Free Market Medicine is an overarching topic that includes: Direct Patient Care, Price Transparency, Freestanding Ancillary Services such as Surgery Centers, Imaging Centers Laboratories and Independent Pharmacies, amongst others.

Direct Patient Care is the up and coming reimbursement and care delivery model in which government, employers or individuals pay a set monthly fee for a prescribed list of services. It does not involve insurance, therefore no copays, deductibles or out-of-pocket maximums.

No longer limited to primary care, several specialties now feature this membership medicine model as well, including Dermatology, Ophthalmology and Rheumatology.

Price transparency is becoming more and more important as deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums continue to climb. Independent price transparency resources such as Pratter, Healthcare Blue Book, MDSave and ClearHealthCosts are important in helping consumers locate low-cost alternatives to hospitals and hospital-owned ancillary services. Why? Because these facilities are allowed to charge "facility fees" which can increase one's bills by 80% and upwards. The freestanding, independent non-hospital owned ancillary centers make it possible to find these low-cost alternatives.

Health sharing plans, such as Liberty Health Share, Sedera Health and others could also be considered free market alternatives to traditional insurance. When combined with a Direct Patient Care practice and price transparent services, significant savings can be achieved with an actual increase in quality of service rendered.

Hello, everybody!

My name is John Chamberlain. I am a recovering hospital CEO and have been involved in healthcare forever (over 40 years professionally). My dad was an internist and I spent many a day at the nurse's station as he made rounds. From that point forward, I have worked in healthcare manufacturing, hospitals, insurance, physician practices and urgent care settings.

For the last 7 or 8 years I have been working in the world of Free Market Medicine, in which patients have so much more choice in how and where they receive health care services, typically without third party interference. This world includes Direct Patient Care physicians, independent imaging, laboratory and surgery centers and others of similar ilk.

I am serving as Direct Care Lead for Citizen Health and because of that am reenergized about the future of health care in our country and internationally as well.

I would like to see this community grow and be the place for free exchange of ideas on how to make health care more accessible and affordable to all.

The things I dislike(despise) about our current sickcare system? Intermediaries. Those entities that add no value to health care. PBMs, GPOs, RCM companies, the health insurance cabal, hospitals and health systems that refuse to post transparent prices, government, employers... Oh, the list goes on.

Removing the intermediaries and making health care about the patient/physician relationship once again is the major thing I would change.

Life goals? To continue making health care better for my children and now, grandchildren.

Notice what I did there? I use the term healthcare when I refer to our existing fee-for-service system and health care when I refer to the players in the Free Market Medicine movement.

I look forward to getting to know all of you better and to making health care great again!