Good news for Montana. The Montana House of Representatives advanced their DPC bill:

Senate Bill 101 would formalize the practice of a patient paying a monthly fee in exchange for agreed upon services from a health care provider, which is called direct patient care or DPC.

The disturbing part for me was the Democratic push back on it. There was a time, not long ago, that both sides agreed that DPC was affordable and gave patients the time they truly needed. Something has changed. Here was the quote from the article:

Democratic House Minority Leader Kim Abbott opposed the policy this session. She said the practice would go unregulated.

“It’s outside of the insurance commissioner’s regulatory duties, and it’s outside of the board of medical examiners. And so what that creates is a pretty big consumer protection issue, from my view.”

In no way do I want to make this website political but I am just lost on what this person is saying. Here are my questions in response to what she said:

• Why does an insurance commissioner need to have anything to do with a doctor-patient relationship?
• Are you so addicted to the insurance model, which is broken, that you think an insurance commissioner should have power over doctors?
• What is a board of medical examiners? Please correct me if I am wrong but a medical examiner signs a death certificate.
• Do you mean the state board of medical licensure? DPC has NOTHING to do with medical licensure. All doctors are still beholden to the state board for their license. And all doctors have malpractice insurance.
• What consumer protection issues do you speak of? Transparency? The insurance model you protect has none. DPC doctors list their prices and services and the patient agrees or doesn’t agree. The majority of DPC doctors don’t hold a patient to a lengthy contract and have a 30 day out clause. The service and care at a DPC clinic is so much better than the industrialized model because DPC doctors have fewer patients and much more time to spend with patients.
• Oh….do you mean the consumer protection issue of physician burnout? Yeah, DPC docs don’t have that. Instead of you a broken insurance model, which you are protecting, which has little oversight over midlevels and doctors seeing too many patients with no time to catch up.

I hope you see this, Kim Abbott, because you have NO idea what you are talking about. I can find you a DPC doctor in Montana if you want to learn more.