While no organization keeps track of how many cash-based medical centers have cropped up nationwide in recent years, Smith and Lantier say they’ve witnessed an explosion. In Oklahoma City alone there are roughly three dozen centers that are all or partly cash based, specializing in everything from radiology to oncology. Texas has two dozen such facilities, and in Torrance, Calif., the Ocean Surgery Center posts many of its prices online. Thousands of cash-based primary-care practices have also sprung up across the country.
This trend may accelerate nationally. With the Affordable Care Act on the chopping block, many experts expect the free-market model to take off. While congressional Republicans have yet to produce a viable replacement for the Obama Administration’s health care law, almost any change is likely to result in more Americans’ choosing high-deductible insurance plans, which would help fuel the cash-based marketplace for years to come.
A few days after Villa’s knee-replacement operation was completed on Jan. 17, his daughter captured a video of the happy patient, in headphones, “boogying down the hallway,” as he put it, of the Marriott Residence Inn in Oklahoma City, where he stayed for a week and a half to recover. After the surgery a physical therapist and a nurse visited Villa in his hotel room, bearing gifts: an ice machine, pain medication, a thermometer and detailed, hands-on instructions for his recovery, all of which were included in his original bill. “I’ve really never experienced this quality of care,” Villa says.
There is good reason to think Villa’s experience could be the shape of things to come. Since taking office, President Donald Trump has signed an Executive Order instructing the Department of Health and Human Services to begin weakening Obamacare, while standing by his previous promise that any replacement plan will allow Americans with pre-existing conditions to access affordable insurance.
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