Warning for Obamacare enrollees: ‘Coverage doesn’t mean care’

From Mark Perry.

"I’ve written many times before about the Surgery Center of Oklahoma, the “free market-loving, price-displaying, state-of-the-art, AAAHC accredited, doctor owned, multispecialty surgical facility in central OK.” A few recent news reports have highlighted the Surgery Center’s fastest growing group of patients – Obamacare enrollees. 

From an August Watchdog.org story “Oklahoma doctor making a run around Obamacare“:

About a year before the birth of Obamacare, Dr. Keith Smith, director of the Surgery Center of Oklahoma, posted all the prices for his center’s surgeries online. Today, he’s in expansion mode, looking to build two more operating rooms. His fastest-growing group of patients? Obamacare enrollees.
Though armed with Obamacare health insurance plans, the patients are saddled with high deductibles. Looking for alternatives, some of them fly from around the country to the Surgery Center of Oklahoma, where the cost of care and travel together amounts to less than their deductibles under their Affordable Care Act plans.
The Surgery Center of Oklahoma is a physician-owned operation that does not take Medicare or Medicaid and only selectively works with private insurance plans. Patients pay in cash or with cashier’s checks.
“Even if someone has an Obamacare insurance card in their pocket, they are soon going to find out that it’s worthless,” Smith said, citing both higher prices and doctor shortages under Obamacare. “Coverage doesn’t mean care.”

From a FOX 25 KOKH-TV (Oklahoma City) report yesterday “Patients with ‘Obamacare’ having a hard time paying with plans, doctor says“:

There is one group of patients growing faster than any other at the Surgery Center of Oklahoma. Medical Director Keith Smith says patients with ‘Obamacare,’ plans under the Affordable Care Act, are flocking to his facility.
“They’re not the largest part of our business but they’re definitely the fastest growing part of our business as patients discover they can actually buy their health care cheaper than they can buy their coverage,” Dr. Smith said. “We started with the idea we could do it better and cheaper than the hospitals and to say it’s been a success would be a wild understatement,” Smith said.
Now, Smith says, more and more Affordable Care Act patients are becoming attracted to this different approach to healthcare. “They can actually buy a hernia procedure here for instance, or a gallbladder procedure here, cheaper paying for it themselves rather than going through the insurance benefit paying,” Smith said.
Smith said that is because many people with these insurance plans have high deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs.  The prices he offers are actually smaller than these costs.

MP: I think that we can expect to see a lot more of this type of market-based, price-displaying, innovative disruption in the health care industry. As Dr. Smith says, Obamacare enrollees are quickly finding out that “coverage is not care,” and his center is offering an affordable solution. If the Surgery Center of Oklahoma can offer surgery prices below the high deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs for Obamacare patients, this type of health care, and not government-managed health care, could represent the future of medicine."