By Katy Talento – CEO | Former White House Policy Advisor | Media Commentator, Writer, Communicator and Influencer | Recovering Epidemiologist | Naturopath. Hacking the systems that control our health.
The post-network world of a cash economy may be the only hope for saving health care, which is otherwise headed toward such unsustainable costs, grievous harm to patients and moral injury for everyone involved. BUT that world can’t come if the vast majority of patients are served through their employer plans that are run by networks.
Cash-pay is primarily happening in little pockets of higher income patients and a few brave doctors outside the system (like many of my friends at Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, where I spoke last night). It’s not available to the vast majority of patients living paycheck to paycheck.
To get from here to there a big enough scale to tip the current system into a real cash economy, the employer market – where 180 million Americans are covered – must find ways to dodge and weave around networks and pay cash to independent doctors and facilities.
This is a challenging process that involves a variety of imperfect solutions with trade-offs, on our way to the promised land where ALL health care is affordable because of a competitive cash market, but it’s a heck of a lot better than the status quo that’s taking our entire system off the cliff, and the country with it.