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Thirty-six times.
Same brain MRI. Same CPT code.
$406 at Henry County Memorial in New Castle, Indiana.
$14,681 at Sky Ridge in Lone Tree, Colorado.
Five years of price transparency. The gap did not shrink. It just got public.
A posted price without a shopper is still a sticker.
Direct care posts the fee before you walk in. The number on the door is the number you pay.
medicalpricecheck.com/resear…
1/4
5.9 million adults in Canada don't have a regular family doctor, nurse practitioner, or primary care team.
And having one isn't the same as getting in. Only 37% of people with a regular clinician said they could get a same- or next-day visit for something urgent.
4/4
The honest catch: Canada Health Act and provincial rules vary, and a membership can't be a condition for publicly insured care. So the real conversation is what a clear, legal pathway for this model would look like, province by province.
Worth having.
Sources:
5.9M without regular clinician; 37% same/next-day for urgent issues (OurCare 2025 national survey, with CMA): utoronto.scholaris.ca/server…
Admin burden (CMA + CFIB, 2025): cma.ca/physician-wellness-hu…
Canada Health Act annual report on membership-fee clinics: canada.ca/en/health-canada/s…
79%.
That's how many UK GPs say they aren't fairly paid, per Medscape's UK Doctors Pay Report 2026. Specialists: 68%.
GPs reported seeing 97 patients a week, more than double specialists' 45. Doctors overall spent 17 hours a week on paperwork and admin. And 87% of GPs work solely in the NHS.
That isn't a doctor problem. It's what happens when a single payer sets the price and most doctors have no other buyer for their time.
Direct care flips it. Flat monthly membership. Smaller panels. No billing department.
Doctors: how many hours a week does your paperwork take?
Medscape UK Doctors Pay Report 2026:
medscape.com/p11/uk-doctors-…
Day #7 since flying cars were created before healthcare was fixed.
Starlink brought internet to places cables never reached. Direct care brings a doctor to your phone: text, call, same-day answers. No waiting room. @elonmusk can #DirectCare be next?
Day #6 since flying cars were created before healthcare was fixed.
Elon's first step: question every requirement, then delete. Prior auth, coding, referrals for a sore throat. Direct care deleted them.
@elonmusk can you add #DirectCare to your list?
40+.
That's how many coverage mandates the average state piles onto your health insurance.
Each one adds about 0.44% to 1.11% to premiums. Your plan is a bundle you never got to choose.
Direct care unbundles the everyday part: a flat monthly fee for primary care, and insurance for the big stuff.
Jared Rhoads at the Center for Modern Health on how coverage mandates push premiums up: centerformodernhealth.org/pu…
Day #6 since flying cars were created before healthcare was fixed.
Elon's first step: question every requirement, then delete. Prior auth, coding, referrals for a sore throat. Direct care deleted them.
@elonmusk can you add #DirectCare to your list?
Day #5 since flying cars were created before healthcare was fixed.
Elon's playbook: break it down to first principles. A doctor, a patient, a fair price. Everything else is optional. @elonmusk add #DirectCare to the list?
$232,000 for one outpatient knee surgery.
That's what a hospital quoted an employer. After pushback it was a "clerical error," and the price dropped to just under $50,000. Still almost 5x Medicare.
STAT's words, not mine: workers and employers are "drowning" in their premiums.
So which is it? Through the roof? To the moon? Or just drowning?
How far past drowning do we have to go before we stop waiting on insurance to fix this?
If not now, when?
Enough is enough. Direct care is the one thing actually showing up with answers:
Unlimited visits.
The price is on the wall before you walk in.
Copays? Gone. Nobody's sending flowers.
Stitches, mole removals, in-office stuff: free.
Not "free beer tomorrow" free. Hotel breakfast free. Nobody charges you for the waffles. You already paid when you booked the room.
Your membership is the room.
2 tries this year to show drug cash prices before the script is sent.
Feb: Surescripts and GoodRx pulled their Script Corner pilot weeks after launch.
Oct: Epic announced Prescription Marketplace. Due summer 2027.
Direct care patients didn't wait. They shop cash prices now.
h/t @healthapiguy for the timeline: xitter.cf/healthapiguy/status/21…
In February, @Surescripts and @GoodRx pulled Script Corner, their patient price transparency pilot, weeks after launch. Yesterday, @HeyEpic announced its own take: Prescription Marketplace, which will put pharmacy cash prices next to insurance copays before the prescription is sent.
Some of the largest nonprofit hospital systems in Texas write off a patient's bill and never tell them.
The help exists. They just don't advertise it.
Direct care and GoodBill exist to make sure patients actually get it.
Becker's on the Tradeoffs and KFF Health News review of 166 Texas hospitals: beckershospitalreview.com/fi…
$100 billion.
That's how much in drugs went through 340B last year, a program meant to help hospitals serve low-income patients.
No rule says the discount has to reach the patient. Sometimes the copay is higher than what the hospital paid for the drug.
That's not a safety net. That's a spread.
Direct care and direct insurance are the future of outpatient medicine as the health insurance bubble continues to burst.
Fixing health insurance premiums will help restore the middle class.
As health care grows more complicated and insurance prices continue to rise, some patients are turning to a different model for routine medical care: direct primary care.
More:
bit.ly/3VYDb5w
h/t @DrDiGiorgio for the math: xitter.cf/DrDiGiorgio/status/210…
The average American spends $130 a month on food delivery, $70 on streaming services. $140 on their pets, and $50 on coffee. 90% of US households have at least one streaming subscription.
A direct primary care membership is $100-$200 a month.
“A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it…gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want”
12.4%.
That's this year's individual premium increase in Rhode Island. And a doctor there warns costs could go "through the roof" in the coming years.
Through the roof? We've said that so many years in a row, it's a skyscraper by now.
Dr. Michael Fine on Rhode Island's premium increases: whatsupnewp.com/2026/10/dr-m…
