By using this site, you agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Accept
Health Works CollectiveHealth Works CollectiveHealth Works Collective
  • Health
    • Mental Health
    Health
    Healthcare organizations are operating on slimmer profit margins than ever. One report in August showed that they are even lower than the beginning of the…
    Show More
    Top News
    bowl of vegetable salad
    Raw Foods: benefits and harms
    November 9, 2021
    pros and cons of the keto diet
    Read This Before You Follow the Keto Diet
    May 18, 2022
    spinal cord injuries
    4 Potential Causes of Spinal Cord Injuries (and How to Seek Compensation)
    May 25, 2022
    Latest News
    7 Most Common Healthcare Accreditation Programs: Which Should You Use?
    August 20, 2025
    Hospital Pest Control and the Fight Against Superbugs
    August 20, 2025
    Hygiene Beyond The Clinic: Attention To Overlooked Non-Clinical Spaces
    August 13, 2025
    5 Steps to a Promising Career as a Healthcare Administrator
    August 3, 2025
  • Policy and Law
    • Global Healthcare
    • Medical Ethics
    Policy and Law
    Get the latest updates about Insurance policies and Laws in the Healthcare industry for different geographical locations.
    Show More
    Top News
    TBI: Some Surprising Statistics
    February 9, 2016
    Your Keys to Safer, Even More Secure Healthcare Cloud Services
    January 13, 2015
    4 Career Options in Healthcare Industry that Combine Big Data & Healthcare
    February 5, 2021
    Latest News
    How Social Security Disability Shapes Access to Care and Everyday Health
    August 22, 2025
    How a DUI Lawyer Can Help When Your Future Health Feels Uncertain
    August 22, 2025
    How One Fall Can Lead to a Long Road of Medical Complications
    August 22, 2025
    How IT and Marketing Teams Can Collaborate to Protect Patient Trust
    July 17, 2025
  • Medical Innovations
  • News
  • Wellness
  • Tech
Search
© 2023 HealthWorks Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Reading: How Much Do You Want to Pay for Medical Care?
Share
Notification Show More
Font ResizerAa
Health Works CollectiveHealth Works Collective
Font ResizerAa
Search
Follow US
  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy
© 2023 HealthWorks Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Health Works Collective > Business > Finance > How Much Do You Want to Pay for Medical Care?
BusinessFinanceHealth ReformPolicy & LawPublic Health

How Much Do You Want to Pay for Medical Care?

JohnCGoodman
JohnCGoodman
Share
8 Min Read
medical costs
SHARE

The title above is not a misprint. I want you to think about choosing your own price.

Suppose you could magically pay any fee you want to health care providers and they can’t refuse. You can’t control the fee others are paying. But you can select your own. What fee would you choose?

The title above is not a misprint. I want you to think about choosing your own price.

Suppose you could magically pay any fee you want to health care providers and they can’t refuse. You can’t control the fee others are paying. But you can select your own. What fee would you choose?

More Read

health start-ups
Health Start-Ups! – Four Tips for Health IT Start-Ups
Keeping an STD from Destroying Your Quality of Life
How A Pharmacist Can Help You
Twitter Collage: A Zillion Volts of Noticeability
Having Purpose Adds Years to Your Life

medical costsYour first inclination might be to select a fee of zero, or at least something close to it. So let’s try that out in a thought experiment. When you call for a doctor’s appointment, you would discover increasing difficulty getting one. You would be put on hold for long periods of time. The number you are asked to call might be answered by a voice recorder, not a real person. When you are given an appointment, it would be weeks (perhaps months) away. When you arrive at the doctor’s office you would discover that others in the waiting room are seen before you are ― even patients who arrive after you have arrived.

BTW, I’m not making any of this up. I’m more or less describing the difference in how patients are treated by dermatologists if they need a Medicare-covered service versus a service for which payment will be out of pocket; how Medicaid patients are treated vis-à-vis non-Medicaid patients; and how I have observed that HMO patients are treated versus patients who pay market prices.

Choosing a fee below the fee everyone else is paying means you will be the least desirable patient to doctors from a financial point of view. It means you will be the last patient doctors will want to see. It doesn’t mean you will never get care. It means you are likely to be the last to get care.

