The Medical Price Transparency Revolution Is Here

At Urgent 9, we’ve been leading the fight in Southern California against unfair and exploitative medical pricing that’s come about as a result of the broken health care system in America. Rather than playing by insurance companies’ confusing and intentionally complex rules, we’ve adopted a cash model that revolves around fair and transparent pricing. Now, according to a Yahoo News report, more and more medical practices nationwide are following suit.

“The System Is Broken” Is An Understatement

For millions of families across America, the healthcare debate is not merely an ideological one. It is not a political football to be used to score points about which party has the best idea. It is a grim, terrifying, and complicated reality that threatens lives and regularly bankrupts savings accounts.

Regardless of your opinion on how to fix it, there’s simply no getting around the fact that the healthcare system is broken beyond repair in its current state — and it’s going to require bold, innovative thinking to rescue Americans from a system that is shamefully inadequate considering our national wealth and status on the world stage.

Medical bankruptcies for families aren’t just something you might read about in the news from time to time. They are happening, daily, in apartments, condos, and houses across the southland, leaving a trail of devastation and ruined dreams in their wake. Retirement accounts, drained to make a life-saving surgery possible. Savings, totally wiped out just to pay for one course of treatment. Generations of families set back for years just to provide a decent end-of-life quality for aging parents or grandparents. This is one of the most pressing issues facing our communities today, and it has to stop.

 

Cash & Transparency Is The Future

Increasingly, community urgent care centers like Urgent 9 are being joined by major national surgery centers in a rapid sea change that is moving toward a cash model. Instead of playing by insurance companies’ rigged rules, the emerging cash model seeks to sidestep it entirely.

You might be thinking: “how is paying cash for medical treatment better than having insurance?” Although it might sound more expensive on the surface, it’s not even close. The cash model movement is built around the idea that medical practices show you exactly what it costs them to provide each specific treatment, a figure that is shockingly lower than what insurance companies calculate to justify their own inflated tables that have nothing to do with reality.

In fact, the vast majority of treatments are within the financial reach of just about any family. By making health care something that can be paid for, in its entirety, using cash or credit — without leaving you in crippling medical debt for the rest of your life — cash model providers are putting quality medical care back in reach of the average person once again.