The Future of Medicine Is the Personal Option

The personal option approach to healthcare and health insurance reforms will give patients more choices. Increased choice will lead to medical care providers and insurers operating innovatively to keep healthcare quality high and costs low.

To create more patient choices, we must give doctors and healthcare providers more flexibility. One major way to increase flexibility would be to allow healthcare professionals to practice across state lines. This opportunity was allowed as a response to COVID-19, but is an option that should always be available.

A second way to increase access to care is to continue the progress that has already been made with tele-medicine.  In the outpatient setting, this technology has been used as an effective tool to engage patients who have limited transportation, have a high rate of falling out of care with traditional office-based visits, and those whose life schedule makes it much more convenient to speak with their physician from home.  However, the benefits of tele-medicine are also seen in the hospital setting, where tele-ICU and tele-stroke programs-for example-augment the care being given in smaller hospitals.

A third way to increase choices is to policies that incentivize and encourage more direct care. Direct care, healthcare where a price is agreed on and bills are paid immediately, allows doctors to take more time with their patients, and spend less time filing reports to the government and insurance carriers. Additionally, direct care means that more resources can be spent on the patient instead of the bloated administration that our current healthcare system dictates.

Additionally, as patients have more freedom, they will demand more personalized care and more transparency. Transparency will help create more competition in both access and price. And, competition to provide personalized care will also lead to more competition in both quality and access.

In contrast, increased governmental control of the healthcare system would only lead to shortages in the supply of goods and services. We need only look to Europe for examples. In France, “The number of drugs reported as scarce in the country increased 20-fold between 2008 and 2018.” The lack of a robust French pharmaceutical market is a primary cause of these shortages. According to Politico, “One explanation for Europe’s rising shortages is that drugs and their ingredients are increasingly manufactured by only a handful of companies, mostly located in Asia.” Naturally, less competition results in higher prices and a lack of supply of drugs under the French system.

We need to look for a new approach. The key to improving U.S. healthcare and health insurance systems is a move towards the personal option. These reforms need to be centered around the consumer – the patient – which means removing unnecessary barriers within our system that prevent increased choice and access. We need more flexibility in the way physicians deliver care, we need more price transparency, and patients need to have more choices.

Reforms to implement the personal option would change the fortress of the current healthcare market and lead to a revolution, or a new frontier, for healthcare. The less that the government is involved in the exam room the better and more effective the patient – physician relationship will be.

Dr. Sunil V. Bhat is an infectious disease specialist in Columbus, Ohio.