So let’s consider a completely different choice. What if you choose to pay a fee higher than everyone else is paying? In that case, you are more likely to get a same-day or next-day appointment. If there are patients in a room waiting to be seen, you are likely to be one of the first. Indeed, the doctor may even call you and talk to you about your health needs on a phone. She may email you. This is why (surprise!) given the opportunity to pay any fee you choose, you might actually volunteer to pay more than what others are paying.

Again, I’m not making any of this up. This is precisely what “concierge care” is all about. People pay more to concierge doctors so that they can get more care and better care.

Now if you are inclined to think this is all fanciful, you are completely wrong. What I have just described (in less than 500 words) summarizes the principal difference in how the left and the right think about health care. It also describes the principal difference in what the left and the right expects to happen under ObamaCare.

If you go back over the health policy literature of the past 60 years, you will find almost without exception that writers who are left of center either explicitly or implicitly endorse two propositions:

1.     In health care, prices don’t matter (if you artificially change them nothing bad will happen); and

2.     The way to make health care more accessible (especially to poor people) is to make it free at the point of delivery.

For the past half-century we have had a grand test of these ideas in the contrasting ways we subsidize medical care and food for the poor.

With food stamps, low-income families pay the same market prices you and I pay. They are free to add cash to their food stamps and make just about any supermarket choice you and I can make. And you never hear of a supermarket refusing to take any more food stamp customers. In the market for medical care, however, low-income families are not allowed to supplement Medicaid’s fee with cash. If a nurse at a Minute Clinic accepts cash in addition to Medicaid’s fee, she would probably be committing a criminal offense! So most walk-in clinics don’t accept Medicaid patients (despite the fact that the care is convenient, low-cost and high-quality) and the patients must endure long waits instead at community health centers and the emergency rooms of safety net hospitals.

With ObamaCare it’s going to be déjàvu all over again. We are about to see a huge increase in the demand for care, but no increase in the number of physicians available to deliver it. As higher income patients pull doctors out of mainstream medicine and into the realm of concierge practice, the shortages will get increasingly severe and the waiting times will grow.

What will happen to the newly insured? About half of them will enroll in Medicaid and the other half will acquire insurance in the health insurance exchanges ― in most cases with taxpayer subsidies. But pressure to keep premiums down is forcing the carriers to offer narrow networks that promise below-market fees to providers. In fact, early indications are that many of the exchange plans are little more than “Medicaid Plus.”

Massachusetts is a likely precedent for what is about to happen. In that state, the newly insured are in subsidized plans that pay only about 10% more than what Medicaid pays doctors. And early indications are that people in these subsidized plans have less access to care than patients on Medicaid.

And what will people on the left say when these things happen. They will blame the bad outcomes on greed, selfishness, avarice… ― on anything other than their own inability to accept reality.

(Medical care costs / shutterstock)

Share This Article
Facebook Copy Link Print
Share

Stay Connected

1.5kFollowersLike
4.5kFollowersFollow
2.8kFollowersPin
136kSubscribersSubscribe

Latest News

engineer fitting prosthetic arm
How Social Security Disability Shapes Access to Care and Everyday Health
Health care
August 20, 2025
a woman explaining the document
How a DUI Lawyer Can Help When Your Future Health Feels Uncertain
Public Health
August 20, 2025
physiotherapist at work
How One Fall Can Lead to a Long Road of Medical Complications
Health care
August 20, 2025
Common Healthcare Accreditation Programs
7 Most Common Healthcare Accreditation Programs: Which Should You Use?
Health News
August 20, 2025

You Might also Like

Pill Bottle Warnings Go Unnoticed

September 11, 2012
Medical Device Marketing, DTC Digital Marketing, Medical Technology Marketing
BusinessFinanceMedical DevicesTechnology

Medical Device DTC Marketing: Digital Co-Marketing and the Power of the Referral (Part 1 of 4)

July 16, 2014

Health Literacy Resources

October 30, 2012
Team of doctors having a meeting
BusinessHealth ReformHospital AdministrationMedical RecordsMobile Health

How do we achieve coordinated health care?

February 12, 2016
Subscribe
Subscribe to our newsletter to get our newest articles instantly!
Follow US
© 2008-2025 HealthWorks Collective. All Rights Reserved.
  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy
Welcome Back!

Sign in to your account

Username or Email Address
Password

Lost your password?