Has paying for health care taking tips from the cellphone industry? The WSJ examines the concept of pre-paid care, a sort of poor man’s concierge model:
For a monthly fee of $83 per individual or $125 for a family, the clinic provides unlimited primary and urgent care. Those who enroll in the prepaid plan get office visits, lab work, X-rays and as many generic drugs as the clinic can provide.
Dr. Wood is one of several hundred doctors across the country offering flat-rate, pay-in-advance plans. Though still experimental, proponents argue that the approach tackles two crises in U.S. health care: the rapid decline of doctors practicing primary-care medicine and the growing number of Americans who are either uninsured or underinsured.
