A Primary Care Doc Rejects Insurance, Gets Happy

Very interesting.

clipped from blogs.wsj.com Albert Fuchs, a primary care doc, lands on the Los Angeles Times op-ed page this morning telling the story of his career as a physician and a business owner. He opened a practice and grew so busy he couldn’t keep up. So he dropped the insurance plan with the worst reimbursement. As his practice continued to grow, he continued to narrow the insurance plans that he accepted. Now he doesn’t take any insurance — and, he argues, he serves his patients better. If an urgent need arises after hours, patients want to be able to call their own doctor. Patients want to be able to e-mail their doctor with non-urgent questions and to fax them interesting articles. They want to be educated, not just medicated. They want to know they can get in to see their doctor the same day if needed, and that their doctor will be the one taking care of them if they are hospitalized. Jonathan Kellerman, another Angeleno, who fired up the debate on insurance being the big problem–not the solution–in health care today