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Exceptional Health Care at a Reasonable Price

A small, personalized medical practice for a low fee

Medical insurance companies are taking a larger and larger chunk of money for simply processing payments for routine medical care. All of us have many types of insurance: Life, Auto, Homeowners, etc. Our insurance is there for catastrophic problems. For our automobile we pay the gas, oil changes, routine maintenance, even repair. We use our insurance in times of emergency for those problems we cannot afford. However, when it comes to our health insurance, we use it to pay for the most routine matters. This means we are paying the insurance company just to pay our routine bills, with our money. They are not “insuring” us against a catastrophic event, rather just using our monthly payments to pay routine bills (doctor, lab, x-ray facility, etc.) For this you pay a hefty processing fee.

Remember, it is your money. The insurance companies should only save it for you to use on your “rainy day.” An insurance company will never “give” you anything. Using health insurance for ongoing routine care (Preventive care, check-ups, chronic illnesses, etc.) is simply paying the insurance company to process your bills. You may consider switching from a low-deductible PPO plan to a high-deductible PPO plan, the savings in insurance premiums will more than cover the practice membership fee. A high-deductible insurance plan is truly for catastrophic healthcare, as insurance was originally meant to be.

Continuing the automobile analogy think of a preventive care visit as routine servicing on your car and a visit for an acute illness is like fixing a mechanical problem. Reserve your insurance benefits for those times which we all hope will never come; a heart attack, a cancer, a severe injury. Then together we will work to actively prevent such events through preventive care (the equivalent of driving safely.)

By not paying an HMO to manage your healthcare dollars you instead get to decide how you want to spend (or NOT spend) your healthcare dollars.

The solution is to recognize that insurance simply can't pay for all the care you might need at the level of service you expect. The extras, like flexible, open appointment scheduling, easy telephone and email access to your doctor, and extended length visits are not covered or paid for by insurance. None the less these non-covered services make a huge difference in your care and the way you are treated in a doctor's office. The monthly fee supports these non-covered services for all patients in our practice.

We bill insurance for covered services, for example if you come in for a sore throat; we collect co-payments and deductibles just like any other doctor's office. The difference is that the extra fee provides for all the non-covered "extras" that you cannot receive elsewhere.

Our office is a participating provider for most insurance plans. But it does not matter if we are in-network" or out-of-network. We always accept the insurance company allowed amount.


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