ObamaCare Driving Doctors and Patients to Direct Pay
UnitedHealth Group has dropped thousands of doctors from its networks due to falling reimbursements, leaving patients wondering what their options are. So are those physicians.
What’s driving people to Dr. Umbehr’s office is not only the increasing pressure on physicians to perform more duties in addition to practicing medicine and the resulting increasing declines to patient access, but also a little known provision in the Affordable Care Act (ACA): Section 1301 and amendment Section 10104. This allows practices such as Dr. Umbehr’s to compete with traditional health insurance options under ObamaCare when they are combined with a high-deductible, lower premium plan designed to cover catastrophic medical costs.
What’s invisible to Dr. Umbehr’s patients, and others who use direct pay or direct primary care (DPC) practices, is that each of them is one of only about 500 or fewer patients the doctor...