I’m getting phone calls from my health insurance company, first from a “registered nurse” with no information in the voicemail other than a call-back number (seems like it could be a scam, but I need to verify the number, so far people are saying the number is legit), and now I have a second phone call where the voicemail mentions they are calling from the insurance company’s “concierge program”.
Mostly I want to know if I can ignore these calls without consequence, or if I have to return them, and if so what should I expect?
I can’t answer why you’re getting calls, but I’d be suspicious.
It’s where your primary care physician goes independent and stops accepting insurance. You pay them a flat fee a couple of times a year, and get their service for free. That is, you’re obviously paying them whether you use them or not, but you don’t pay them every time you see them.
You still need insurance, to cover things like specialists, and many tests the doctor performs - blood work, etc - can still be billed to insurance. But you go to a flat fee for your doctor.
My wife and I did it because our primary care physician, who we’ve been with for years and like, went concierge; we decided to stay with her despite it costing more than to switch to a different doctor.
Many things changed, mostly for the better.
There is really the only one downside: insurance does not cover concierge, and it is not cheap. It’s within reason for middle class, but it’d be utterly unaffordable for lower or lower-middle class. It’s totally entitled. OTOH, if we had a single payer universal healthcare system, or if every provider were concierge, healthcare would be cheaper all around and maybe it’d be affordable.
Anyway, we did it because we followed a doctor. I don’t know that I’d jump into it with a provider I didn’t know. In our doctor’s case, she only offered it to her existing patients and doesn’t take on new ones (or, not often), and keeps her work load more manageable; I’d expect this to be common.
If insurance is trying to get you to do this, there’s an angle and I’d be suspicious. Either because they have to pay less (because concierge fees aren’t paid by insurance); or some company has figured out a way to “give you insurance” where you pay them and they pay the concierge fee, in which case they’re just a middleman skimming money and you’re paying more.
We are extremely happy with our concierge service, but we love our doctor, we can afford it, and it’s been a massively better experience for us. But that’s us. YMMV.
My kids’ pediatrician has something similar. Their model is you pay some nominal amount annually (I think it was $50/kid) and while they still bill insurance for your visits, all copays and incidentals are waved not including lab work. Works out for them because they’re not wasting staff time tracking down copays and get that money up front for the year and if we end up having to go more than once a year it’s cheaper for us.
The hoops providers have to jump through to get around our horrible healthcare and insurance systems; it’s astounding there hasn’t already been a revolt.
Honestly, it’s the worst of what’s bad about capitalism.