There are some hospitals that proudly make a point of not accepting insurance. They avoid the administrative overhead of negotiating insurance contracts and pricing procedures, and accordingly have a smaller salary footprint.
As a byproduct of not working with insurance, they're allowed to advertise standard prices per procedure, because there actually is a standard price instead of 3-5 different "negotiated" prices. This price transparency is a competitive advantage, and it means they can attract price-sensitive patients for elective procedures.
The competitive advantage of price transparency is just enough to make them competitive with insurance-taking clinics.
The difference is that, in these setups, your clinic lives and dies by its reputation. Being in a big insurance carrier's network will effectively guarantee you a baseline patient volume. Going it "on your own" means you get no such guarantees. It's a riskier proposition.
There are some hospitals that proudly make a point of not accepting insurance. They avoid the administrative overhead of negotiating insurance contracts and pricing procedures, and accordingly have a smaller salary footprint.
As a byproduct of not working with insurance, they're allowed to advertise standard prices per procedure, because there actually is a standard price instead of 3-5 different "negotiated" prices. This price transparency is a competitive advantage, and it means they can attract price-sensitive patients for elective procedures.
The competitive advantage of price transparency is just enough to make them competitive with insurance-taking clinics.
The difference is that, in these setups, your clinic lives and dies by its reputation. Being in a big insurance carrier's network will effectively guarantee you a baseline patient volume. Going it "on your own" means you get no such guarantees. It's a riskier proposition.
I work in health insurance tech, but if you're curious to hear it from the horse's mouth, Keith Smith is the head person of an insurance-refusing operation in Oklahoma: https://www.econtalk.org/keith-smith-on-free-market-health-c...