'We believe that in healthcare, third-party payment is necessary, or better. In reality, healthcare is expensive in large part because we’ve expanded the role of third parties, and in so doing, we’ve separated patients from decisions,' HadleyHeath writes.
Of course, there is a role for insurance. Traditionally, insurance served as a backstop againstcosts. This is the way we use other types of insurance. But health insurance in the United States has drifted far from this. The public has found that we like sending someone else the bill, even for a routine doctor’s appointment.
And because our premiums don’t reflect our risk of filing a claim, and because for most people, someone else pays the premiums, it is better for us to have more services covered by insurance. It shifts the cost of our healthcare away from us altogether — or at least it feels that way if we don’t consider our tax bill or how our employer-sponsored health insurance lowers our salary.
People can’t be blamed for wanting to keep this system in place, even if it’s exactly this system that makes healthcare so unaffordable, regressive, and uninterested inBut there’s one sign of hope from outside the political arena: the organic proliferation of direct primary care. In the DPC model, doctors take third parties out of the mix and bill patients directly for primary care services, usually as a monthly subscription.
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