Talk of The Villages Florida - View Single Post - Socialized Medicine is Here!
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Old 03-13-2012, 08:27 AM
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Originally Posted by Villages Kahuna View Post
There are many doctors throughout the U.S.--I'm familiar with a group in north suburban Chicago--that are beginning to practice medicine using the following model...

Each doctor agrees to provide unlimited treatment to a maximum of 150 patients for an annual fee of $10,000, payable in advance. The doctor would no longer file for any insurance claims, nor would they maintain the record-keeping and billing systems needed to obtain payment for either Medicare or any private insurance company. However, each patient would be free to file and personally administer such claims using information provided to him by the doctor.

Using this model, each doctor in the practice would have an annual gross income of $1.5 million. From that amount, they would pay for all necessary office space, reception, nursing, insurance, and all office operating expenses. The model would suggest that each physician would have a pre-tax "salary" of about $1 million per year.

By limiting their patient load to only 150 patients, they would have sufficient time to schedule hour-long appointments with each patient on almost a monthly basis. Patients could see their doctor as often as they wished with a guarantee that they could schedule an appointment on very short notice and not endure any more than a few minutes wait in the doctor's waiting room. The doctors could really get to know each of their patients on a personal and intensive basis, providing only the necessary testing and care based on that intimate knowledge of each patient.

This is a model that could be very effective in actually "bending the cost curve" while at the same time vastly improving medical care. If I understand what Gary Morse is proposing, the new Villages system is pretty close to this model.

Socialized medicine? Absolutely not! A system that will likely result in much improved medical care and results? Probably.

So the arithmetic works, don't you think?
I've yet to to see any reference to how the costs for medical treatment would actually be paid in the Villages model. Will participants be members of the 10k Club? That of course is the polar opposite of socialized medicine, and I don't think this is What Mr. Morse has in mind. More likely he intends to work within the 'system', charging standard patient rates and submitting them for for insurance or medicare reimbursement for example. He will then be in a position to control costs and care to the extent he wishes to do so. Therefore, his model could well become a significant move away from the independent, private doctor/patient enterprise. I don't have a problem with this because I think it's about time models like this were put in place.

And I agree, hooray for Mr. Morse!