On March 25, 2010, President Barack Obama said, “From this day forward, all of the cynics, all the naysayers — they’re going to have to confront the reality of what this reform is and what it isn’t. They’ll have to finally acknowledge this isn’t a government takeover of our healthcare system. They’ll see that if Americans like their doctor, they’ll be keeping their doctor. You like your plan? You’ll be keeping your plan. No one is taking that away from you.”
Unfortunately, Obama’s PREDICTION is not the REALITY. And it’s not just our opinion, but Sean Hannity’s too, that maybe we should put less emphasis on “the plan” and in turn, less emphasis on government. Hannity is even going so far as to cite our direct care model in his vision of an American healthcare solution.
CHECK OUT HANNITY’S WEBSITE HERE
Hannity has no shame in calling out the five lies of Obamacare:
- Lie #1: If you like your plan you can keep your plan
- Lie #2: If you like your Dr you can keep your doctor
- Lie #3: $2500 for each family in savings per year
- Lie #4: Every American will have insurance (CBO says 30 million Americans remain uninsured)
- Lie #5: The website will be up & running on 10-1-13
Like Hannity, we agree, healthcare was flawed before the ACA went into effect. But are we headed in the right direction? Avik Roy of the Manhattan Institute, thinks otherwise. After his analysis of data, he recently concluded:
“A Manhattan Institute analysis I helped conduct found that, on average, the cheapest plan offered in a given state, under Obamacare, will be 99 percent more expensive for men, and 62 percent more expensive for women, than the cheapest plan offered under the old system. And those disparities are even wider for healthy people.”
Hmmm, maybe instead of focusing on the past, and the administration’s lies, we push forward, and ditch a portion of our coverage. In Hannity’s conservative solution, he proposes that Americans take their health into their own hands with individual Health Savings Accounts. He encourages wrap-around plans, and a competitive market where providers seek to offer the best service at the lowest price. In effect, he wants a subsidized system pushed aside a by a free market approach. He would like our nation to encourage people to “use their HSA funds to pay for concierge, or as they now call it, “direct primary care” services.”
Hannity cites Atlas MD as a “perfect example of how concierge services work…” On average, we can save our patients anywhere from $500-$1,000 a month on insurance because the model allows them to adjust their insurance cover less of what they don’t need. It’s all about the membership model. We can keep the cost-per-patient low while at the same time, maximizing availability and quality of the service. It’s no joke. Eliminating the third-party payer, i.e. insurance, is a smart move for routine care.
But we’re not here to dismiss insurance. We’re not here to dismiss third-party payers. We’re only trying to raise awareness that an unnecessary force has permeated the status quo. From there, we’re trying to help more doctors enter into the direct care space. Step one, though, is increasing the patient demand. If people are thirsty, some entrepreneur is going to bottle water. If people demand cash-only medicine, entrepreneurial doctors are going to deliver the care they want.