What are your thoughts on concierge medical services?

There was an article in the Boston Globe today about how Tufts Medical Insureance is going to start providing concierge medical services to "wealthy" people willing to pay at least $1800.00 a year for the service. The article goes on to say the visits to the doc, instead of being the average 15 minutes would be as much as an hour. And the doc would talk to the patient about preventative steps that the patient could take. Also, the article says, people having this service would be put in a nicer, quieter, less noisy waiting room.

Now, I read this and it gave me a chill. What it essentially says to me is that decent medicine, as it used to be, is a thing of the past or something to be paid for. What really upset me is that people are seeming to accept this as the status quo.

Yes, it is very bad. Many doctors like it because they don't have to work as hard and will still be well compensated. Also, they are being squeezed from every side by the erosion of funding of social medical programs like Medicare, CHAMPUS and Medicaid. This is why we need national health more than ever. We will never get rid of those who want special VIP treatment and can afford it, so I guess there would have to be a niche for this type of operation.

However, if doctors and hospitals were adequately compensated and if the people who actually needed medical care were able to get it, then the doctors wouldn't be looking for alternatives like the elitist program for the rich you have posted about.

This needs to be discussed.

...it would cost me slightly less than $700/month. Certainly that concierge fee must be higher, or must not include the costs of drugs, hospital stays, tests, Xrays, and the rest.

I guess that $1800/year provides the rich hypochondriac's dream, constant access to a trained physician who will schedule any test he can think of every time Mr. Rich's liver hiccups from too many martinis.

If a doctor wants a private practice dealing with whiny, unhappy, rich alcoholics, more power to him. Somebody has to do it, I suppose, and it will be providing a service to the rest of us in health care if the old drunk has somebody else to pester, somebody who can't be complained about for ducking the calls. For his part, the doctor gets maybe 100 patients in a practice in Palm Springs, maybe 5% of the average case load, and gets to work on his golf while he contemplates early retirement and takes the cell phone calls.

As a precedent, of course, it sucks. In practice, it might just take some of the burden off the larger health care system, as the hypochondriac rich are shuttled off to clinics for testing rather than put into the hospital as an inpatient. Gawd knows I'd like to see fewer of them when I go to work.

Box seats, or grandstand?

Limo, or city bus?

I guess this isn't unique.

I get nothing really in medical services except a bill every month. It's all I can afford though. I guess it will get me into a hospital if I have an emergency.

I know of are doing just that. One in particular is specializing in gastric bypass surgery for the well to do patient. People come to these out of the way facilities far away from families and friends and are pampered to the max. It's a means for survival for some of these places in a state where every medicare patient they see makes the budget hemorrage red ink.

before medical plans became popular, medical care was on a pay as you go basis. Many physicians performed unnecessary hemorrhoidectomies and hysterectomies, while poor children died of polio and typhoid because their parents couldn't afford medical care.

before medical plans became popular, medical care was on a pay as you go basis. Many physicians performed unnecessary hemorrhoidectomies and hysterectomies, while poor children died of polio and typhoid because their parents couldn't afford medical care.

We were paying almost 700 a month PLUS co-pays when we DID go to the DR..

For $150.00 a month, you can get your own "rent-a-doc"?? Sign me up :)

I think it's closer to $18,000, and there are other expenses in the package, but for those who don't have to look at the price label, it means they can get in to see the doctor for a hangnail before the guy with the severed finger.