Quote:I'm sorry. What power do insurance companies have? They went screaming to the State's designated bureaucrats, who pulled out their law books and threatened to revoke his license to practice medicine. I guess if that didn't stop him from treating the sick at too low a price, then jail time might do the trick.It doesn't surprise me that, for run of the mill medical services, someone who goes around insurance regulations and just provides basic care directly would come out with far better costs than ordinary health insurance. This is for two reasons.
1) The American system is a bloated, rent-generating mess that combines many of the worst features of a market system and a single-payer one.
2) This doctor is only providing the care he has available, and not the expensive diagnostic, catastrophic, or palliative treatments that drive insurance prices up (and also constitute the major reason for insurance in the first place.) If you wanted to be covered for that, you'd have to go somewhere else for both treatment and insurance.
I am tickled, however, by the Seattle doctor's claim:
Quote:He rejected the idea that unrestricted access causes overuse, calling that "nonsense promoted by insurance companies .... There's nobody I've ever met who gets their pleasure by seeing doctors."It isn't like buying beer. ;) *
-Jester
* unless you have Münchhausen Syndrome, of course.