Reply #10: The concierge fee is on top of all the other payments, not substituted for it.

[highplainsdem]

Patients will still pay for their insurance (and/or Medicare) as well as any out-of-pocket costs and co-pays. This is simply an additional fee being charged so the doctor will limit the number of patients he sees slightly and give each patient slightly more time. One article I saw on this a while back suggested the difference in time would amount to minutes a year, in return for that $1500 fee.

This will also shunt patients who don't want to pay the fee, or can't afford it, to other doctors, increasing their patient load, and that will decrease the care those patients are getting and put pressure on those doctors to become concierge doctors.

And management companies like the one owned by P&G will profit from this change. Once most doctors are using such companies, they'll almost inevitably start raising their fees, forcing doctors to start raising the annual fees to patients.

This is making our medical system more expensive, not better.