Plum Health at DNewTech Q&A

We were invited to pitch at DNewTech on Wednesday night, and after our pitch, we had 5 minutes to answer questions about Plum Health DPC. Here's the video of the event! 

You can see the original Pitch Video here, and you can see our original blog post here. 

One of the biggest barriers for people learning about our model is the difference between health care and health insurance. You need health insurance to protect you against the unknown or unforeseen: cancer, stroke, heart attacks and car accidents. Your health insurance should not cover your primary care services, because it introduces a middle man (or several middle men) between you and your doctor, driving up the price of those services. 

Health care is what we deliver at Plum Health. As your primary care doctor, I'm not that expensive and you're really paying me for my time. This allows me to answer your phone calls, texts, and emails in a timely fashion. It also allows me to get you in for an appointment when you need it, rather than having you wait for weeks just to be seen. 

Health care delivers the basics, like office visits, meds, labs, stitches when you cut yourself, and advice/counseling on lifestyle changes when you need it. Health insurance covers the unforeseen circumstances that are beyond our control. 

An analogy is auto insurance. We all have auto insurance, but we almost never use it, unless we're in an accident or our car is stolen. However, we don't expect our auto insurance to pay for the routine maintenance of our vehicles, like oil changes, tire rotations, and gas at the pump. If we did require our auto insurers to pay for these things, it would drive up the prices and make these basic services a hassle. Could you imagine long lines at the pump, prior authorizations to drive to Chicago, and auto insurance that only covers the basic oil, not the Valvoline. 

This would be an absurd way to take care of our cars. And I know that cars and people are different, but the way we've structured our health insurance coverage has caused very similar stress points to the imagined scenario above: long wait times to see your doctor, prior authorizations to get imaging studies like CT scans, and health insurance coverage that only covers some medications, but not others. 

In Direct Primary Care, we get rid of all of these middle men to deliver excellent, affordable services without the hassle. 

Thanks for reading and watching,

- Paul Thomas, MD