Dr. Jerry Williams of Urgent Care 24/7 discusses the insurance industry, specifically the health insurance industry.

Now, if any of you are familiar with my company, Urgent Care 247, you may or may not know that we do not accept third party payment insurance of any kind, either public or private. So what that means is that our patients pay for our services at the point of service. There are a lot of people who have health insurance., Dr. Williams included, that we pay very dearly, and he might say through the nose for our health insurance coverage. Dr. Williams wanted to talk about this topic because it's a big deal, it's a big deal facing us facing our country right now. It's a big deal facing our country that we've been facing now for what, eight, nine years, most recently with the Affordable Care Act.

Dr. Williams wanted to talk to you a little bit about the insurance industry history, he's got some notes here that an expert in the health insurance space provided me and he wanted to use these notes because they're just so good, and he didn't want to put anyone off by referring to these notes.

It says here health insurance originated in the 1920s as hospital and medical expense insurance. What was widely considered the first employer responsive sponsored plan was with a group of teachers in Dallas, Texas. And guess what it was a pre paid basis plan. This meant that the member knew the cost of what they would pay up front and the value of those services. The member knew exactly what they would get without any surprises. How different is that compared to today? Right? Justin Kimball created the Blue Cross to allow the teachers in Dallas, Texas to pay a hospital 50 cents a month and not be charged later, when they went to the hospital to have a baby. If the teachers didn't have a baby, the blue cross kept the 50 cents, which of course, if the teacher had a baby, some portion of that 50 cents went to the hospital. Thus the birth no pun intended, of health insurance.

Here we are nearly 101 years later, we now have what has been has become a disaster commonly referred to as BUCHAS. That's capital B, U, C, A, H, S, which stands for Blue Cross, United, Cigna, Aetna and Humana. Dr. Williams refers to them as the dark side and to 2021 and nearly 2021 in nearly 90% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. The BUCHAS plans have deductibles that are killing the American dream. Next to mortgage payments, healthcare has become a top expense, and it's one of the top causes of bankruptcy in America. This is largely due to the fact that the insurance companies have risen deductibles to unprecedented levels. Imagine making $50,000 and having a $5,000 deductible. And if you're like most Americans, you don't have an additional $5,000 laying around to satisfy medical bills that could happen very unexpectedly.

You end up with the quote being functionally uninsured quote, which means you have insurance for catastrophic health issues, but you cannot afford to use your insurance for anything else. Re-enter the concept of prepaid basic health care. History repeats itself. The concept of membership based medicine was the origin of private commercial health insurance. But the industry veered off into a revenue focus supply chain that has become self destructive. Membership based medicine restores order to the largely failing ecosystem of healthcare. At Urgent Care 247, we've avoided commercial insurance BUCHAS from the beginning. We've never taken third party payment insurance. We predicted the downfall of the big boomers. The boomers have concern excuse me, the boomers have cornered Americans and our whole country. Americans are fed up and tired of waiting for appointments choosing to eat versus pay medical expense deductibles. The case for change has never been larger than now. Urgent Care 247 sets a specific membership cost in place, much like a gym membership. You pay a level prepaid amount every month.

We provide an impeccable experience for your health care, no appointments, walk in 24/7/365. We are also offering another unique approach we call concierge for a higher cost. You'll see an even more extensive list of medical services offered. Our staff is ready to serve Americans and deliver health care the way it should be transparent, high quality directly delivered health care 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

So we're reinventing health care the way it was intended to be from the beginning. So he wanted to read you that and he didn't want it to be disingenuous by me reading it to you but just thought it was worded perfectly. It kind of sums up what Urgent Care 247's mantra has been from day one that we can eliminate third party payer health insurance, eliminate that middleman and pass that savings along to our patients, our customers.

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