Seattle doctors try flat-rate no-limit primary care

Re:Seattle doctors try flat-rate no-limit primary care by philwelch on Monday October 12, 2009 @04:23PM (#877550)

I've long heard it argued that the current model of billing insurance for primary care caused more problems than it solved. It's good to see entrepreneurs test this hypothesis.

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Re:Seattle doctors try flat-rate no-limit primary care by nopal on Monday October 12, 2009 @04:56PM (#877625)

Agreed! This is a perfect market for innovation to succeed.

If a quick Google is to be believed, Norm Wu is a EE+MBA.

I think healthcare is a field where some smart people coming from outside the industry can make some big improvements on the way things are done, especially when they reinvent the model.

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Re:Seattle doctors try flat-rate no-limit primary care by lionhearted on Monday October 12, 2009 @05:03PM (#877642)

Yes - the reason why health insurance is so pervasive as an employee benefit is that it can be written off with no taxes, whereas currently this kind of monthly-fee unlimited visit medicine can't. That's asinine from a tax perspective, but that's how the current system works.

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Re:Seattle doctors try flat-rate no-limit primary care by lupin_sansei on Monday October 12, 2009 @11:32PM (#878254)

The origin of health insurance as an employee benefit in the US is that during World War 2 wages were fixed, so employer provided health insurance was a government approved way to give more to the employee through benefits. Basically it's a bad hack to get around a bug.

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Re:Seattle doctors try flat-rate no-limit primary care by philwelch on Monday October 12, 2009 @05:51PM (#877739)

Between people who don't get insurance through work and people who do but want better service, this has a definite niche.

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