I’m a neurologist. If a patient has stable seizures and can’t find a doctor to refill his meds, he will run out of his seizure meds , have a seizure , lose his drivers license, possibly injure himself and end with a huge hospital bill. There is a doctor shortage and insurance is expensive. Not everyone has a doctor.
Solution
All Americans should be allowed to take free short self study exams (put out by the drug maker) on each medicine or condition they have and then be permitted to prescribe medications FOR themselves or their dependents ONLY for that condition only. . (This will NOT be paid for by insurance but most common drugs are on the Walmart 4 dollar list.)
Patients should also be allowed to order and pay for common labs
A cottage industry will spring up providing cheap lab tests (most can be done under 10 dollars). Another industry will arise providing quick instructional podcasts folllowed by the link to the exam) to people who want to learn to manage their own diabetes hypertension or asthma.
For the average person under 50 who is on 1-3 meds this will allow him to manage his own hypertension diabetes and migraine meds Without insurance and would cost less than 50 dollars a month including all meds. If he bought a high deductible policy for catastrophic illness he would have cheap and effective health care and would have a greater interest and stake in his health
Americans can learn to check their BP manage their cholesterol, and manage uncomplicated illnesses. This will free up doctor time for new (undiagnosed) patients and complex patients . It will lower insurance costs. It will make care immediately accessible. It will reduce the doctor shortage
We no longer rely on scribes to write our letters for us. We write them ourselves . We have scribes (called lawyers) to write complex materials. We don’t need doctors to just refill our meds once a year. Most people can learn to do that themselves. Let’s make health care great again!