I have been in medical practice for over 12 years. Over the past several months I have written extensively about both the intended and the unintended consequences of healthcare reform from a physician's perspective and have appeared on numerous radio shows talking about the problems of health care reform. I have seen the breakdown and particularly the erosion of the doctor patient relationship, which is the fundamental foundation of medicine. As a patient advocate, I felt compelled to educate and inform people about what to expect over the coming months and years regarding their health care choices.
I started my journey as an idealistic optimist who believed that my voice could be heard. That belief took me to Washington to meet with my Congressmen. It was a hard lesson to learn that the political status quo and the power of special interests were more important than doing what was best for patients. It has been equally frustrating to listen to pundits who know absolutely nothing about what it takes to keep a practice open and to provide excellent care to patients. It remains a mystery to me how the opinions of those who have no idea what its like to make payroll or pay for malpractice insurance while fighting increasingly more losing battles with insurance companies and the government for the chance to treat his or her patient as they were trained have been allowed to dictate the conversation about healthcare reform. I have come full circle. I decided that I can either complain about the problem or do something to be part of the solution. This is something we each can decide to do.
My choice is to take back my power as a physician for myself and for my patients. In my opinion, it is the middleman that has led to the explosion in healthcare costs and has insinuated itself between me and my patient. I can no longer sit back and hope that the government will help me (The passing of the healthcare reform bill made that plainly obvious that wasn't going to happen). You only need to look to the fact that the stocks for the pharmaceutical industry and the medical insurance industry went up after the bill passed.
My solution is the creation of Best Price MD (http://www.bestpricemd.com/). It is simply a consortium of healthcare providers - from physicians, specialists, surgeons, and dentists to integrative providers such as chiropractors and acupuncturists. All of our providers have one thing in common, that is their willingness to provide a discount on their services to those without insurance and those who do have insurance, but have high deductibles. [more...]
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