By Dave Chase

Not a week goes by without seeing some headline about deficits pushing municipalities to desperation or Bill Gates describing state budgets using accounting techniques that would make Enron blush.  The common culprit: healthcare costs with Medicaid being the biggest driver.

Recently Carly Fiorina opined on The Health Care Blog about Health Care, Not Coverage. She pointed out the unnecessary administrative burden that could be better spent on delivering healthcare. Fortunately, there is already a proven model, developed and run by physicians, that has shown it can reduce costs 20-40% by removing administrative overhead while improving outcomes (e.g., 40-80% reductions in hospital admissions) and greatly increasing patient satisfaction with Google/Apple level of patient satisfaction.

It can be described as two parts Marcus Welby and one part Steve Jobs. The federal health reform bill included a little-noticed clause allowing for Direct Primary Care (DPC) models to be a part of the state health insurance exchanges. That little-noticed clause (Section 1301 (a)(3) of the Affordable Care Act and proposed HR3315 to expand DPC to Medicare recipients) should have the effect of massively spreading the DPC model throughout the country. In California, the DPC model was introduced in a bill to bring explicit support for the DPC model as has been done in the state of Washington and elsewhere.

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