t care for that pace, preferring to spend 45 minutes to an hour with each patient. ...Because he doesn’t have to file insurance forms, he only needs a single office assistant, and the low overhead allows him to charge less than other doctors. Occasionally, his charges wind up being less than just the co-pays for Medicare or private insurance. He’s negotiated deals with a lab company to reduce his patients’ costs for tests. The lab loves being paid on the spot for services rendered and allows Forrest to charge his patients $30, for example, for a prostate-cancer screening test that the company bills to an insurer at $184. “For specialists, cash in the hand is better than a bigger amount charged to insurance,” he says. He’s found other doctors happy to join in, such as a cardiologist who’s willing to give discounts of 80 to 90 percent to his patients if he’s paid cash up front. “The discovery I made was that by getting rid of administrative, bureaucratic hassles, I was able to do very well financially and at the same time have high patient satisfaction and good quality of care,” he says. Even more surprising, most of his patients are not wealthy. Half have no insurance, and another 15 percent are on Medicare. ...in recent months, he’s been flooded with inquiries from fellow doctors. “Since the health care reform bill passed, you wouldn’t believe the number of doctors who have said they’ve had it and want to operate outside the system,” he says.