Primary care services are the highest value treatments in healthcare. I write regularly here on how primary care teams can improve health and reduce cost for patients with cardiometabolic disease. This article is about a broken healthcare system, medical debt, and irrational healthcare finance. It makes some great points and is well worth your time. It discusses deductibles and copays which prevent many patients from getting the care they really need. There should be no copays for primary care visits and critical generic medicines for cardiovascular and related conditions. You can save money and lives all day long with a system like that.
“In a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper published last year, researchers looked at how increases in cost-sharing affected how older adults, who are more likely to need care, pay for and use drugs. Remember, people age 65 and older in the United States are insured with what most consider to be rather comprehensive coverage: Medicare. The researchers claimed, however, that a simple $10 increase in cost-sharing, which many would consider a small amount of money, led to about a 23 percent decrease in drug consumption. Worse, they said it led to an almost 33 percent increase in monthly mortality. In other words, making seniors pay $10 more per prescription led to people dying.”
Look at the slide above. Even if a patient has diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol, they can receive a precision medicine protocol for $40 a month. By eliminating copays and deductibles for primary care visits and these medications we can prevent the much higher costs that result from too little too late.
Our system for treating chronic disease needs an extensive overhaul. Let’s get started
Yup! Absolutely.