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Affordable private health care

A group of physicians in Rhode Island has formed what they call HealthAccessRI, a network of doctors who are providing their customers primary care for a small monthly fee, with medical insurance playing no part in it. This news article presents a very favorable view of it.

The premise underlying the plan, [Dr. Michael] Fine says, is that primary care is both inexpensive and effective, and for most people, it’s all they need. …

Fine notes that his monthly fee is “less than the cost of a cell phone, less than the cost of cable TV, less than the cost of high-speed Internet,” and he can take care of the vast majority of problems that come his way. The “fancy stuff,” the expensive tests and treatments, are often unnecessary or even harmful, he asserts. …

Financially, HealthAccessRI has worked out well for his practice, possibly even better than payments from insurance companies, Fine says. He estimates that 150 to 200 people are on the plan at any given time and some 500 or 600 have cycled through it.

And the money quote:

[Dr. James] Schwartz believes primary care should be paid for directly, separate from insurance. Today’s health-care financing perverts the original concept of insurance, which was supposed to pay for catastrophes, he says. “No auto insurance sells you a plan that covers oil changes and tune-ups,” he says. The current system has also harmed primary care, Schwartz argues, by paying doctors per visit, making it financially difficult to give patients the attention they need. HealthAccessRI gives doctors a steady, predictable income to cover predictable costs.”

I also learned from that article that Massachusetts residents are required by law to buy medical insurance. How does anyone argue that such coercive distortions of market forces don’t have unintended, harmful consequences in the health care industry? Especially when there are hundreds of laws at least as distorting?

(P.S. I emailed this story to Lew Rockwell last night, with high expectations that he would deem it worthy of his blag, but it looks like it won’t happen. Man, I’ve emailed him three or four good news stories for his blag over the years, and he only accepted the one about the “smoke-easys”. Seems like almost anything non-election-related is destined for the trash bin.)