Free Market Medicine
David Henderson explains:
I was driving and so my wife got on the iPad and did a Google search. What came up was a site called “Just Answer.” She clicked on the link for “Doctors and Nurses” and registered. She had two choices: (1) pay $24 and wait who knows how long for an answer or (2) pay $38 for an expedited answer. We were concerned enough that she did the latter. She keyed in her symptoms and some of her medical history. About an hour later, a specialist — a neurologist — was on her case and she and I my wife went back and forth on a “chat” feature on the site that also allowed my wife to “save” the conversation. Bottom line: deal with the symptoms while we were in Santa Barbara for a week and then get some blood tests when she returned. My guess is that she would have gotten a similar response from Doctors on Duty or Urgent Care. But we would have been slowed down, we would have paid a multiple of the $38, and we wouldn’t have had a specialist.
The sad thing is that as great a service as that looks to be, there is someone out there that wants to regulate it out of existance.
PCP’s average how many minutes per patient these days? 8? I’m sure there are issues with this sort of a system, but that sounds like a fantastic deal.
Technology in action.
Side note, I’ve been saying something like this should have been implemented years ago. Hm, should’ve got on that.
This is pretty cool! But, I always ask Dr. Google.
I can’t get past the fact that the difference in prices between the two services is only $14. I wonder if anybody would actually pay for the first one just to save that much money.
This seems like a viable and speedy way to consult a physician. However, I think it’s safe to say that most people would be concerned about whether that “physician” they are “chatting” with is actually a doctor and not a scam.
As long as the system is caveat emptor, reputation should be enough to ensure that it is not a scam.
This is a very interesting post. Glad to see that medicine is keeping up with technology.