Concierge Medicine will be driven by looming Doctor Shortage

Yup.

As the State’s central planning succeeds in making one of the “tiers” in healthcare much much worse, more and more middle-class people will opt out of that “tier” and move up to another level which, perversely, the State’s horrible actions are now encouraging.

So the divide between and among the tiers of healthcare will become greater.

Nice work, Central Planners!

More at The Happy Md:

As the doctor shortage worsens, the typical patient will begin to notice they are only seen by a physician on rare occasion. A certain percentage will become willing to pay for that privilege. I suspect this will quickly grow to a huge new demand for concierge medicine services, where you pay a reasonable monthly fee to guarantee you are always seen by your doctor.

As the doctor shortage continues to worsens,  I believe a larger and larger segment of our population will become willing to pay to continue to see their primary care doctor as they do today and their only alternative will be concierge medicine.

The huge popularity of concierge medicine will have another important driving force – the office duties of the concierge medicine physician are exactly the opposite of those in example #1 above.

In a concierge medicine practice,  the physician is often seeing less than 15 patients a day, providing direct patient care and continuing to have meaningful personal relationships with their patients.